For me, The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera; On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-Ocean Vuong; Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most tragic, painful, human suffering can be presented and these writers present it in the most excruciatingly beautiful prose.
On Earth we are Briefly Gorgeous-“A woman stands on the shoulder of a dirt road begging, in a tongue made obsolete by gunfire, to enter the village where her house sits, has sat for decades. It is a human story. Anyone can tell it. Can you tell? Can you tell the rain has grown heavy, its keystrokes peppering the blue shawl black?”
What is the beauty for you?
Agree. The more you grow to understand the amount of effort that we put into killing each other, especially in the World Wars, the more probably it becomes to consider spending so much time and effort doing the reverse. It’s hard to fathom the scope of these massive human operations.
Also, I know the prose is a bit plain, but like Hemingway, he conveys such beauty with such plain words.