SINGAPORE – Unable to leave home due to circuit breaker measures, or even set foot outside your room due to a home quarantine order? Escape your physical confines through the "uniquely portable magic" of books, as author Stephen King puts it. Here are 10 works of fiction that contain worlds within worlds for you to go wandering in.
1. The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (1950)[hhmc]
By C. S. Lewis
Available at this website.
In this children's classic that kicks off the beloved Chronicles Of Narnia series, the four Pevensie children are evacuated during World War II to a house in the English countryside, where the youngest, Lucy, enters a wardrobe and discovers a magical land called Narnia.
Though her siblings are sceptical, all eventually make their way to Narnia, which is populated by talking animals and mythical beings such as fauns. Its ruler, the White Witch, keeps it in the grip of a perpetual winter and can only be overthrown if the children join the great lion Aslan against her.
2. Neverwhere (1996)[hhmc]
By Neil Gaiman
Available at this website.
When corporate drone Richard stops to help a bleeding girl in a London street, his act of kindness costs him his house, job and fiancee and renders him invisible and ignored by the rest of society.
To survive, he has to make his way in London Below, a fascinating but dangerous otherworld of floating markets, court politics aboard underground trains and an ancient labyrinth in which lurks a terrible beast.
3. Sofia And The Utopia Machine (2018)[hhmc]
By Judith Huang
Available at Local Books' website.
In a dystopian Singapore that has been literally stratified by class, 15-year-old Sofia accidentally creates a new world using a top-secret machine in her mother's Biopolis laboratory.
The good news is that she has become the goddess of her own universe. The bad news is that she must go on the run from the government and flee to the no-man's-land of Pulau Ubin.
4. His Dark Materials (1995 to 2000)[hhmc]
By Philip Pullman
Available at this website.
In this epic trilogy, lavishly adapted for television by HBO last year (2019), the irrepressible 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua journeys to the frozen north in search of her kidnapped friend Roger and winds up in a war of divine proportions.
Lyra is from a world parallel to this one, where humans all have their own daemons, animal manifestations of people's souls. She crosses paths with Will Parry, a teenager on the run who becomes the wielder of the Subtle Knife, an instrument that can cut windows into multiple worlds.
5. Howl's Moving Castle (1986)[hhmc]
By Diana Wynne Jones
Available at this website.
Sensible Sophie Hatter's life as a small-town milliner is upended when she is transformed by a vindictive witch into an elderly woman. Seeking to get her curse reversed, she starts keeping house for Howl, a melodramatic and allegedly heartless wizard who lives in a moving castle that opens onto four locations at once and is powered by a fire demon.
This novel was turned into an acclaimed film by animation great Hayao Miyazaki. Even so, the book still manages to be better.
6. The Star-Touched Queen (2016)[hhmc]
By Roshani Chokshi
Available at this website.
In this lush tale spun from Indian mythology, Mayavati, a princess of the Bharata kingdom, has been shunned by the rest of the court because of her terrible horoscope.
About to be sacrificed at her wedding as a political pawn, she is given the chance to escape by becoming queen of the mysterious kingdom of Akaran, a dark, empty land of jewelled trees, sinister whispers and thousands of locked doors.
7. The Night Circus (2011)[hhmc]
By Erin Morgenstern
Available at this website.
Two star-crossed magicians, Celia and Marco, are locked in a duel to the death that neither of them chose to enter.
The stage of their contest is Le Cirque des Reves, a phantasmagorical travelling circus that arrives without warning and draws a devoted following for its panoply of wonders – a garden made entirely of ice, a hall of mirrors, a vertical cloud maze and more. But the circus grows increasingly unstable and unmoored from time as their rivalry comes to a head.
8. The Eyre Affair (2001)[hhmc]
By Jasper Fforde
Available at this website.
In Fforde's metafictional series, people can actually escaRead More – Source
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