Picture of Dorian Gray

This is one of my favourite books of all time. Oscar Wilde is a marvellously cunning storyteller and his books always absorb me like no other. This is the story of a young man who sells his soul to the devil, planting it in a portrait of himself so that his picture will age instead of him. Every sin he commits disforms his portrait; when he kills a man the arms and hands of the portrait is covered in blood, for example. A bit of a cliché, one might think, but Wilde makes it very effective and I'm impressed. This is 19th century literature at it's best.

Some say that Lord Henry is supposed to represent the hedonistic decay of man. I really have no patience for moral lectures, but that's an interesting thought, I admit that. But I still prefer to think of Dorian's closest friend as the devil. I love the relationship between the artist who can't be bothered by anything but his art and the core of all evil. I love how everyone in the room reacts so fiercly to everything he says, how they seem to unable to shut his voice out and how he, in the end, leaves them speechless. Subliminal yet obvious, it's absolutely brilliant.