Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

In the Happy Valley of Abyssinia, Prince Rasselas has everything a man could want: beauty, wealth, companionship, and freedom from want. Yet he is miserable. At once a charming adventure and a devastating philosophical inquiry, Samuel Johnson's only work of fiction asks a question that still haunts us: why is contentment so impossible to find? Rasselas escapes his paradise to wander the world, seeking wisdom from shepherds, scholars, and solitaries. He examines the lives of the rich and the poor, the powerful and the idle. What he discovers is as true now as it was in 1759: we are condemned to imagine that happiness lies just beyond our reach. Written in a single fevered week to pay for his mother's funeral, Rasselas pulses with a quiet desperation beneath its elegant surfaces. It is a book for anyone who has ever stared at their good fortune and wondered why it isn't enough.