I'mma bounce back into this thread to make another recommendation, a little more contemporary than Hundred Years of Solitude for ya'll.

But Kenziboru Oe's Death by Water, also known as Sushi in the original Japanese is a great book. It might be more than off putting for most people used to the popular style of say Harry Potter or whatever kids are reading today, because Kenziboru writes in such a minimalist style. Nearly the entire book is written via dialog with scant narrative description. It makes enough to set the scene before it gets the ball rolling. It's something I would have passed off had I not had the enlightening moment I did reading the book, at which point the full scope of it hit me like a rock and I had, shall we say: a zen moment.

I won't spoil it because I don't want to ruin what that was. But I will say it's a story worth its merits. It's initial pretenses do die rather quickly, which is what had me confused at first before it plodded along and I discovered what he was really doing with the story.