History MindScrew / Literature

* {{Dante}} ''attempts'' to describe God a three spheres, of different colors, ''occupying the same space''.

* Though the first two books in are quite straightforward, the last book of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is very Mind Screwy, to the point that it culminates in [[spoiler:resurrected Merlin channelling the spirits of all the other planets out to Saturn, who are clearly the Roman gods that each planet is named for, but also established as Angels of the Lord, in order to take down a scientific organization bent on achieving immortality by destroying their own physical bodies to acquire unending astral ones]]

* Though the first two books in are quite straightforward, the last book is very Mind Screwy, to the point that it culminates in [[spoiler:resurrected Merlin channelling the spirits of all the other planets out to Saturn, who are clearly the Roman gods that each planet is named for, but also established as Angels of the Lord, in order to take down a scientific organization bent on achieving immortality by destroying their own physical bodies to acquire unending astral ones]]

* I Am the Cheese by Robert Corimer seems pretty straightforward at first, but slowly begins to screw with you as you snowball closer and closer to the end, to the point where the last two pages are one of the best examples of all time.

* HeritageOfShannara. It can all be summed up with: ''[[TomatoInTheMirror Who is the Shadowen again?]]''
** Now that isn't true. The first sentence is the last half of the sentence the book ends with. A clue to this can be seen in the character who carries an earlier draft of the book through the story, updating it when things don't happen how it says. [[FalseReassurance I hope this helps.]]

* ThomasLigotti is a man who likes to play with readers' expectations. Nowhere is this more obvious than "The Nightmare Network", the third and final story from ''MyWorkIsNotYetDone''. '''[[HighOctaneNightmareFuel "Think again."]]'''

* ThomasLigotti is a man who likes to play with readers' expectations. Nowhere is this more obvious than "The Nightmare Network", the third and final story from ''MyWorkIsNotYetDone''. ''[[HighOctaneNightmareFuel "Think again."]]''

* The ''MaximumRide'' books have several mind-screwy moments, especially ones involving the Voice.

** speaking as one who has been through exogenously produced madness and a vast amount of various drug use, i totally et the woman behind the paper, although i am a man and have been hospitalized only 13 days or so. you would not believe... the things you could believe... under the right circumstances.

* ''NineteenEightyFour'' by George Orwell. The book is supposed to be this guy's vision of the year 1984 (he wrote it in the 1940's). If it is, his mind must just be one big bowl of mindfuckingness, because that's definitely what this book is...

* ''NineteenEightyFour'' by George Orwell. The book is supposed to be this guy's vision of the year 1984 (he wrote it in the 1940's). If it is, his mind must just be one big bowl of mindfuckingness, because that's definitely what this book is...

* ''NineteenEightyFour'' by George Orwell. The book is supposed to be this guy's vision of the year 1984 (he wrote it in the 1940's or 50's). If it is, his mind must just be one big bowl of mindfuckingness, because that's definitely what this book is...

* "1984" by George Orwell. The book is supposed to be this guy's vision of the year 1984 (he wrote it in the 1940's or 50's). If it is, his mind must just be one big bowl of mindfuckingness, because that's definitely what this book is...

* ''TheBrothersKaramazov'' is billed as a murder mystery and courtroom drama. Yet, characters make key revelations towards its conclusion (especially in Book Eleven, which features a conversation with a [[TheDevil demon]] that might not be there) that qualify it as a MindScrew. [[ThirtyXanatosPileup With everyone playing mindgames against each other for different reasons]], peeling through the layers at the end and dissecting the motivations and the symbolism just blows one's mind.

* ''I Live in Your Basement'' from the {{Goosebumps}} series is far too mindfucky and complicated to summarize here, but check out this BloggerBeware [[http://www.bloggerbeware.com/2006/05/61-i-live-in-your-basement.html post]].

* ''[[FridayThe13th Jason X]]: [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs Death Moon]]'' is generally regarded as SoBadItsHorrible because of this. The book is half coherent and half... not, having random meta and ranty parts, scenes involving poorly explained concepts like Teknopriests, Akasha.net, reality hackers, etc. and what's pretty much the definition of a GainaxEnding where Jason starts fighting his past self for no immediately discernible reason.

* The book of Revelation in TheBible, making this OlderThanFeudalism. Revelation has so much symbolism that interpretations of it range from "it all already happened in the first century" to "some has already happened" to "it'll all happen sometime in the future". Interpretations on who the "Beast" is ranges from the Roman Emperor Nero to the Pope to [[TheBoondocks Ronald Reagan]] to the Mass Media to a future [[{{Terminator}} Skynet]]-like artificial intelligence to Oprah Winfrey ([[TakeOurWordForIt seriously]]).

* "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak [[hottip:* :who also wrote ''WhereTheWildThingsAre'']].

* ''AliceInWonderland,'' though once you realise its all a dream it becomes perfectly straight forward: the nonsense is normal for dreams, there isn't really any plot just lots of witty dialogue and then Alice wakes up.

* HeritageOfShannara. It can all be summed up with: ''[[TomatoInTheMirror Who is the Shadowen again?]]''

* ''HarryPotter''. Everything is symbolic; Hedwig is the saint of orphans, holly -the wood in Harry's wand- represents purity/good, etc. Most of the symbols are too obscure to make a good mindscrew, but they are there.