Flowers for Algernon

Written as progress reports by its narrator, Daniel Keyes's novel follows Charlie Gordon, a gentle 32-year-old floor sweeper with an IQ of 68 who has learned to read and write only after a fashion. Charlie is chosen as the first human subject of an experimental surgery to raise intelligence, a procedure that has already turned a laboratory mouse named Algernon into a genius among mice. The story touches on ethical questions about how people with mental disabilities are treated. Keyes first wrote it as a novelette, which took the 1960 Hugo for short fiction, and the 1966 novel tied with Babel-17 for the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Andrej Karpathy described it as inventive, clever and interesting, and hostel co-founder Irina Botnari called it the highlight of her reading year, an idea at once heartbreaking and deeply disturbing.