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Fiction - General
General works of fiction. New additions should be best-sellers, award-winners or otherwise significant with no more than six books per author.
Also see other Fiction subjects e.g. Fiction - Mystery, Crime and Thrillers, Fiction - Romance, Fiction - Science Fiction and Fantasy and the various Non-Fiction subjects.
1947. The first of A. B. Guthrie, Jr.'s, epic adventure novels of America's vast frontier. Guthrie wrote the Academy Award-nominated script to the landmark film Shane
1949. Won Pulitzer prize
A trilogy of Greek tragedies about the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. Though originally written as tetralogy, the fourth play, Proteus, a satyr play that would have been performed as finale, has not survived. The Oresteia was originally performed at the Dionysia festival in Athens in 458 BC, where it won first prize.
Aesop (620–560 BC), was a slave and story-teller who lived in Ancient Greece. His fables are some of the most well known in the world. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today.
Won the 2000 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2001 Whiting Writers' Award.
1955. First published in French as 'Le Voyeur'.
1981. Subtitled "A Life in Four Books", the Scottish writer's first novel is now regarded as a classic, and was described by The Guardian as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."
2007. A novella.
1956. 'La Chute'
'La Mort heureuse' Written 1936-1938, published posthumously 1971
1947. 'La Peste'. An existentialist classic about suffering
1942. 'L'Étranger', often translated as 'The Outsider'
1968. Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie Française
1947. Anti-fascist novel which was the basis for the film 'The Conformist'
Won the Strega Prize (Premio Strega)
1947 'The Woman of Rome'
1939. This satire explores several philosophical and social issues, some of which would later take the forefront in his final novel Island. The title is taken from the Lord Tennyson poem Tithonus about a figure from Greek mythology to whom Aurora, the goddess of dawn, gave eternal life but not eternal youth. The book was awarded the 1939 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
1923. A comic novel. The story takes place in London, and depicts the aimless or self-absorbed cultural elite in the sad and turbulent times following the end of World War I.
1921. Crome Yellow is the first novel by Huxley. Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time.
1936. The chapters of the novel are not ordered chronologically.
1928. Huxley's fourth novel. It is highly regarded: the Modern Library lists it in the top 100 novels of the 20th C.
A novel of the Haitian Revolution, in which he describes his vision of "lo real maravilloso" ("But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?").
1967. Semi-autobiographical novel by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, banned in the Soviet Union in 1968
1968. The novel details the life of the occupants of a gulag prison camp located in the Moscow suburbs, the Marfino sharashka. Many of the prisoners (zeks) are technicians or academics who have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Stalin's purges following the Second World War.
1962. One of the most chilling novels about the oppression of totalitarian regimes and the first to open Western eyes to the terrors of Stalin's prison camps; if Solzhenitsyn later became Russia's conscience in exile, this is the book with which he first challenged the brutal might of the Soviet Union.
1827. An Italian historical novel. It has been called the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language.
1844 - 1886. An adventure story of justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness based on a true story. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas' most popular work. It is also among the highest selling books of all time.
In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers conducted by the Norwegian Book Clubs, the book was named among the top 100 books of all time.
Named after the valley in the Pennines of England where the action occurs
Won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1994. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1989.
2007. The book is set in a single day
2002. Sold over a million and remained on the New York Times hardback bestseller list for over a year.
Pulitizer Prize and National Book Award, 1983
Costa Book of the Year Award 2007
Pulitizer Prize, 1960; died on his 80th birthday
A social protest against the structures of the society that would later give rise to apartheid. Cry, The Beloved Country was written before the implementation of the apartheid political system in South Africa. The novel was published in 1948, with apartheid becoming law later on that same year.
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award in 1996
1999. Awarded the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française 1999
1954; Nigerian writer, 1920-1997
"and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town"
1990. Bestseller
2005. Multi-layered morality tale by the same author as The Joy Luck Club
A lyrical prophecy of a veritable emancipation of Woman, an affirmation of Breton's belief in youth and a championing of the three great causes of poetry, love, and liberty.
Starts with the question "Who am I?"
1927. 'Les faux-monnayeurs'. Its main theme is that of the original and the copy, and what differentiates them – both in the external plot of the counterfeit gold coins and in the portrayal of the characters' feelings and their relationships.
1914. 'The Vatican Swindle'. Aka. 'Les caves du Vatican'. A humorous satire on bourgeois complacency, be it orthodox or anticlerical, and on relativism and chance.
'La Porte Étroite'. Probes some of the complexities and terrors of adolescence and growing up.
1933; 'La Condition Humaine'. A novel about the failed communist revolution that took place in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction
A magic realist post-feminist novel, in which the female characters dominate the males.
The fortunes of two chorus girls and their bizarre theatrical family
A literary classic. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her sisters.
Anne used the pen name Acton Bell.
Inspired by, and was intended as a tribute to, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
2008 - Prometheus Award (Hall of Fame Award). Chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.Speculative fiction novel (1962) adapted to film in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick
Memoirs of an 81 year-old homosexual writer. Shortlisted for the Booker prize.
Volume 1 of the best-selling Enderby Quartet
A fictional recreation of the life and world of Napoleon Bonaparte
Originally published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell.
A twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin.
The second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It is possibly Trollope's best known work.
The author considered this his finest novel
(1855) This novel established Trollope's reputation as a writer and was the first in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series. It was Trollope's first novel.
First published in 1875 after first appearing in serialised form in 1864 and 1865. It is the first of six novels in the "Palliser" series. "The Pallisers', a 26-episode tv adaptation of all six Palliser novels, first broadcast in 1974
French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most famous novel. It has been translated into more than 180 languages and sold more than 80 million copies making it one of the best-selling books ever.
No. 126 on the list of '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' by Peter Boxall
1688. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko is both one of the earliest English novels and one of the earliest by a woman.
Aka. 'Knick Knack Paddy Whack'. A comedy. Ardal O'Hanlon is an Irish comedian and actor, best known for his roles in television sitcoms as Father Dougal McGuire in Father Ted and George Sunday in My Hero.
Generally regarded as one of Bennett's finest works.
1997. Made into a movie of the same name.
1940. His most famous novel, it is set in 1938 during the Stalinist purges and Moscow show trials. It reflects the author's personal disillusionment with Communism
It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins who become victims of circumstance. The book is a description of how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives. The book won the Booker Prize in 1997.
Part historical and part contemporary fiction. 1990 The bestselling novel is a winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
1985. 2nd book in the quartet that started with 'The Virgin in the Garden'. It won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award
1890. An English translation of Strindberg's novel "I havsbandet".
1887. Hemsö is a fictional island, but it is based on Kymmendö where Strindberg had spent time in his youth. Strindberg wrote the book to combat his homesickness while living abroad in Germany and France.
1879. This is the novel which brought Swedish author Strindberg fame. It has been translated into several languages.
1957. It was Rand's fourth, longest, and last novel, and she considered it her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing.
1943. Rand's first major literary success. The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that "man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress".
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
1998. A bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the fictional village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. Won the National Book Prize of South Africa, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize
1905. a classic play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution.
The book was made into a film Kes and is often used in Key Stage 4 assessment in the UK, as part of GCSE English courses.
No. 186 on the list of '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' by Peter Boxall
. . . or, "The Two Nations" traces the plight of the working classes of England in 1844. The book is a roman à thèse, or a novel with a thesis — which was meant to create a propagandistic furor over the squalor that was plaguing England's working class cities.
1957. The novel has been included in Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Novels"
Pulitizer Prize and National Book Award winner, 1967
His first novel in 1952
Schlink's novel was a huge commercial success not only in his native country but in the English-speaking world, becoming the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list when it was translated two years later.
Evolved from 'The Threepenny Opera'
Bessie Head is usually considered Botswana's most important writer.
A nationwide best-seller that was distributed to servicemen overseas.
1948. A utopian novel
A collection of 100 novellas by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, probably begun in 1350 and finished in 1353. It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic.
As the book was frowned upon by the Soviet authorities, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled abroad by his friend Isaiah Berlin. In 1958 and 1959, the American edition spent 26 weeks at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list.
An epistolary novel told as a series of diary entries and letters. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
An autobiographical novel by Irish nationalist Brendan Behan, recounting his imprisonment at Hollesley Bay for carrying explosives into the United Kingdom, with intent to cause explosions on a mission for the I.R.A.. T
Published in 1982 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year.
Published in 1964, the book achieved fame for having holes cut in several pages as a narrative technique.
A novel by the experimental writer B.S. Johnson. As is typical of Johnson's work the novel is written in an unorthodox style.
1945. Gives an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Aliano, a remote town in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives the town the invented name 'Gagliano'.
A novel, 1985
1997 Winner of the Orange Prize, and the Prix de Livre
Won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.
2002 winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, shortlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize
1940. Made the best-seller lists in 1940. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
The book has been adapted for the stage, motion pictures, and television.
A Dutch author. He has won the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, the P. C. Hooft Award, the Pegasus Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Constantijn Huygens Prize, and has frequently been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Het Volgende Verhaal". Won him the Aristeion Prize in 1993
An English translation of the novel 'La Luna e i Falò'. The book was written in Italian in 1949. It is considered Pavese's best novel. Pavese is an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.
Factotum was adapted into a film of the same name starring Matt Dillon in 2005.
His first novel, 1971. Post Office may be said to be an autobiographical account of Bukowski's later years.
Historical novel with plot based on the "no-popery" or Gordon riots of 1780 in Great Britain
Dicken's 9th novel is an assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system in the 1800's
Written as a potboiler to enable Dickens to pay off a debt
The most autobiographical of his novels, it comes at the mid-point of Dickens' career
Deals with the then-prevalent practice of arranged marriages for financial gain or as a form of slavery
Criticized for its excessive use of words due, it is said, to the fact he was paid by installment for his serialised work
The shortest of his novels, it was set in Coketown, not in London
Comic novel that takes aim at social injustices
A satire on debtor's prisons - each issue of Little Dorrit's 19 installments cost one shilling (except the last which cost two)
Depicts America satirically as a near wilderness filled with deceit
Follows the life of Little Nell and her grandfather, residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London
One of the first English language novels to feature a child protagonist
Dickens' last completed novel; also the most challenging and complicated
Dickens' first novel, written as a serial in 19 issues
A historical novel centering on the years leading up to the French Revolution
National Book Award, 1997; made into a popular movie
2006; his second novel after 'Cold Mountain'. Charles Frazier was given an advance payment of over $8 million for a proposal that became 'Thirteen Moons'. The book had an initial print run of 750,000 copies, but sold only approximately half of them. It is estimated that Random House lost $5.5 million on the advance
Title exists in three different lives; as novel, anthology, and verse
Made into the very successful film 'The Graduate'.
Classic romance novel about a governess whose employer falls in love with her
Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel's popularity led to Shirley becoming a woman's name. In the novel, Shirley Keeldar, the title character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the publication of the novel, Shirley was an uncommon - but distinctly male - name and would have been an unusual name for a woman.
Villette is most commonly celebrated for its explorations of gender roles and repression.
Lennox's second and most successful novel, 'The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella'.
A Utopian novel which describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis.
One of the Harlem Detective novels
A finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize for Fiction, it has been described as the "most important novel to come out of Africa in the [1980s]
It is Achebe's third novel following Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease. These three books are sometimes called The African Trilogy. Arrow of God won the first ever Jock Campbell/New Statesman Prize for African writing.
1966 satirical novel. It is Achebe's fourth novel.
The book's title comes from the closing lines of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Journey of the Magi.
It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim.
Wolf is one of the best-known writers to emerge from the former East Germany.
Challenges the state of masculinity in American culture
The book's chapters and page numbers are put into reverse order - it begins with Chapter 47 on page 289 and ends with Chapter 1 on page 1.
An essay written by Cicero in 44 BC on the subject of aging and death. In addition to its profound subject matter, it has remained popular because its clear and beautiful language have made it a useful example for teaching Latin to students.
Won the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize.
1964. A mystical novel. The work takes the form of a monologue by a woman, identified only as G.H., telling of the crisis that ensued the previous day after she crushed a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe. Its canonical status was recognized in 1988 by its inclusion in the Arquivos Collection, the UNESCO series of critical editions of the greatest works of Latin American literature.
He novel is the second of MacInnes' London Trilogy, coming after City Of Spades (1958) and before Mr. Love and Justice (1960). These novels are each self-contained, with no shared characters.
2004. Best-seller made into a very successful miniseries.
Shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Won the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, won the L.A. Times Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Book Award & the Lambda Literary Award, and was listed by The New York Times as one of the 10 most notable books of 2004.
Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) is a poetic novel (or a long prose poem) consisting of six cantos.
National Book Award, 1992
1985. Was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years.
The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.
Thought by some to be non-fiction it is actually a fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London.
A lower class woman travels among the wealthy and exposes their vanity and shallowness. The full title is 'The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who Was Born In Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety For Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife [Whereof Once To Her Own Brother], Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon In Virginia, At Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.'
Often regarded as the first novel in English, it is a fictional autobiography of an English castaway and his rescue. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain, and is even referred to by some as one of the founders of the English novel.
The full title of the novel is 'Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress Or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim'.
Best-seller. Made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
Best-seller with the famous opening line, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." The classic, haunting story of love, and mystery.
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) (shortlist)
Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 list.
Won the Hawthornden Prize. Written in a mixture of verse and prose: it defies categorization as either poem or novel, and critics still differ as to what term best applies.
The first novel by David Leavitt, and deals primarily with the difficulties a young gay man, Philip, has in coming out to his parents
Though Markson's original manuscript was rejected 54 times, the book, when finally published it met with critical acclaim.
A young Pacific islander witnesses the nightfall of science and civilisation, while questions of history are explored in a series of seemingly disconnected narratives. Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is set in modern day Tokyo and tells the story of Eiji Miyake's search for his father.
Part of the Red-Riding Quartet comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002), which deal with police corruption, set against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, and feature several recurring characters across the four books. Red Riding, a TV adaptation of the series, aired in the UK in 2009.
'Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître'
The novel was supposedly begun originally not as a work for literary consumption but as an elaborate practical joke aimed at luring the Marquis de Croismare, a companion of Diderot's, back to Paris. The novel is told in a series of letters purporting to be from a nun, Suzanne, who implores the Marquis to help her in renouncing her vows, and describes her intolerable life in the convent. Diderot later revised the letters into a novel and publicly revealed his role in the ruse.
Rameau's Nephew, or the Second Satire (French: Le Neveu de Rameau ou La Satire seconde) is an imaginary philosophical conversation
Gerber's experiences are expressed in this novel, as with later novels such as Out of Control and A Voice from the River, through the story of man's search for meaning and purpose in life. In these works Gerber dramatizes his characters' reevaluations of career, family life, and values.
Its publication in 1928 caused a scandal due to its explicit sex scenes. Not printed in the UK until 1960.
Subject of an obscenity trial in 1915. Copies were seized and burned. Banned in UK for 11 years.
This autobiographical novel is 9th on the list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century (Modern Library)
It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula.
Dino Buzzati Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to this novel 'Il deserto dei Tartari'.
Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style.
1975. The Dead Father fully supports Barthelme's claim that in the contemporary age, physicist Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle is our song of songs."
Clever anachronisms and mock-Arthurian diction mark this madcap, absurdist 20th-century parable, in which Barthelme transposes King Arthur and his Round Table to 1940s England under Nazi bombardment.
Paradise touches on a wide variety of themes as it explores the experiences, thoughts, and memories of its central character, Simon. Marriage, sexual and economic power, midlife crisis, generation gaps, male inadequacy, male fantasy, the element of fear in urban life, the responsibility of the artist, feminism, and religious ideas of guilt and grace all appear
Snow White re-contextualizes the famous fairy tale as a 1960s commune consisting of seven men and one woman, and satirizes the sociopolitical issues infesting that turbulent decade.
It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Underworld was the runner-up on the New York Times' survey of the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years, announced in May 2006.
Won the National Book Award
The novel won the WH Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2003.
Regarded as one of Lessing's most important works. The book, which finishes like a science fiction story with its bloody end to an epoch, created a stir upon publication, with claims that the novel promoted communism.
1962. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005
The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received The W.H. Smith Literary Award (1985) and the Italian Mondello Prize (1985)
Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing is the 11th woman to win the prize in its 106-year history, and also the oldest person ever to win the literature award.
Novel 1 in the Pilgramage series. Richardson was the first writer to publish an English-language novel using what was to become known as the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her 13 novel sequence Pilgrimage is considered one of the great 20th C works of modernist and feminist literature in English.
This novel covers the first half-century or so of Dutch settlement at the Cape, opening with a view from the inside of a Khoi nation, the Goringhaicona, under the leadership of Autshumao, dubbed "chief Harry" by early English visitors.
Won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel
National Book Award, 1993; Pulitizer Prize, 1994
The first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine
Won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize
An unnamed narrator recounts his encounter with a man from Starkfield, Massachusetts (1911)
1905. A novel about New York socialite Lily Bart attempting to secure a husband and a place in rich society. It is one of the first novels of manners in American literature.
He story is one of only two novels by Wharton to be set in New England; Wharton was best known for her portrayals of upper class New York society.
The 1st of an autobiographical-fiction series that continued with 'The Beautiful Room Is Empty' and 'The Farewell Symphony', describing stages in the life of a gay man from boyhood to middle age.
The first in a trilogy.
Made into a movie of the same name.
Easily Abbey's most famous fiction work, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench" has come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any action to preserve wilderness and ecosystems.
Religious romance by the author of Flatland
Religious romance by the author of Flatland
Religious romance by the author of Flatland
Autobiographical novel by the poet and novelist E. E. Cummings about his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I.
Won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and received the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the best novel of the previous five-year period.
Nominated for a National Book Award, it fictionalized the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for allegedly giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
Received the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
National Book Award, 1986
Translation of 'Die Klavierspielerin' by Joachim NeugroschelJelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004.
Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. (Original title 'Die Blendung', 'The Blinding')
First appeared in serial form in 'Letteratura' in 1938, and was first published as the novel 'Nome e Lagrime'.
Set between the two world wars. It is about a sixteen year old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas and falls in love with Eddie, a friend of her sister-in-law. The novel was adapted into a 1986 TV miniseries.
Her final novel.
The novel has been called "one of Elizabeth Bowen's most artful and psychologically astute novels".
Concerns life at the country mansion of Danielstown, Cork during the Irish War of Independence.
The best-known novel of the 19th century English writer. It was first published in 1851 as a serial in the magazine Household Words, which was edited by Charles Dickens.
Her first novel. The story is set in the English city of Manchester during the 1830s and 1840s and deals heavily with the difficulties faced by the Victorian lower class.
Originally appeared as a twenty-two-part weekly serial from September 1854 through January 1855 in the magazine Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens.
Story about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor in a provincial English town in the 1830's. First published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. When Mrs Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was not quite complete, and the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood.
Not of movie fame, Ms. Taylor was born and educated in Reading, lived in Buckinghamshire; was a governess and librarian
The novel was adapted into a film of the same name.
A class struggle in turn-of-the-century England (1910)
Set during the Indian independence movement of the 1920's, it foreshadows the end of the British Raj.
The romance of a young woman in sexually repressed Edwardian England
Originally entitled 'Monteriano'. The title comes from a line in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
Bronte's only novel is considered a classic of English literature (1847)
War novel. The book describes in graphic detail the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental duress experienced during fighting in this war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.
This 1973 novel, controversial for its attitudes on female sexuality, played a role in the development of feminism
The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I. The title is taken from a poem by 16th century English dramatist George Peele. Widely regarded to be amongst Hemingway's greatest works.
The title is taken from "Meditation XVII," a metaphysical poem by John Donne ("No man is an island," etc.). This novel is widely regarded to be amongst Hemingway's greatest works.
This novella is the last major work of fiction for Hemingway
First significant novel by Hemingway centers on a group of expatriate Americans in Europe in the 1920's
The novel was so controversial that a literary board in New York attempted to censor it, leading to the author's arrest and trial for obscenity. Exonerated after a jury trial, the author counter-sued the literary society for false arrest and malicious prosecution. It is laced throughout with racy innuendo, calling into question the issue of marital fidelity
1932. Tobacco Road is set in Augusta, Georgia during the worst years of the Great Depression.
Childers was an Irish nationalist, who was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. The Observer, in a "fundamentally English" list, listed the book as #37 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Novels" from the past 300 years.
An autobiographical novel
Pulitizer Prize, 1973
1945. Full title: 'Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'.
A social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s.
It is included in Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and Time Magazine's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The title is an allusion to T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land.
Based partly on his experience working for the Daily Mail. Waugh scooped a story on Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.
Satirises decadent young London society between World War I and World War II. The title comes from the Epistle to the Philippians 3:21.
Subtitled A Picture of Youth. Published in 1796
Subtitled Memoirs of an Heiress. Set in 1779 and published in 1782.
Subtitled 'The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World'.
'A Great Day for a Ballgame: A Conscious Love Story'. A male-perspective love story.
Her 2nd and final novel. It is the story of Francis Tarwater, a fourteen-year-old boy who is trying to escape his destiny: the life of a prophet.
Her first novel.
It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction.
A novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. Was published after his death.
It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. Uses a series of flashbacks, a literary technique that Ford pioneered.
A tetralogy (four related novels) by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The four novels were originally published under the titles: Some Do Not... (1924), No More Parades (1925), A Man Could Stand Up (1926), and The Last Post (1928). The compilation was ranked at number 57 on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.
A connected series of 5 novels written in the 16th C. It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein. There is much crudity and scatological humor as well as a large amount of violence. Long lists of vulgar insults fill several chapters.
Published in 1954, when the author was only eighteen, it caused an overnight sensation. The title is derived from a poem by Paul Éluard, "À peine défigurée,".
American version of Aimez-vous Brahms
1925. 'Le Désert de l'amour'. Awarded the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. Generally regarded as the best book of the Nobel Prize winning Mauriac.
1927 His characters exist in a tortured universe; nature is evil and man eternally prone to sin.
1941 His novels are imbued with his profound, though nonconformist, Roman Catholicism.
Also known as 'Der Verschollene' or 'The Man Who Disappeared', was the incomplete first novel of author Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled The Stoker.
Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is about alienation, bureaucracy, and the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system.
A novella about a traveling salesman who wakes transformed into a "montstrous vermin."
Josef K is arrested and subjected to the judicial process for an unspecified crime
1968 Subtitled "A Fictional Memoir" and categorized as fiction, the book is somewhat autobiographical. The novel was nominated for the National Book Award. It also received the William Faulkner Award for best first novel, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and earned Exley a Rockefeller Foundation grant worth $10,000
1988 The final novel of his semi-autobiographical trilogy.
1975. The 2nd novel of his semi-autobiographical trilogy.
Manfred's most successful book, and a finalist for the National Book Award in 1954.
Rolfe wrote under the pseudonym "Baron Corvo". Rolfe's most well known work, this novel of extreme wish-fulfilment developed out of an article he wrote on the Papal Conclave to elect the successor to Pope Leo XIII.
An expurgated version of 'The Middle Parts of Fortune'. The original publication of this edition credited authorship to "Private 19022", possibly a simple desire for anonymity or possibly a further pun on "private soldier" and "private parts"
The full title is Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland. The work is composed of letters from Hyperion to his friends Bellarmin and the writer Diotima. It is set in Greece and deals with invisible forces, conflicts, beauty, and hope.
'Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None' is a philosophical novel.
1922. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Café Society. As with all of his other novels, it is a brilliant character study and is also an early account of the complexities of marriage and intimacy that were further explored in 'Tender Is the Night'.
A chronical of the "Jazz Age". Time magazine's #7 in its list of the Ten Greatest Books of All Time.
1934. It is ranked #28 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.
1920. Fitzgerald's debut novel. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem 'Tiare Tahiti', the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth.
Dostoyevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner, but he died less than four months after its publication.
Story about the murder of a miserly pawnbroker, her younger sister, and the effects that follow.
There are at least three popular translations: The Possessed, The Devils, and Demons.
The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline so he could pay off gambling debts.
Dostoyevsky's motives for writing The Idiot stem from his desire to depict the "positively good man".
A short novel. It is considered by many to be the world's first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.
A "poem on the solitude of power" according to the author, the novel is a flowing tract on the life of an eternal dictator. The book is divided into six sections, each retelling the same story of the infinite power held by the archetypical Caribbean tyrant.
Novella. It tells, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the two Vicario brothers.
It is a fictionalized account of the last days of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. First published in 1989, the book traces Bolívar's final journey from Bogotá to the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe.
A fifty year love triangle about unrequited love and the nobility of suffering
A novella written by the Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.
Metaphorically encompasses the history of Colombia. It was an immense commercial success, becoming the best-selling book in Spanish in modern history, after 'Don Quixote'
A collection of stories written in the 14th C (2 of them in prose, the remaining twenty-two in verse). The tales are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.
A.k.a. Mary Ann Evans, this was her first novel in 1859
Many critics accuse the novel as a propaganda tool to encourage British patriation of Palestine to the Jews.
Victorian era novel and Time magazine's #10 in their list of "The 10 Greatest Books of All Time"
A brother and sister grow up on the fictional river Floss in the 1820's
Written during the Industrial Revolution and may be a reaction against it. (1861)
Gissing was one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
Set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London.
Famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism during the Stalin era.
A tale about the waning days of British imperialism after World War I.
It is the most culturally English of his novels with alarums of war mingling with images of an idyllic Thames-side Edwardian childhood. The novel is pessimistic - industrialism and capitalism have killed the best of Old England, and there are great, new external threats.
It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is the protagonist's romantic ambition to give up money and status, and the dismal life that results.
Georges Bataille's first published novella. It is a work of dark eroticism, centred on the relationship between two nineteenth century brothers in a small French village, one of whom is a Catholic parish priest, while the other is a libertine. It explores issues of split subjectivity and existentialist bad faith.
A transgressive novella of erotic fiction
A novella written by Georges Bataille and published in 1928 that details the increasingly bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenage lovers. It is narrated by the young man looking back on his exploits. It takes its title from an eye which the narrator extracts from the socket of one of his victims, and which is then used as a sexual fetish.
An immensely complex and rich work; a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas and literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block, 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier (no such street exists, although the quadrangle Perec claims Simon-Crubellier cuts through does exist in Paris XVII). It was written according to a complex plan of writing constraints, and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity.
A 300 page French lipogrammatic novel, written in 1969, entirely without the letter e (except for the author's name), following Oulipo constraints.
Consists of alternating chapters of autobiography and of a fictional story, divided into two parts.
English comic novel spawning the word "Pooterism" to describe a tendency to take oneself too seriously.
Inspired by Parabel der Blinden (1568), a painting by artist Pieter Bruegel, the short novel tells the story of the work's creation from the point of view of the 6 blind men depicted in the painting.
A novel written in the style of an autobiography by her lover, Alice B. Toklas.
Consists of word clusters chosen for their prosody, juxtaposed for the purpose of subverting commonplace dictionary meanings which Stein believed had largely lost their expressive force and ability to communicate.
Gertrude Stein's first published work. The book is separated into three novellas, "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena." The 3 stories are independent of each other, but all are set in the fictional town of Bridgepoint.
1959. German novel of insanity placed around World War II.
Satirical novel written in the form of a diary, it has a sequel named "Myron"
Underworld thriller and exploration of the nature of sin and the basis of morality
A reluctant smuggler betrays his colleagues
Criticism of U.S. Foreign Policy
One of the first modern realistic novels, it was attacked for obscenity upon its release in France in the mid-1800's
"Coming of age" story, it was Lee's only novel.
Or Life Among the Lonely
1913: his only novel. He was killed in WWI.
Considered one of the first prose works describable as a novel, released in 1749.
A novella about a confused courtship that leads to tragedy (1878)
Reflects the author's interest in the differences between the New World and the Old (1881)
Described the joys and hardships that came from escaping the "air conditioned nightmare" of modern life.
Sexus is the first book of a 3 part series by Miller. The second book is Plexus, followed by Nexus.
Led to an obscenity trial that was one of several that tested American laws on pornography in the 1960s. While famous for its frank and often graphic depiction of sex, the book is also widely regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th C literature. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
A semi-autobiographical novel by Henry Miller, first published in Paris in 1938. The novel was subsequently banned in the United States until a 1961 Justice Department ruling declared that its contents were not obscene. It is a sequel to Miller's 1934 work, the Tropic of Cancer.
Last work and "magnum opus" of the German author
Short novel features eastern mysticism and a trip through time and space
Story of a young man who wanders aimlessly throughout Medieval Germany
Allegorical novel dealing with the spiritual journey of an Indian man during the time of Buddha
Story of good and evil aboard the HMS Bellipotent in 1797. Unfinished at his death in 1891 and not published until 1924. early versions gave the book's title as Billy Budd, Foretopman, while it now seems clear Melville intended Billy Budd, Sailor: (An Inside Narrative)
"Call me Ishmael"
Pulitizer Prize, 1952
Two brothers struggle to recover the family inheritance
This cult classic takes a harsh look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950's
Raoul Duke and his attorney chase the American dream through a drug-induced haze
Studies the psyche of a car crash victim
Kate Telman suspects someone is stealing from the company
A famous Japanese cellist is trapped aboard a supertanker in the Panama Canal
Portrays the Scottish attitude toward sin and transgression
It begins, "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
About the life of Ken Nott, a radio DJ in London
A rich and famous rock star struggles to be happy
A story about what happens when normal rules of society break down
Three apparently unrelated stories end with a flavor of incest
A novel about the abuse of power and religious scepticism
A novel about religion and culture
An aristocrat is hunted by a religious cult
Mother-of-two, Mattie is trying to mend her broken marriage; but her emotional journey leads to an unthinkable conclusion.
Famous quote, "It appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room without a door."
1976; British, 1919-1999
1978; winner of the Booker prize
1982; b. 1942, Chile
It's about a reader trying to read a book
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