The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading

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Literary critics, historians, avid readers, and even casual readers will all have different opinions on which novel is truly the "greatest book ever written." Is it a novel with beautiful, captivating figurative language? Or one with gritty realism? A novel that has had an immense social impact? Or i that has more than subtly affected the world? Here is a list of 12 novels that, for various reasons, accept been considered some of the greatest works of literature ever written.

Anna Karenina

Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina
Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina (1935), directed by Clarence Chocolate-brown.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

Whatever fan of stories that involve juicy subjects like infidelity, gambling, marriage plots, and, well, Russian feudalism, would instantly place Anna Karenina at the summit of their "greatest novels" list. And that's exactly the ranking that publications like Time magazine have given the novel since it was published in its entirety in 1878. Written by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, the eight-office towering work of fiction tells the story of two major characters: a tragic, disenchanted housewife, the titular Anna, who runs off with her young lover, and a lovestruck landowner named Konstantin Levin, who struggles in faith and philosophy. Tolstoy molds together thoughtful discussions on dear, pain, and family unit in Russian society with a sizable cast of characters regarded for their realistic humanity. The novel was peculiarly revolutionary in its treatment of women, depicting prejudices and social hardships of the time with vivid emotion.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
This book cover is 1 of many given to Harper Lee's classic work To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). The novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and the adjacent year was made into an Academy Honour-winning motion-picture show.
M Primal Publishing/Hachette Volume Group

Harper Lee, believed to be one of the virtually influential authors to accept ever existed, famously published only a unmarried novel (upwardly until its controversial sequel was published in 2015 just before her death). Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and became an immediate classic of literature. The novel examines racism in the American South through the innocent wide eyes of a clever young girl named Jean Louise ("Scout") Finch. Its iconic characters, well-nigh notably the sympathetic and just lawyer and father Atticus Finch, served as part models and inverse perspectives in the U.s.a. at a time when tensions regarding race were high. To Impale a Mockingbird earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into an Academy Honor-winning picture show in 1962, giving the story and its characters farther life and influence over the American social sphere.

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The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Public Domain

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is distinguished every bit one of the greatest texts for introducing students to the art of reading literature critically (which means yous may have read it in schoolhouse). The novel is told from the perspective of a young homo named Nick Carraway who has recently moved to New York Urban center and is befriended by his eccentric nouveau riche neighbor with mysterious origins, Jay Gatsby. The Great Gatsby provides an insider's wait into the Jazz Age of the 1920s in U.s. history while at the same fourth dimension critiquing the idea of the "American Dream." Peradventure the most-famous aspect of the novel is its cover art—a piercing face projected onto a nighttime blueish nighttime sky and lights from a cityscape—an image that is also found, in a slightly unlike configuration, inside the text itself as a key symbol.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez, 1982.
© Lutfi Ozkok

The tardily Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez published his near-famous piece of work, One Hundred Years of Confinement, in 1967. The novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and follows the institution of their boondocks Macondo until its destruction forth with the last of the family's descendents. In fantastical form, the novel explores the genre of magic realism by emphasizing the extraordinary nature of commonplace things while mystical things are shown to be common. Márquez highlights the prevalence and ability of myth and folktale in relating history and Latin American culture. The novel won many awards for Márquez, leading the way to his eventual award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his entire torso of work, of which One Hundred Years of Confinement is oftentimes lauded equally his nigh triumphant.

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A Passage to Bharat

East.Grand. Forster
E.M. Forster.
BBC Hulton Picture Library

E.Thou. Forster wrote his novel A Passage to India after multiple trips to the country throughout his early on life. The volume was published in 1924 and follows a Muslim Indian dr. named Aziz and his relationships with an English language professor, Cyril Fielding, and a visiting English schoolteacher named Adela Quested. When Adela believes that Aziz has assaulted her while on a trip to the Marabar caves near the fictional city of Chandrapore, where the story is prepare, tensions between the Indian community and the colonial British customs rise. The possibility of friendship and connection betwixt English and Indian people, despite their cultural differences and imperial tensions, is explored in the conflict. The novel's colorful descriptions of nature, the landscape of India, and the figurative power that they are given within the text solidifies it as a bang-up work of fiction.

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Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison, 1952.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Oftentimes confused with H.One thousand. Wells's science-fiction novella of well-nigh the same name (just subtract a "The"), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is a groundbreaking novel in the expression of identity for the African American male. The narrator of the novel, a man who is never named but believes he is "invisible" to others socially, tells the story of his motion from the South to college and so to New York City. In each location he faces extreme adversity and discrimination, falling into and out of piece of work, relationships, and questionable social movements in a wayward and ethereal mindset. The novel is renowned for its surreal and experimental way of writing that explores the symbolism surrounding African American identity and civilisation. Invisible Homo won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.

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Don Quixote

Don Quixote
Don Quixote (right) and his retainer Sancho Panza are pictured in an illustration from the volume Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. The illustration appeared in an edition of the book that was published in the 1800s.
Public Domain

Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, perhaps the most influential and well-known piece of work of Castilian literature, was first published in full in 1615. The novel, which is very regularly regarded every bit one of the best literary works of all fourth dimension, tells the story of a man who takes the name "Don Quixote de la Mancha" and sets off in a fit of obsession over romantic novels near chivalry to revive the custom and become a hero himself. The character of Don Quixote has become an idol and somewhat of an archetypal character, influencing many major works of art, music, and literature since the novel's publication. The text has been so influential that a discussion, quixotic, based on the Don Quixote grapheme, was created to describe someone who is, "heedlessly impractical peculiarly in the pursuit of ideals; especially: marked past rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action."

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Dear

Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, c. 1980–87.
Bernard Gotfryd Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-gtfy-02425)

Toni Morrison'southward 1987 spiritual and haunting novel Love tells the story of an escaped slave named Sethe who has fled to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the yr 1873. The novel investigates the trauma of slavery even after liberty has been gained, depicting Sethe'southward guilt and emotional pain after having killed her own child, whom she named Dearest, to keep her from living life as a slave. A spectral effigy appears in the lives of the characters and goes by the same name as the child, embodying the family's anguish and hardship and making their feelings and past unavoidable. The novel was lauded for addressing the psychological effects of slavery and the importance of family unit and customs in healing. Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.

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Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf.
New York World-Telegram & Sunday Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-111438)

Perhaps the nearly idiosyncratic novel of this list, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway describes exactly ane solar day in the life of a British socialite named Clarissa Dalloway. Using a combination of a third-person narration and the thoughts of various characters, the novel uses a stream-of-consciousness style all the way through. The outcome of this style is a deeply personal and revealing wait into the characters' minds, with the novel relying heavily on character rather than plot to tell its story. The thoughts of the characters include constant regrets and thoughts of the past, their struggles with mental affliction and postal service-traumatic stress from World War I, and the effect of social pressures. The novel's unique fashion, subject, and time setting brand it ane of the most respected and regarded works of all time.

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Things Fall Apart

The Western canon of "great literature" often focuses on writers who come from North America or Europe and often ignores accomplished writers and astonishing works of literature from other parts of the earth. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, is one such work of African literature that had to overcome the bias of some literary circles and one that has been able to gain recognition worldwide despite information technology. The novel follows an Igbo man named Okonkwo, describing his family, the hamlet in Nigeria where he lives, and the effects of British colonialism on his native country. The novel is an example of African postcolonial literature, a genre that has grown in size and recognition since the mid-1900s equally African people have been able to share their often unheard stories of imperialism from the perspective of the colonized. The novel is frequently assigned for reading in courses on earth literature and African studies.

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Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
Illustration past Fritz Eichenberg for an American edition of Jane Eyre.

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, another novel often assigned for reading in school, was initially published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell to disguise the fact that the writer was a woman. Fortunately, a lot has changed with regard to women in literature since 1847, and Brontë at present receives the credit she deserves for one of the most-groundbreaking novels virtually women in history. At a time when the writer felt compelled to hide her true identity, Jane Eyre provided a story of individualism for women. The novel'south eponymous character rises from being orphaned and poor into a successful and contained woman. The work combines themes from both Gothic and Victorian literature, revolutionizing the fine art of the novel past focusing on the growth in Jane's sensibility with internalized action and writing.

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The Color Majestic

Oprah Winfrey in The Colour Majestic
Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple (1985).
Gordon Parks/© 1985 Warner Bros., Inc.; photograph from a private drove

Though the epistolary novel (a novel in the form of letters written by one or more than characters) was near popular before the 19th century, Alice Walker became a champion of the style with her 1982 Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Accolade-winning novel The Color Imperial. Set in the post-Civil War American Southward, the novel follows a young African American girl named Celie into adulthood in letters she writes to God and to her sis Nettie. Celie faces sexual abuse by her begetter and eventually her married man, chronicling her ain suffering and growth too as that of her friends and family. The novel explores themes of sexism, racism, gender, sexual orientation, and disability through its grouping of disadvantaged and damaged characters who, over fourth dimension, grow to shape their ain lives. The story was adapted into an University Laurels-nominated film in 1985 that, despite widespread critical acclamation, was notoriously snubbed of all 11 awards it was nominated for.

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