Top 25 Novels of all time

Fitzgerald’s depiction of extravagance and greed challenges the idea of the American Dream, exposes the insincerity of the wealthy, and illustrates how social class played a major role in your “success” in the 1920’s. With numerous symbols and hidden meanings throughout the book, it’s worth reading a second time too.

Modernist masterpiece, reworking Homer with humour. Following a bored student and a middle-aged advertising salesman as they wander across Dublin, it contains one of the longest “sentences” in English literature: 4,391 words.

Orwell’s imagination of what a future society might look like at its worst has some shocking similarities to modern times. In this dystopian tale, mindless obedience rules, and as the main character finds himself straying, the regime crushes in. Although written in 1949, Orwell makes indirect references to “fake news,” “facetime,” “social media,” and more. Big Brother is watching!

Perhaps the most notorious “eat your vegetables” novel of all time, Moby-Dick looms on many people’s literary bucket lists like a shadow—too long, too flowery, and much too concerned with 19th century whaling tactics. But it must read for the simple reason that understanding much of the literature that followed novel requires it, so profound was its influence. The fact that it’s also a really great story once you get past all the sailing jargon also helps.

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular novels in English literature to illustrate social issues. Featuring a strong female character, Lizzy’s intelligence, charm, and resilience shows off a feminist perspective and social class deconstruction that was rare in the 19th century. If that isn’t enough to want to read this popular classic, how about an enchanting romance story and comedy, too?

Poor and obscure and plain as Jane is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally. (He's already married – see Wide Sargasso Sea, above).

Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual, the story's protagonist.

Picaresque tale about elderly gent who decides to become a knight in shining armour (he's read too many romantic novels). It's given us the word "quixotic"

A scholar’s sexual obsession with a prepubescent “nymphet” is complicated by her mother’s passion for him. The narrator may be a loathsome paedophile, but his gift for language is irresistible. First published in Paris, Nabokov's darkly comic novel caused a scandal; the Home Office ordered customs guards to seize any copy entering the UK.

The non-linear narrative isn’t the only thing that makes this book compelling. What seems like a tragic love story goes much deeper into jealousy, revenge, and supernatural events. Wuthering Heights, originally published in 1847, is considered a literary masterpiece and remains a bestseller today.

Seven volume autobiographical meditation on memory, featuring literature’s most celebrated lemony cake.

Tolstoy’s idea for this tale of a doomed adulteress's affair with a rich count grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”. William Faulkner thought it was the finest novel ever written – and so did the none-too-modest Tolstoy

Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art and the problem of perception.

Faulkner made the bold decision to make the first section of this novel one of the most difficult pieces of writing you will ever encounter—it’s told from the point of view of a mentally-challenged man. The rest of the book’s sprawling story of the downfall of a Southern family isn’t so easy, either, but it’s also brilliantly lyrical, and infused with a sadness as powerful today as when it was first published.

Surely you know the story of Frankenstein by now, or at least the concept. Whether you’ve never read the book or it’s been too long to remember the details, this classic horror story is one to add to your to-be-read list.

Myth and reality melt magically together in this Colombian family saga.

Harper Lee’s classic is one those rare perfect novels, which by itself makes it a should read. It’s further elevated by the evergreen nature of its central conflicts and plot; nearly six decades after publication, the story of a small southern town’s struggle with racism and injustice remains disturbingly current. It’s also become a must read because it’s widely the quintessential 20th-century American novel.

“Okies” set out from the Depression dustbowl seeking decent wages and dignity in this realist masterpiece.

“The conquest of the earth,” writes Conrad, “is not a pretty thing.” Steamboat captain Marlowe discovers that himself, when he travels up the Congo for a rendezvous with a deranged ivory trader. Francis Ford Coppola shifted the plot to Sixties Vietnam for his film Apocalypse Now.

“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf, praising this richly detailed portrait of overlapping lives in a fictional Midlands town.

Following few novels missed out of top 25 narrowly:

> Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
> Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961 )
> A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce, 1916)
> A Passage to India (EM Forster, 1924)
> The Catcher in the Rye ( JD Salinger, 1951)