Stories to Make Franz Kafka Proud

With this in mind, a kafkaesque story is often one which examines and criticises normativity, what is typically expected of us both professionally and socially, and the dynamics of behaviour in our day-to-day lives. They are stories that satirise work, etiquette, and even family dynamics. This is what you’ll find here, in these novels.

The following novels all have something of the kafkaesque to them. Some might be comedies, others horror. Some are straightforward; others are surreal and feverish in their presentation. There is a real diversity here, but all of these books wear their kafkaesque themes proudly and in novel, original ways.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unconsoled is the longest novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, and calling the book a “fever dream” feels almost unavoidable. The Unconsoled is a masterful work of kafkaesque surrealism which follows concert pianist Ryder, who has just arrived in an unnamed city to play a concert, and from the very moment he enters his hotel, the world becomes an unknowable place.

In the novel’s first chapter, Ryder meets Gustav, a bellhop who begins a pages-long monologue about the nature of his work. From here, Ryder heads to a cinema to watch a late-night viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey while two men play chess. The next day, he meets with a woman who talks to Ryder about her child, and Ryder steadily realises this is his wife and the child is also his own. And so the rabbit hole continues to deepen.

The Unconsoled is a work of impossible strangeness that owes so much to Franz Kafka in its dreamlike quality, its circular and disjointed narrative, and the ways in which its protagonist is lost and disorientated at every turn, unable to obtain simple answers to simple questions.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

One of the most successful and beloved Korean novels in translation, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is separated into three parts and begins with Yeong-hye, a woman whose life is upturned in frightening and unimaginable ways after she makes the decision to stop eating meat. Each story follows a member of her family who is shocked by her decision and begins to treat her differently.

Our first narrator, Yeong-hye’s husband, explains that he married her because she was as ordinary as he is, and that she would guarantee a simple, peaceful, well-behaved life. But when she throws away all the meat in their fridge and goes vegetarian, he is disturbed and shocked. He attempts to persuade her to change back, and even invites her father around, who attempts to physically force her to eat meat.

The Vegetarian explores the concept of conformity, and what happens when someone—especially a woman—makes even a small, autonomous decision to change something in a novel and unpopular way. For many, this novel is shocking and disturbing, and it’s one that Kafka would surely have adored.

Authority by Jeff Vandermeer

Authority, the second book in sci-fi author Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach series, is set in the Southern Reach itself—a strange agency which exists to monitor a mysterious stretch of coastline called Area X, which exists inside a gradually expanding bubble. Area X affects any human who enters in dangerous and unpredictable ways (as were explored in the first novel, Annihilation). And in this novel, our protagonist is desperately trying to understand Area X.

That protagonist is John Rodriguez, the Southern Reach’s new director. He prefers, ironically, to go by the name Control, and was given this role by his mother. Periodically, Control reports his findings to someone called The Voice over the phone, and he spends much of his time interviewing people who have returned from expeditions to Area X, as well as searching through reports, findings, logs, photos, and videos.

At times, Authority feels like a dizzyingly circular novel, as Control makes little progress; he is waylaid, distracted, manipulated, and confused at every turn. He wants to do his job but the very agency itself seems to be guiding his hand or stopping him entirely. Control is trapped in an unclear role in a kafkaesque system with no clear direction, and all the while he has a mysterious, possibly alien, and definitely dangerous phenomenon to solve.

City of Ash and Red by Hye-young Pyun

Translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell

This phenomenal Korean novel is perhaps the truest successor to Kafka’s works you’ll ever read. The book’s protagonist is a nameless rat catcher who has been sent by his company to work in a new city. That city has been devastated by sickness and its streets are overflowing with garbage.

Upon arriving, our protagonist is unable to find his prime company contact, and nobody is able to help. Shortly after, his luggage is lost, he is told to quarantine, and he soon gets a call from his friend who breaks the news to him that this friend has married his ex-wife. Not long after, the ex-wife is found dead in our protagonist’s apartment, and he is natural the murder’s prime suspect.

As is the case in Kafka’s The Trial and Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, Pyun’s protagonist wishes to find answers, to straighten up his understanding, and to explain himself. But at every turn, nobody will listen to him. In fact, they display more than just ignorance; they are indifferent to his problems. This is a Korean kafkaesque masterpiece.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Several People Are Typing is a brilliantly strange and inventive work of sci-fi horror comedy with its roots deep in the kafkaesque philosophy. The entire book is presented as a series of conversations via Slack. Our protagonist, Gerald, works at a company which uses Slack for its work-related chats, and Gerald begins one day by informing his team that he is trapped inside Slack. His consciousness has somehow been uploaded into the app itself.

Naturally, nobody believes Gerald. He gets his colleagues’ attention repeatedly, in various work and casual Slack channels, asks them for help, and they laugh it off as a prank. Eventually, Gerald asks a colleague who lives close-by to go and see for himself—to go and check on Gerald’s body. And all the while, we get to know the various people of Gerald’s office as they express themselves through Slack.

In kafkaesque fashion, Gerald is expected to continue his work regardless. And he is even praised for a rise in productivity because he can do nothing but work, since he is trapped in his company’s Slack account. He sends messages and files reports for lack of anything else to do. Nobody takes his situation seriously but they all praise his increase in productivity.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Sayaka Murata is one of the finest Japanese authors writing today, and Convenience Store Woman put her on the map. This novel follows an autistic-coded protagonist who has worked at the same convenience store for almost twenty years, never asking for anything else out of life. But that doesn’t sit right with her colleagues or her family, who often ask her when she will get a career and a husband and a mortgage—all the things we are expected to do.

But Keiko is content. The world is a strange and confusing place; she has never been able to fully understand how people behave or the unwritten rules of society that they dutifully follow. She doesn’t judge others and she is exhausted by their judgement of her. The modern world expects certain performances from us (college, career, marriage, family etc) and Keiko has found a way to survive outside of all that.

And for this, Keiko is endlessly worried over and looked at with suspicion. When in reality, as we learn from select flashbacks, she has always struggled to navigate everyday life. Convenience Store Woman echoes Kafka’s criticism of bureaucratic rule-following and the nonsense laws of life, bringing them into the twenty-first century Japanese society.

Managing and Other Lies by Willow Heath

Managing and Other Lies is a collection of queer horror stories, and its titular tale Managing is a deeply kafkaesque gothic tale set in a labyrinthine house at the edge of an English village. Every day, our nameless protagonist—who has been hired to clean and tidy this strange house—writes about their progress in a journal. As the days go on, they soon learn that they aren’t as alone as they first thought.

A man has barged his way into the house; he refuses to explain his presence and insists that our protagonist is doing a terrible job tending to the garden. Soon after, our protagonist meets a woman who lives in a room upstairs. She seduces our protagonist and offers them the happiness they seek in exchange for various small sacrifices. These sacrifices are bits and pieces of their own body; beginning with a skin tag, then a fingernail, and on it goes.

Our nameless protagonist is battling with dysphoria, berated by the misogynistic and bullish man, and encouraged to make painful sacrifices by a woman who seduces and gaslights them. In order to be happy with who they are, they are forced to fight, perform, and put themself through pain and discomfort, all because the men and women of society expect them to. Being trans is wonderful; it is only the expectations of society that makes it hard.

Buy a copy of Managing and Other Lies here!

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd

In one of the most on-the-nose kafkaesque novels ever written, a factory spreads itself impossibly large, and we follow three protagonists who work there. The factory makes all kinds of consumable products, and also behaves like a town with places to live, eat, relax, and play.

In the world of The Factory, there is no separation of work and life; they are now one and the same. People live, work, and die at and for the factory. Nobody can recognise where work ends and every other aspect of life begins. All anyone knows is the factory.

In this novel, Japanese author Hiroko Oyamada takes Kafka’s themes and blows them up impossibly large, painting them on a billboard for every reader to see.

The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe

Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders

Kobo Abe could accurately be called the Kafka of Japan. Many Japanese authors explore the kafkaesque in their writing, but none with such dedication and surrealism as Kobo Abe. And while many of his books are worthwhile reads, The Ruined Map is the perfect introduction to his works, due to its more clear and direct narrative.

The Ruined Map begins with a detective who has been hired by a woman to find her missing husband. What at first seems like a simple detective story gradually gives way to something more surreal and dreamlike, in a very similar vein to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The detectives obsession over minor details that lead nowhere, and the circular, empty answers given by his interviewees (the wife included), scream Kafka.

This is a book that asks us if we can ever truly know one another. The titular ruined map is both the city of Tokyo and the mental map we each have, populated by the people we meet and come to know. This is a novel fantastically reminiscent of Kafka’s stories.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

In Julia Armfield’s queer gothic horror, we follow a couple whose lives have been irreversibly changed by a mission to the bottom of the sea that went horribly wrong. Leah’s trip should have been a short one, but something went wrong and she was stuck down there for a long time. As we follow her story, we learn what she encountered and how she was changed by it.

But the bulk of the narrative is her wife Miri’s story, which takes places after Leah has returned. Leah is no longer communicating properly, and enjoys little more than sitting in a full bathtub day in, day out. Leah gradually grows sick as her skin falls away and she vomits salty water. Miri is powerless to help her, and doesn’t understand how something like this could have happened.

Miri grieves the loss of her wife and her marriage, all while her wife is still technically present. She has so many questions but cannot get answers. Our Wives Under the Sea is a different kind of kafkaesque, examining the bureaucracy of our social and romantic lives, as well as that of loss itself.

Weird girl books are all about upsetting the norm. They’re punk tales of women being gross, strange, dangerous, or even just allowing themselves to be sad, angry, unpleasant, and unlikeable. These subversive books are all about painting women in darker, stranger colours, and we love to see it!

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

One of the progenitors of weird girl fiction, Out is a thriller that follows four women who work night shifts at a sandwich factory. The men in their lives are cruel and hateful, and eventually one of them snaps and murders her husband by choking him to death with his own belt while their kids are in the other room.

With the help of the other three women, she cuts up and hides his body, and they all agree to a vow of silent solidarity. But this vow might not last, and if it doesn’t there will be police and even worse sniffing around, searching for the truth. This is a very bleak novel about downtrodden women doing dark things in order to forge a path too freedom, liberation, or even just a little good old fashioned revenge.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh is perhaps the quintessential weird woman of fiction right now. Her books are off-kilter and upsetting, leaving readers with a sense of unease. None moreso than Lapvona, a gothic medieval tale of serfdom, subservience, witchcraft, and death.

The titular Lapvona is an isolated village lorded over by a rich man who lives on a hill above the peasantry. One of those peasants is a disfigured boy with a cruel father who lies to him. We learn about these men, as well as the son of the lord, over the course of a year. That year is beset by drought, disease, and day-to-day struggles.

There is also a dark magical element to Lapvona. The village witch was wet-nurse to many of the villagers, and she replaces her eyes with those of a horse in order to regain her sight. Beyond this, Lapvona is a novel with clear socialist undertones from an author who seems to be very cynical towards society, and the book is amazing as a result.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanchez

Boulder is a Catalan novel about the complexities of love and relationships. We begin on a ship off the coast of Chile, where the titular Boulder meets a woman with whom she quickly falls in love. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik, Boulder follows her and their relationship becomes strained. This is mostly because Samsa wants to have a child and Boulder doesn’t.

What begins as a hedonistic relationship defined by lust and adventure soon becomes a recognisable tale of the struggles of love when one person wants what the other doesn’t. It’s an ugly and uneasy work of sapphic literary fiction. There is little romance in here; instead, it reminds us of the often uneasy and messy nature of relationships.

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

An icon of weird girl fiction, Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts is a work of literary fiction about a photographer in her twenties who lives in Newcastle and is defined by her own self-destructive behaviour. Irina is building a portfolio of works which all depict boys and men in explicit poses and doing illicit acts. She invited them to her studio, sometimes seduces them, and takes photos for her collection.

Soon, she is offered the opportunity to display her work at a museum in London, which she accepts. In the meantime, she falls into a potential relationship with an actual good guy, goes to parties with friends, and flashes back to a fractured and strange past that we gently piece together over time.

Irina isn’t like other girls; and she is also on the fast track to burning out. Memories are creeping in, and she is shutting everyone out. We watch her like a car crash and we wonder where she will land.

Read More: Essential Fantasy Books by Women

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Translated from the Norwegian by Marjam Idriss

Written by Norwegian singer-songwriter Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot follows a naive young woman who has moved to a dank and wet nameless town for university. She moves into a converted brewery—open-plan but divided poorly by cheap and flimsy walls, like the cubicles in an office. There is an unsettling lack of privacy here between pour protagonist and her new roommate.

What makes this so wonderfully weird and gothic is our protagonist’s obsession with the body—with bodily fluids and the mechanics of our fleshy, wet parts. While it isn’t body horror, it is a novel that makes a horror out of the body, reminding us that we are gooey sacks that take in and expel so much mush and wetness, and everything about us dies and rots. This is a claustrophobic and strange tale.

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

A straight-up work of political horror, Tell Me I’m Worthless has become a cult classic of the genre. Rumfitt’s novel tells the story of two women who were once friends at university. As adults, however, one is transgender and the other is a TERF. We know they fell out after spending a night at a haunted house (called Albion—get it?). Something awful happened there, and we will eventually find out what, exactly, that was.

With a real Shirley Jackson edge to it, Tell Me I’m Worthless is a novel about the fascistic attitudes of modern-day Britain to scapegoat transgender people. It explores the “values” of Britain and twists them into something that better resembles what the country really is at its core. A wonderfully subversive and unsettling haunted house horror novel.

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Japanese author Sayaka Murata has become a legend of weird fiction in recent years, and her novel Earthlings upsets as many people as it impresses. It tells the story of a young woman named Natsuki who believes that she is, in fact, an alien.

As a girl, she spent her summers in a mountaintop holiday home with her extended family. She and her cousin Yuu had an unhealthy and taboo relationship at a very young age, and that is only the tip of Natsuki’s iceberg.

As an adult, she still believes that she is an alien, but she has found a way to survive in ordinary human society by entering into an asexual marriage with a man, though she gradually teaches him about how she sees the world: as a factory churning out well-behaved minions for patriarchy and capitalism to suck dry. Natsuki wants to escape this factory, and her methods for doing so are deeply unsettling.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

Like Ottessa Moshfegh, Melissa Broder is a queen of weird woman fiction, and The Pisces is her masterpiece: a darkly funny tale of mental illness, seduction, unhealthy relationships, and dysfunctional people. Protagonist Lucy is invited to look after her sister’s dog and apartment in Venice, LA. There, she goes on a few bad dates with awful men and eventually falls into a relationship with an actual honest-to-goodness merman.

She goes to group therapy sessions, continues to fall deeper into self-destruction via toxic Tinder dates, and develops a deep obsession with her merman, all the while gradually ignoring her sister’s dog, her responsibilities, and her life. She is a broken, awful woman, and we become addicted to following her decline into depravity and unhinged behaviour.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Gretchen Felker-Martin is known for writing the most visceral, uncensored, and frankly depraved scenes of horror in the genre’s history. Her novel Cuckoo plays out like Stephen King’s IT meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers at a conversion camp for gay and trans kids in the ’90s. These kids have been abducted and driven out to the desert to learn “correct” values. There, they will come up against an eldritch horror that threatens their lives.

This group of kids features lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans boys and girls, and we gradually learn about their individual pasts, watch them bond together, and get some kind of idea about the monstrous thing that lives out in the desert, hunts them, and wears their skin. These kids are being hollowed-out, but they’re also resilient and tougher than they look. But the threat is monstrous and deadly.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Bunny is part of the popular dark academia genre, but it stands out by being a strange, satirical, and cynical novel about college life and the cliquey relationships between young women. This modern classic follows Samantha, a masters student of Creative Writing, and she’s the only girl on the course who isn’t part of an exclusionary in-group of vapid girls who all call each other Bunny.

Samantha is a punk outlier until she isn’t. She gets invited into the group via a letter to one of their parties. At this party, the Bunnies play with dark magic and sacrifice rabbits, which conjures up a hot but simple-headed guy who suddenly appears at their door. From here, Samantha falls into a world of off-kilter strangeness. Feverish and occult, it is an addictive tale of weird women being weird.

The Best Modern Mystery Novels

From Argentina to Japan, here are some of the finest mystery novels that are revitalizing the genre right now, all of which deserve your attention. Get ready to scratch your head and remark on the ways in which these mystery writers are blending genres and casting aside the rulebook to achieve great things. Let’s dive in.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Few modern mystery novels lean as hard on the definition of “mystery” as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle does. There are countless mystery novels that present an answer that reveals a dozen new questions, but this puzzle box of a novel actually pays all of that off with aplomb.

We begin halfway through a word that has just left the mouth of our nameless, amnesia-stricken protagonist. It is as though he has just woken up in his own body. He is in a forest, shouting a name he doesn’t know, and he is alone. He walks and eventually arrives at a manor house. The people there tell him he is their friend and that he is a doctor.

The next morning, he wakes up as a different person in the house, and it is then that he learns that he will continue to flit from body to body for eight days, tasked with solving and preventing the death of the titular Evelyn Hardcastle.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a dizzying novel, masterfully crafted and thrilling at every turn. Stuart Turton showed absurd and admirable confidence in writing such a mystery masterpiece as his debut novel. Incredible work.

Buy a copy here!

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

One of the novels that stands at the summit of the dark academia genre, If We Were Villains is also an excellently crafted murder mystery story. What sets this apart from other mystery novels is the fact that its mystery sits quietly at the back of the room. You can’t forget about it but are encouraged not to look at it.

We begin with a man named Oliver, who has just been released from prison for a murder he didn’t commit. We then flashback to the year of that fateful murder. Our cast is a group of college students, all studying theatre at a specialist arts academy. They live in the minds and works of Shakespeare, and one of them will soon die.

We don’t know who the victim will be until it happens, and we know that Oliver didn’t do it. The drama of this dark academia novel is at its forefront, with the murder mystery sitting like a ghost offstage. The blend of these two genres is what makes If We Were Villains one of the great modern mystery novels.

Buy a copy of If We Were Villains here!

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

Forget your typical whodunnit. Turton’s newest novel throws you headfirst into a genre-bending whirlwind of dystopian sci-fi, pulse-pounding thriller, and classic murder mystery, all set against the idyllic backdrop of a seemingly perfect island untouched by the world’s deadly fog.

With multiple POVs and the omnipresent AI Abi whispering in everyone’s ear, the narrative unfolds like a puzzle box slowly clicking into place with Emory, a would-be detective, at the heart of it.

This is no ordinary murder mystery. The memory-wiping security system adds a mind-bending twist, forcing suspects to grapple with the possibility of being a killer without any recollection of the act. It’s a constant dance of uncovering and rediscovering, keeping you guessing at every turn. Each revelation feels like a victory, propelling you further into the heart of the island’s secrets.

If you’re looking for a book that will bend your brain and keep you guessing until the last page The Last Murder at the End of the World is it.

Buy a copy of The Last Murder at the End of the World

Helle & Death by Oskar Jensen

Helle & Death is a loud and proud homage to the golden age of crime fiction; a rekindling of the cosy vibes and puzzle-box structure that made Agatha Christie a cherished household name. Jensen’s novel follows a group of eight friends in their early thirties who all studied at Oxford together ten years ago. One of those friends made his fortune straight out of uni by developing an app. He has now sold it and lives a reclusive life in a large country manor.

Out of the blue, Dodd has invited the other seven to visit his home for a reunion dinner, and we primarily follow Danish art historian Torben Helle as he and the rest spend an evening catching up, dining, and then being hit by the bombshell that Dodd is dying, and in his will he has left each of them £50,000. A large sum to many, and a pittance to others. The group drown their sorrows, and in the morning Dodd is found dead in his bed.

From here, the game is afoot. Made to look like suicide, it surely couldn’t have been. Right? Helle puts on his sleuthing hat and starts asking questions, piecing together motives and means. Whodunnit? You’ll have to read on to find out. It’s a doozy of a tale that echoes the best Christie stories, and cements Jensen as a stellar writer of the modern mystery novel.

Buy a copy of Helle & Death here!

The Three Dahlias by Katy Watson

Katy Watson’s The Three Dahlias is a love letter to the golden age of crime fiction, led by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. It’s a murder-mystery story about murder-mystery stories. Our protagonists are three actresses from three generations who have all played (or are about to play) the role of an iconic detective.

Created by the author Lettice Davenport — Princess of Poison — Dahlia Lively was a Miss Marple-esque sleuth who featured in many of Davenport’s novels and was brought to life via TV and Film. To celebrate those adaptations, a celebration is being held at the stately home of the late Lettice Davenport. There, our three Dahlias will be brought together by blackmail, then by theft, and at last by murder.

This stately home inspired Davenport’s writing; most of her mystery stories were based on her own home, and now someone is using her works to inspire their own very real murders, and our three actresses must summon their inner Dahlias to solve this crime, all while fearing exposure by whomever is blackmailing them.

The Three Dahlias pays homage to the traditions of the murder mystery while also leaning into the genre’s tropes in order to break its rules and take the reader on a fresh, original journey.

Buy a copy of The Three Dahlias here!

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

This genre-blending gothic horror mystery thriller wasn’t Catriona Ward’s debut, but it was the novel that broke her into the mainstream and landed her on every reader’s lips. The Last House on Needless Street is a rare book that pushes the world of mystery novels forward, mixing terror and strangeness into its formula to create an unforgettable experience.

Our main protagonist is a man in his thirties named Ted. More than a decade ago, he was the prime suspect in the disappearance/murder of a girl at a nearby lakeside. Now, Ted lives a secluded life with his cat and his daughter. We sometimes see things from the cat’s perspective, and the daughter is not always there.

Assumptions can very quickly be made, but they are all so telegraphed, so predictable, that they can’t be true. This is a novel that wrongfoots the reader constantly and has fun doing so. The gothic and horror themes and tropes that have been mixed in make for an atmosphere that you feel as though you’re drowning in. The Last House on Needless Street set Catriona Ward up as the new queen of mystery novels.

Buy a copy here!

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

With The Last House on Needless Street, Catriona Ward turned the genres of mystery, thriller, horror, and gothic into Lego bricks to play with in new and experimental ways. With Looking Glass Sound, she takes that approach several steps further, writing a book within a book that examines the very concepts of fact and fiction, of memoir and narrative, of lives and lies.

Our protagonist, Wilder, first provides us with a memoir about two teenage summers spent on the coast of Maine, about the two friends he made there, and about the dangerous Dagger Man haunting the town. This doesn’t last long, however; soon, we move with Wilder to college in Pennsylvania and the strange roommate who calls himself Sky.

We watch Sky steal Wilder’s memoir and publish it as his own novel, propelling him into fame and leaving Wilder alone with nothing. Now, Wilder is an aging man going blind who has returned to coastal Maine with the aim of setting the record straight, of writing his memoir at last, and of exposing the now-dead Sky as the thief he was.

Looking Glass Sound is a dizzying modern thriller that examines the genre and its implications for readers, writers, and storytellers.

Buy a copy of Looking Glass Sound here!

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

Scorched Grace is a very different kind of mystery novel. Not so much because it breaks convention in a genre sense, but certainly in a tonal one, and in terms of what we expect from a mystery novel protagonist. Sister Holiday was a punk kid; a young lesbian from Brooklyn, covered in tattoos, playing in a band, doing drugs, and tangling with her parents.

She’s also a devout Catholic. After escaping to New Orleans, she was taken in by the progressive nuns of Saint Sebastian’s School, where she has worked as a teacher ever since. A tattooed, chain-smoking, filthy-mouthed nun isn’t your typical sleuth.

The mystery she becomes tangled up in is a series of arson attacks targeted at her school — arson attacks which also lead to the deaths of people she knows and cares about. When the police prove all but useless, Sister Holiday takes things into her own hands, especially when she feels prying eyes on her, and all signs point to her being set up for the crime.

Set against the backdrop of a scorching, sweltering, oppressive summer heat, with a supporting cast of angry nuns, punk teenagers, and unreliable cops, this is one of the most unique and compelling mystery novels in a long time.

Buy a copy of Scorched Grace here!

The Readers’ Room by Antoine Laurain

Translated from the French by Jane Aitken

The Readers’ Room is a delightful French murder mystery novel, very much in the vein of Agatha Christie and her compatriots. This is a bright yet twisted mystery that grows and tangles as it goes.

The Readers’ Room is set in a Paris publishing house. The head of the publishing house has been sent a manuscript that she sees as something truly unique and special. It’s fresh, daring, and exciting, and she has big plans for it. Meanwhile, the novel also remarks on the mechanics of publishing houses in a very intimate and satisfying way.

That new novel is published, but the identity of the author remains a mystery. When it is nominated for a prize, the prize can only be given if the identity of the author is revealed. Our publishing director is now caught up in the investigation of real-world murders tied to the events within this strange new mystery novel.

The cozy, warming note of The Readers’ Room is so at odds with its content, and that’s often the pleasant paradox of so many beloved murder mystery novels.

Buy a copy of The Readers’ Room here!

The Tattoo Murder by Akimitsu Takagi

Translated from the Japanese by Deborah Boehm

The honkaku genre of Japanese murder mysteries is a broad and beloved thing. Many talented authors have added small masterpieces to this genre over the past century. The genre has a legacy so grand that it is difficult to pick one that stands above the rest, but what makes 1948’s The Tattoo Murder unique is its dedication to character drama.

Translated by Deborah Boehm, The Tattoo Murder was honkaku author Akimitsu Takagi’s debut mystery novel. Set in the aftermath of World War II, after the fall of the Japanese Empire, The Tattoo Murder is a locked-room murder mystery novel that satisfies as much as it surprises.

Our protagonist is a medical student who becomes enamoured with a young woman: the heavily tattooed daughter of a late legend of the Japanese tattooing world. She tells him that her brother and sister were both lost to the war, and that she believes she herself is not long for this world.

Her prediction proves true when she is found dead in her own home’s locked bathroom, the water still running. Her torso, the canvas for her stunning tattoo art, is missing. This is a classic Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery but with added emphasis on blood, gore, and character drama.

Buy a copy here!

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

Here is one of those modern mystery novels that had every kind of reader sitting up and paying attention, likely in part because of its delightfully cheeky title. Reminiscent of Emerald Fennell’s daring 2020 film Promising Young Woman, How to Kill Your Family is an angry mystery novel about class disparity, selfishness, and cruelty.

Our protagonist is a young woman who was raised by a poor, single French woman in London. Grace’s mother was knocked up by a philandering playboy billionaire who cast her aside and refused to even look in her or their daughter’s direction.

After the death of her mother, Grace decides to head out on a killing spree, murdering the members of her father’s rich family one by one, and we get to sit back and watch.

The mystery is revealed in the prologue, however. The novel’s framing device: Grace is in prison, writing her memoir. Here, she tells us that she actually got away with all of these murders, and was locked up for the only murder she didn’t commit. There’s our hook; there’s our mystery.

This is a wonderfully funny, grim, and satisfying book that stands out amongst other great modern mystery novels.

Buy a copy here!

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

Translated from the Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong

The Decagon House Murders is another masterpiece of the Japanese honkaku genre of murder mystery novels, and one that uniquely and specifically pays homage to the legacy of Agatha Christie. Many (including myself) consider Christie’s magnum opus to have been her novel And Then There Were None, a story that has inspired so much art and media in the decades since its publication.

One of those writers inspired by it was Yukito Ayatsuji, and his novel The Decagon House Murders proudly echoes Christie’s novel in brilliantly inventive ways. Our protagonists are a group of university students who are all members of their college’s mystery club.

These students have headed out to an island which, only a few months prior, was the site of an as-yet-unsolved murder. The honkaku genre is a pool of fantastic mystery novels, and even amongst all these great books, The Decagon House Murders stands out as a mystery masterpiece.

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The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Grady Henrix is an author of horror novels, all of which have brilliant titles and subvert the tropes of the genre in fun ways. This particular novel, however — The Final Girl Support Group — is as much a murder mystery as it is a horror novel. Maybe moreso, honestly.

Our protagonist is Lynette, a middle-aged woman who was once a final girl (a term used to describe the last victim left alive at the end of a slasher movie). For years, Lynette has been attending the titular therapy support group for massacre survivors, but now one of these final girls stops turning up to their sessions, and is found murdered in her home.

Someone is targeting final girls, it seems. And to make things stranger, a new final girl has just appeared, having survived a fresh massacre. Lynette makes for a great protagonist; as something of an outsider and an incredibly paranoid person, she is an unlikely hero. This adds a lot to the fun and the tension.

Buy a copy here!

The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown

Here is an exciting piece of historical drama that doubles as a compelling murder mystery story. The Key in the Lock is a narrative that is split chronologically. We follow both the adult Ivy, who lost her son in the Great War, and the younger Ivy of the past, scarred by a dreadful fire.

The mystery of the novel surrounds the fire itself, the boy who died in that fire, and the reasons behind it. As a child, Ivy was the daughter of the village daughter. When the fire broke out, she and her father were called to the big house, and are tangled in the web of lies surrounding the cause of the blaze.

As an adult, Ivy has not only lost her son but her husband is also incredibly sick, and as we flit back to the past we see how she and her husband’s relationship initially began. The Key in the Lock is a shining example of both historical British fiction and the legacy genre of murder mystery novels.

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The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

Set in 1643, during the English Civil War, The Leviathan is a creeping, gothic piece of historical fiction that will have you gripping the pages like the wheel of an out-of-control car. Our narrator-protagonist, Thomas Treadwater, is a young man who has returned from war to his father’s farm.

His younger sister is all out of sorts because she believes that their new servant has been seducing and manipulating their ageing father. On occasion, chapters shift forward to Thomas as an old man, married and comfortable but haunted by something in his house. Something he must periodically feed and watch over.

The Leviathan is, frankly, delicious. It is a camp piece of mystery and melodrama. It has all the insane beats of a gothic horror B-movie, while also leading us by the nose with its ridiculous puzzles and problems.

It’s wonderful to see a piece of historical fiction be so lively and campy, as opposed to the more typical slow-burn approach to the genre. This is gothic historical fiction at its finest, while also being a shining example of the mystery genre.

Buy a copy here!

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Here is one of the most impactful mystery novels of the past decade; all the more impressive considering it is a debut novel. Sara Collins is a Black British writer and ex-lawyer. Her debut novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton has also been adapted into a beautiful TV show.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton begins with our protagonist on trial for murder. It’s 1826, she was born and educated on the plantations of Jamaica, and she has since worked as a maid for Benham family. Mrs Benham, a woman Frannie dearly loved, is dead, and it’s Frannie who stands to hang for the murder. But did she do it? And if so, why?

The Confessions of Frannie Langton isn’t only one of the best historical novels of today; it is also a twisting, turning, tantalising murder mystery novel. A mind-bending tale of race, class, empire, love, queerness, and so much more. It is a true modern classic of historical fiction and mystery fiction.

Buy a copy here!

Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro

Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle

Though Claudia Pińeiro is most famous for her crime fiction, Elena Knows is a slightly different beast. This heavy yet short literary mystery novel tackles big themes of religion, sexism, responsibility, and fantasy vs reality.

The novel’s titular, Elena, is a woman in her sixties who is suffering from Parkinson’s. It’s hard for her to move around, yet she is on a journey across Buenos Aires to meet and talk with someone she hopes will understand her situation.

The situation in question concerns Elena’s daughter, Rita, who, three months prior, was found dead at their local church. Rita was found hanging from a rope in the belfry; the death was immediately written off as suicide, but Elena refuses to believe that.

Her only evidence is that it was raining on the day of Rita’s death, and Rita had always avoided the church on rainy days for fear of lightning strikes. Elena Knows takes place over a single day as she journeys across Argentina’s capital, and we are treated to flashbacks to Rita’s death and funeral and their life together as mother and daughter before that.

This is an Argentinian novel that heavily explores the effects of religion on women and children; it asks us to consider our relationships with the people around us vs the relationships we have with the invented versions of them that our minds have cooked up.

There is more to Rita, more to Elena, more to everything than is first laid out, but this is not a crime novel. It’s a mystery story with a laser focus on religion, gender, and family dynamics.

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Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Blending the tone and tropes of horror fiction and mystery novels, Bad Cree tells the story of a young cree Canadian woman whose dreams are following her into reality. When Mackenzie wakes up on page one, she has the freshly severed head of a crow in her hands, and this isn’t the first time a thing from her nightmares has appeared in her waking world.

The dreams themselves are guiding her back to a lakeside forest, a place where her older sisters once briefly disappeared before emerging, disheveled and shaken up but safe. That is, until one of these twin sisters, Sabrina, suddenly died of a brain aneurysm, and now she seems to be haunting her little sister’s nightmares.

The memories, the haunting, and the blurring of dreams and reality all make for some really disturbing and chilling horror and a very compelling supernatural mystery story. Twisted and chilling as a horror novel and utterly compelling as a mystery thriller, Bad Cree is a unique spectacle of a novel.

Buy a copy of Bad Cree here!

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As for defining a novella, that depends on who you ask. Typically, a novella is any piece of fiction that’s shorter than 200 pages (though some argue for 150 pages), but not so brief as to be considered a short story. Here, we’re going off general consensus.

These are your must-read novellas, separated neatly into different styles and genres. Here, you’ll find a hefty selection of classics, as well as many modern novellas separated out by genre. And so many of these masterful short books come from all around the world.

Classic Novellas

So many of your favourite classic stories and novels often actually fall into the definition of a novella, and this can even take some readers by surprise. These classic novellas have changed the landscape of literature for the better; they’re stories we talk about every day, and they continue to impact readers on the deepest levels.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

George Orwell’s allegorical novella, often taught in high schools all around the English-speaking world, is one of the most popular, beloved, and well-respected novellas ever written. Retelling the story of the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist era that followed, Animal Farm is a fantastic piece of dark satire so brilliantly told.

Orwell famously argued that language and stories should be simple, appealing to the broadest possible audience, and Animal Farm is an excellent example of this. A fable for children and a satirical allegory for adults, the novella appeals to so many, so perfectly.

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The Trial by Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka saw little success in his life, but after his death his works came to define an entirely new genre of fiction: the kafkaesque. The Trial is a novella that tells the story of Joseph K, a man arrested for a crime he is unaware of, who finds himself tossed by the waves of the legal system.

K has no idea what he did, and nobody will tell him. We watch as the system intimidates and confuses him, and he is moved from place to place, all the while desperate to understand his own situation. The Trial is a darkly funny, sombre, frustrating read that bites at bureaucracy in inventive and evocative ways.

Buy a copy of The Trial here!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson remains the queen of the American gothic, famous for her horror novels and short stories — the best of which is We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a gothic novella about a secluded family on the edge of town. The family is shunned by everyone, and has a lot of secrets to keep hidden.

We follow the family’s youngest daughter, Merricat, who lives with her sister and uncle. Her parents and brother died from poisoning several years ago, and now Merricat uses what she believes to be magical wards to protect what’s left. A chilling and cold piece of gothic fiction and a wonderful classic novella.

Buy a copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle here!

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of the most famous and revered American stories ever written, The Great Gatsby is a true classic of the 20th century. A novella that tells the story of a lonely man who hosts lavish parties that he himself never attends, all with the hope of luring out the woman he has loved for so many years.

The Great Gatsby is written with captivating clarity and lyricism, and it presents the reader with a unique perspective on the great American dream. Gatsby himself is an alluring and haunting figure, and Fitzgerald’s novella has become one of the great American classics.

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Silas Marner by George Eliot

George Eliot was a pioneer of realism in 18th century literature; an approach to fiction that set her apart from the likes of Dickens and the Brontës. Silas Marner is a novella that tells the story of a weaver who has settled in a quiet village after dark events came to pass.

Accused of stealing from the congregation in his Northern hometown, and likely framed by a friend, Silas is shunned, loses his love, and retreats to the Midlands to live out his life in seclusion, but things don’t go the way he hoped. Silas Marner is a powerful Victorian novella that cemented George Eliot as one of the great writers of her time.

Buy a copy of Silas Marner here!

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

This gothic novella, like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a gothic tale that has left an enormous legacy. Everyone knows the tale of Jekyll and Hyde, whether they’ve read Stevenson’s novella or not: the story of the scientist who transforms into his beastly and dangerous alter-ego.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a well-loved story by a well-loved author, and its ongoing prevalence in popular culture shows what a powerful and original story it was. The tale of a meek and respectable doctor transforming into a cruel and dastardly monster is one that continues to resonate with readers to this day.

Buy a copy of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde here!

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

One of the most cherished stories that Charles Dickens ever told, A Christmas Carol has since become larger than Dickens ever was, with people knowing the story whether they’re familiar with Dickens himself or not. Adapted to the screen many times, A Christmas Carol is, at this point, a fairy tale that every child has enjoyed.

The story of a miserly old capitalist who strangles the joy from his workers, only to be visited by the regretful ghost of his former business partner, and then frightened into changing his ways by visions of the past, present, and future. It’s a terrifying tale, but also a warming and hopeful one that resonates with readers across the world.

Buy a copy of A Christmas Carol here!

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Alongside Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Henry James’ classic novella The Turn of the Screw made an icon of the governess: the intelligent young woman who works as a teacher to the children of a wealthy and large country home full of ghosts and secrets. In the case of this novella, that home is Bly Manor.

Our nameless governess is charged with the care of two children who live with their uncle after the deaths of their parents. While working at Bly, the governess starts to see ghostly figures, and also learns about two people who once worked and died there; now, their ghosts are seemingly influencing the children. It’s a chilling tale and a classic gothic novella.

Buy a copy of The Turn of the Screw here!

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

James Baldwin was an American author, playwright, and civil rights activist who escaped to Paris. There, he wrote the much-loved novella Giovanni’s Room. The story of a bisexual American man living in Paris and the love affair that unfolds between himself and a bartender named Giovanni.

Giovanni will soon be executed, and our protagonist David narrates the story of their love affair, which took place while David’s girlfriend is in Spain. This is a tale of isolation, gender roles and expectations, and queer expression in the 1950s. An empathetic and vitally important piece of queer fiction.

Buy a copy of Giovanni’s Room here!

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck was one of the great American authors, and his novella Of Mice and Men remains as thematically prevalent as it ever did. Frequently taught in schools, the novella tells the story of two men — George and Lenny — who work on a farmstead to raise enough money to eventually free themselves from the cycle of capitalism.

George, like so many men, is following the American dream. He will have land of his own, and the simple giant Lenny will help him get there. But the cycle of capitalism is harder to break away from than George thinks, and tragedy awaits them both. Of Mice and Men is a powerful tale, vitally relevant, and beautiful in its simplicity. An amazing novella.

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The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French philosopher known for presenting his philosophical arguments as fiction. The first and most famous of his works was the novella The Stranger, which tells the tale of a man living in French Algeria who kills another man shortly after the death and funeral of his own mother.

In the novella’s first half, we learn about Mersault’s life leading up to the funeral, and the subsequent murder. In the second half, we watch the fallout of these events. The Stranger is a piece of absurdist fiction that explores the theme of isolation in unusual ways (as Camus was known to do), and it remains an impactful novella to this day.

Buy a copy of The Stranger here!

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

Japanese author and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata wrote many beautiful tales, often characterised by their emphasis on beauty. Aesthetics, in the form of both human and natural beauty, were intrinsic to his storytelling and his plots, and that can best be seen in his classic novella Snow Country.

This Japanese novella takes place in a remote hot spring town, where our Tokyoite protagonist, Shimamura, falls in love with a local geisha who works at the town’s onsen. Though geisha are forbidden to show affection for their clients, she too falls in love, and we watch their love affair unfold. A stunning short masterpiece by one of the greats.

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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess supposedly wrote A Clockwork Orange over the course of just a few days, and the resulting novella has gone on to become a revered story, adapted into one of the most famous and respected films of all time.

This piece of dystopian satire follows a psychopathic young man named Alex, who spends his days as part of a violent gang, but is later captured and subject to torturous reformation methods by the authorities. A haunting, harrowing story. Surreal and strange, difficult to read, but ultimately powerful and impactful.

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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea is regarded by many readers as Hemingway’s masterpiece. A vital piece of American fiction, and a wonderfully short piece of fiction. This novella presents the reader with exactly what the title promises.

Our old fisherman hasn’t caught a single fish in more than eighty days, but one morning he sets out and hooks an enormous marlin, which he cannot reel in and so holds onto for more than a day and a night, slowly developing great respect and admiration for the fish as the hours tick away. This is a true American classic and one of the great novellas of its time.

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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys’ novella Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s gothic romance novel Jane Eyre. Using what was hinted at in Brontë’s novel as a framework, Rhys presents us with a powerful and literary feminist novel about English colonialism.

Our protagonist is Brontë’s famous madwoman in the attic, a Creole woman named Antoinette. We follow her life leading to her marriage to the cruel Mr Rochester, who removes her to England and famously locks her away in his attic. Rhys’ novella humanises her, gives her a story, and has become a feminist classic novella.

Buy a copy of Wild Sargasso Sea here!

Modern & Literary Novellas

From Argentina to Japan, so many of the best stories of the past several years have come in the form of novellas; short books that can be enjoyed again and again by readers who cherish what they have to offer. These modern — and often literary — novellas are all must-read stories for fans of the artform.

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

Winner of the International Booker Prize, French author David Diop’s incredible war novella is set in the trenches of World War I, where we follow a Senegalese soldier who faces death, disease, and prejudice from his fellow soldiers.

When he loses his fellow Senegalese brother-in-arms, he feels alone and isolated, and so dedicates himself to the fight, despite all that is against him. This is a harrowing tale of war on the front lines, as well as the prejudice and dangers that faced Senegalese soldiers made to fight by the French government. A haunting, incredible novella.

Buy a copy of At Night All Blood is Black here!

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Convenience Store Woman is a transfixing, thought-provoking Japanese novella about a woman who has worked at the same convenience store for more than a decade. Her life is predictable, simple, and stable. And so, she is content. But her family worries about her. They want her to climb that ladder, and also eventually get married and have kids.

Our protagonist has found a way to survive and feel comfortable in a strange, capitalistic, traditionalist world that she doesn’t understand or feel part of, but this only serves to confuse those around her. Sayaka Murata’s novella is a profound piece of Japanese fiction. A masterpiece of modern literature.

Buy a copy of Convenience Store Woman here!

Brickmakers by Selva Almada

Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott

Selva Almada is a genius of feminist literary fiction. Hailing from Argentina, she has written some of the best novels of the modern day. Brickmakers is a novella about cycles of abuse, especially within the context of masculinity.

Starting at the end, with two boys having killed each other in a fight, they are bleeding out on the ground and we trace their personal histories back to the source of this feud. Inherited hatred, masculine pride, and class divides paint a picture of patriarchy in its darkest most honest form. A true masterpiece of a novella.

Buy a copy of Brickmakers here!

Foster by Claire Keegan

Irish author Claire Keegan is a master of short fiction, and Foster is a perfect example. This is a novella about a young girl whose mother is about to go into labour. Our girl is taken, by her father, to stay with a family in a nearby town for the summer.

There, she is welcomed in with open arms by a loving couple and shown a different way of living and loving as part of a family unit. This is a touching tale of growth and experience through the eyes of a child. A stunning work of literary fiction and one of the best modern novellas you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of Foster here!

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Following on from Foster, Claire Keegan once again wowed the literary world with Small Things Like These. This novella is set during the week leading up to Christmas. Our protagonist is a middle-aged man, married with children, and working as the manager of a lumber mill.

His small community are god-fearing church-going hypocrites, and as the novella progresses we watch him steadily come face-to-face with those hypocrisies. This is a novel that daringly exposes the darkness and corruption of organised religion in the modern day. An incredible novella and a masterpiece of literary fiction.

Buy a copy of Small Things Like These here!

Walking Practice by Dolki Min

Translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle

A fantastically strange and imaginative Korean novella, Walking Practice tells the story of an alien creature that crash-landed on Earth and spends their days hunting and eating the most delicious thing on this planet: us.

The best way for them to do this is to shapeshift into a man or woman and use dating apps to lure out their prey. The novel explores gender roles in a multitude of ways, as our alien switches genders and plays different roles to get what they want. It’s a fascinating exploration of gender expectations in the modern world.

Buy a copy of Walking Practice here!

The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto

Translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda

Banana Yoshimoto is one of the most beloved Japanese authors of today, and The Premonition is an elegantly simple novella about a teenager with a happy ordinary life and a family who love her. But she also enjoys sneaking out of the house to stretch her legs. One place she likes to go is the home of her hedonistic aunt.

But one day, while visiting her aunt, gaps in her memory become clear, and she starts to uncover a truth about her childhood and her family that had long been kept from her. This reframes her ideas of love, trust, and family bonds. A truly wonderful modern from a talented Japanese author.

Buy a copy of The Premonition here!

Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio

From the author of the celebrated If We Were Villains (one of my personal favourite novels) comes Graveyard Shift, a gothic novella that clocks in at a mere 108 pages and takes places over a single night. Graveyard Shift follows a group of insomniacs and night shift workers who often meet for a smoke at a local graveyard. Our first protagonist is editor of the university newspaper, and others include a cab driver, a hotel receptionist, and a bartender.

One night, while at the graveyard, they notice a freshly-dug hole. But this graveyard is old; nobody has been interred there in a century. So, who dug this hole and why? Over the course of this night, our misfit gang of protagonists will hunt for answers and uncover a conspiracy along the way. This is dark academia that actually explores the darkness of academia in a creeping, claustrophobic way.

The novella is the perfect medium for this kind of story as well, since it can be enjoyed in a single setting. Reading this will take as long as watching a horror movie, and you will feel just as much edge-of-your-seat tension as the plot thickens and the strangeness amps up.

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Translated from the Norwegian by Marjam Idriss

Jenny Hval is an internationally famous Norwegian singer-songwriter, and she has also written some fantastic short novels. Her novella Paradise Rot is a wonderfully gothic piece of strange fiction about a university student who moves to a new city in a new country for her studies.

When she arrives, she moves in with a local woman. They live together in a converted brewery where the walls between them are more like office cubicles in an open-plan space. Privacy is an illusion, and the space itself becomes a character in its own right. This is a wonderfully unsettling tale and a brilliant work of modern gothic fiction.

Buy a copy of Paradise Rot here!

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanchez

Boulder is a work of sapphic literary fiction from Catalan author Eva Baltasar. Our nameless protagonist works as a cook on a merchant ship which is off the coast of Chile when she meets and falls deeply in love with a woman named Samsa. Her addiction to this woman leads her to move with Samsa to Reykjavik.

Their relationship quickly becomes strained, however, when Samsa declares that she wants a child, and our protagonist doesn’t. Their lives are moving at different paces and in different ways, causing a painful rift between them. This is a stellar and visceral sapphic novella that everyone should read.

Buy a copy of Boulder here!

The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey

Edward Carey rose to prominence with his incredible historical novel Little, about the life of the girl who would eventually grow up to become Madame Tussauds. His novella The Swallowed Man retells the tale of Pinnocchio, focussing on the experiences of Geppetto after being swallowed by the whale.

We spend time in the whale with Geppetto as he explores his surroundings, finds a shipwreck, and reads the captain’s journal. And we also journey back through his memories to the creation of Pinnocchio in a stunningly human and empathetic tale. A beautiful little novella from a master of the craft.

Buy a copy of The Swallowed Man here!

Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami

Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai

Mieko Kawakami is one of the great feminist Japanese writers of today, and her novella Ms Ice Sandwich is a sweet, soulful, uplifting tale. Our protagonist is a teenage boy facing several personal struggles, especially with his at-home family relationships.

However, he has become entranced by a girl who works at his local grocery store; a girl whom he called Ms Ice Sandwich. He admires her, feels as though he is in love with her, and even looks up to her as someone cool, aloof, and unique. It’s a charming tale that will comfort anyone who reads it.

Buy a copy of Ms Ice Sandwich here!

Finger Bone by Hiroki Takahashi

Translated from the Japanese by Takami Nieda

Hiroki Takahashi’s war novella, Finger Bone, places us in the life of a nameless soldier stationed in the jungle of Papua New Guinea. He befriends his fellow soldiers while healing at a war hospital where men are being treated for wounds and sickness, but their lives could be stripped from them at any moment (and they often are).

This is a visceral yet poetic novella about the realities and the uncomfortable truths of war. Like the poetry of Wilfred Owen, this is bleak and honest, painting a raw picture of warfare from the frontlines. An incredible work of short fiction.

Buy a copy of Finger Bone here!

Hex by Jenni Fagan

This is a unique and original novella from a fantastic voice in Scottish literature. Protagonist Iris has found a way to travel back in time several centuries, and there she spends the night in the prison cell of a woman who will be hanged at dawn for witchcraft.

This woman is Gellis Duncan, and she tells Iris the story of how she got here. Iris tells Gellis that the women of today are still treated unfairly, and true equality has still not been reached. The two bond over this painful truth and we learn about the very real North Berwick Witch Trials of 16th century Scotland.

Buy a copy of Hex here!

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

A stunning piece of literary historical fiction, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain tells the story of two women of English history, both of whom claimed to hear the word of God: Julian of Norwich and a lesser-known woman named Margery.

Julian hid herself away and took to life as an anchoress, giving out advice to strangers who sought it. Margery, however, stood in the town square and cried about the words she heard. The two women will eventually meet, and this meeting will eventually change the course of history.

Buy a copy of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain here!

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

Han Kang’s novella, translated with splendour by Tilted Axis Press founder Deborah Smith, won the International Booker Prize in 2017. The Vegetarian tells the story of a woman who decides to become a vegetarian when she is plagued by unsettling and upsetting dreams of animal slaughter.

We see the fallout of this decision from the perspectives of various family members across three parts: her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister. Each one places her at the centre and has a different attitude towards Yeong-hye and her behaviour. This is a radical, powerful Korean novella that should be read by everyone.

Buy a copy of The Vegetarian here!

Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai

Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton

Japanese author Mieko Kanai’s literary novella is a dense and poetic story about nothing much at all. Our narrator-protagonist is a Tokyo housewife with children and a husband to look after, and we spend time in both her life and her mind as she goes about her daily routine.

What makes this novella so captivating is its structure and delivery, as the realism of the tale is offset by the ways in which we fluidly weave in and out of thoughts, memories, actions, and conversations and lines between them all are blurred in an engaging and fascinating way, all translated amazingly by Polly Barton.

Buy a copy of Mild Vertigo here!

Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanchez

Eva Baltasar is a remarkable artist who is able to weave sapphic and feminine themes into stories that explore belonging, hedonism, indecision, and the feeling—whether it be good or bad—of being untethered. Across just one hundred pages, Mammoth accomplishes all of this with harsh, electrifying prose that is translated with staggering force by Julia Sanchez.

Mammoth follows a young lesbian who, as the novella opens, wishes desperately to be pregnant. She works as a researcher at a university and, at a party, attempts to seduce a man who might give her the one thing she wants. When this fails, she quits her job and wanders, almost nomadically, from place to place and job to job, eventually arriving at a rural farm.

This is a story of anxiety. Our protagonist is young, brash, unsure of herself, and seems to be living through a persistent crisis. She knows herself to an extent but experiments with herself and the world in order to better understand both, and harm is often the result. She might often be dark, unlikable, and pitiable, but she is also relatable in one way or another.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital is a novella that traces a single day aboard the International Space Station. Six astronauts orbit the world sixteen times, seeing a new sunrise and sunset every ninety minutes. And in that time, they bond, share memories, discuss God and philosophy, marvel at the beauty of our world, and take stock of our place in the universe.

While it is light on plot and events, Harvey’s focus with Orbital is on musing over the big questions: life, death, love, faith; all those heady questions, all while watching the world spin under your feet. The main subject of the novella is relationships: those between neighbours, family members, nations, and even the relationships between us and our home planet, and between Earth and the rest of the universe.

All of this is written with sharp and poetic prose. While it all feels almost eerily apolitical, avoiding any kind of commitment to one idea or another, it remains introspective, thoughtful, and hopeful. And that, in itself, is something that can be appreciated.

Horror Novellas

Many of the best horror stories of all time take advantage of brevity. Short stories and novellas are uniquely equipped to deliver a terrifying, spine-chilling scare and then simply end, leaving the reader feeling cold but alive. These horror novellas are powerful, frightening things that you will absolutely adore. Not for the faint of heart, of course.

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

This all-but-forgotten classic of gothic horror is a work of strangeness and brilliance. The Black Spider begins with a Swiss family hosting a celebration in their valley home, when the elder patriarch begins telling the story of something dreadful that happened there in the middle ages.

That story involves a village of serfs toiling away to serve a cruel lord in his castle. One day, at the point of starvation, they are visited by a stranger who tempts them with magic that will save them, in exchange for the next child to be born. From here, the village descends into unimaginable horror and tragedy, making for a truly spectacular gothic horror novella.

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Come Closer by Sara Gran

Reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, Sara Gran’s horror novella Come Closer is an eerie and unsettling experience. Our protagonist, Amanda, is starting to lose her grip on what is real and what is sane as strange things occur around her. Noises in her apartment, odd and violent dreams, and accusations of things she hasn’t done.

Amanda’s world is turning upside down, and she desperately needs to understand why. There is a voice in her head that’s taking control and telling her to do things she’d never do. She is losing control and it frightens her. This is a whole new kind of terror, and a brilliant short horror novel.

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What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher

This is T. Kingfisher’s bold and brilliant retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic short story The Fall of the House of Usher. While that tale is an untouchable classic, Kingfisher took it and created something entirely fresh and unique, adding more detail and dynamism to the story.

What was once a twisted and hopeless tale now features more body horror, more strangeness and grotesquerie. Mysteries are answered but the answers are wonderfully unpleasant. This is a fantastically dark, twisted, and exciting horror novella.

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The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

The Salt Grows Heavy is a monstrously strange and bleak horror novella. Our protagonist is a mermaid who, as the story opens, is watching her newborn children feast on the body of their dead father — a cruel patriarch who cut out his wife’s tongue. From here, she leaves on a journey into the woods with a charismatic plague doctor.

In this strange new place, they meet a gang of boys who hunt and kill each other, only to be resurrected by their cultish masters, and so a kind of battle ensues between our heroes and these lords. A wonderfully grotesque and gory tale of body horror and twisted people.

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You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood is a book within a book. We begin with a man named Martyr Black, who is a self-professed serial killer. We read transcripts, diaries, and poetry from him, as well as a novella that he wrote. And that novella takes up the bulk of this strange and wonderful book.

The novella tells the tale of a young woman who has been recruited by a reclusive and enigmatic video games developer. She lives at his remote mansion with her little brother, but her boss is injured and recovering. She is strapped there and being ordered around by her boss’ sister. It’s a claustrophobic, gothic, and unnerving horror novella.

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Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper

Queen of Teeth is a gross and fantastic piece of short horror fiction about a young lesbian woman who wakes up after a one-night-stand with the sheets soaked in blood. What she first thinks is her period turns out to actually be a set of teeth growing at the entrance to her hoo-ha.

The people to blame are part of a pharmaceutical company that treated Yaya when she was still in her mother’s womb, and now, decades later, she is transforming and a voice in her head is getting louder. This is a twisted, dark tale and a brilliant horror novella.

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Sci-Fi Novellas

Science fiction is a genre known for its thematic exploration of various politics and big ideas, and having that distilled down into a short, easily re-readable book provides such obvious benefits. It’s so easy to chew on and get all the benefits from a clever sci-fi story if it’s a novella: something short and re-readable. That goes for all of these brilliant books.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells was one of the great godfathers of science fiction, and The Time Machine remains one of his most well-loved books. It tells the story of a man who travels far into the future; so far, in fact, that humanity has branched into two evolutionary chains.

In this future are the pristine and childlike eloi and the monstrous underground-dwelling morlocks, who feed and then eat the eloi. The Time Machine was one of the earliest sci-fi stories and remains a classic novella to this day.

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To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

American author Becky Chambers is the queen of modern sci-fi, and her short novella To Be Taught If Fortunate is a masterful work of hard science fiction. In a near-future socialist Earth, a grass-roots global space agency has been established, and a group of astronauts has been sent on a mission to another solar system.

While there, this team explores the planets and moons, learn, scan, and study. They come across unexpected obstacles and overcome them together. This is a hopeful work of sci-fi that paints a positive picture of our future.

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This is How You Lost the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

These two fantastic authors worked together to pen a masterful work of short science fiction. Two soldiers fight for opposing armies in a war that spans both space and time, but they are both becoming disenchanted by the war, and in that loss of faith love can bloom.

Our soldiers leave taunting, teasing notes for the other to find, and slowly their letters become declarations of love as they journey from a future battlefield full of mechs back to Shakespeare’s London and Plato’s Greece. An incredible work of science fiction romance.

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Pluralities by Avi Silver

Pluralities is a queer work of short science fiction; a dual narrative about two very different people. One is a young person who works at a mall and is steadily coming to terms with their gender identity, and also happens to have the power of foresight. The other is a prince who has fled his home planet and all the responsibilities that go with it.

The two never meet, but they are connected by something greater. We watch our earthling form an intense relationship with a trans man and we see the prince’s AI ship gradually fall in love with him. This is a fun and unique work of short science fiction. A fantastic sci-fi novella.

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All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red is the first novella in a sci-fi series called The Murderbot Diaries. This story is set in a future world where corporations control much of space and the planets in it. While exploring, teams of humans are assigned a “murderbot” to keep them safe.

We follow a team whose own murderbot has managed to hack its own systems and become self-aware. Now, it wishes to better understand itself, its purpose, and its relationship to humanity. A fantastic sci-fi novella.

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Fantasy Novellas

Fantasy is a genre famous for its size and scale. Fantasy novels are so often not only large in stature but also part of long, ongoing series. There are entire worlds full of people, histories, traditions, religions, politics, and more. But condensing all of that down neatly into a novella is its own kind of beauty, as these authors demonstrate.

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Thornhedge is a modern fairy tale story by the incredible T. Kingfisher. Blending Shakespearean fairies with elements of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, this is the tale of a girl who was stolen by fairies, raised as one, and then given the responsibility of guarding a tower surrounded by thorns.

She has guarded this tower for a long time, and watched as knights try and fail to access it. But one day, she befriends a himbo knight with good intentions, and she tells him her story. The two bond, and we slowly learn about our fairy and about what is actually in the tower. A wonderful fantasy novella from a legendary author.

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The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

Fantasy fans will know the name Patrick Rothfuss, author of the widely celebrated The Name of the Wind and its sequel. But Rothfuss also wrote The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a fantasy novella which takes place in the world of The Kingkiller Chronicles.

This short novel follows Auri, a character introduced in Rothfuss’ first novel, and the adventures she goes on in a hidden labyrinth nestled beneath the university in which The Name of the Wind is predominantly set. This is a great novella that expands the lore of this world brilliantly.

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When looking at lesbian novels and the art put out by lesbian authors, you see the darkest kinds of gothic fiction, as well as the brightest dedications to love and kindness. Whatever genre you love, from historical fiction to tales of sea monsters, and love crossing time and space there’s something for you here.

Essential Lesbian Novels

Some of these lesbian novels are dark and twisted; others are celebrations of queer love in the face of patriarchy. Some are in translation from other languages; others are forging new paths for well-trodden genres. What unites them all is their sheer quality. These are essential lesbian novels by some of the best women writers of today.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

Julia Armfield made an enormous splash with her debut short story collection, Salt Slow. When she followed that with a staggering work of modern gothic fiction in Our Wives Under the Sea it quickly became clear how special her writing really is.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a gothic tale told from two perspectives; and one that explores the concepts of loss and grief from a frighteningly original angle.

Miri’s wife Leah set out on an expedition to the bottom of the sea in a cramped submarine. What should have been weeks turned to months, and when Leah eventually returned, she was different. Leah’s chapters blend the Lovecraftian with the Kafkaesque as we sink slowly with her, and we see what’s down there beneath everything.

Miri’s chapters follow her as she tries to live with, and fails to care for, the returned and broken Leah. A new Leah who barely speaks and behaves in strange and frightening ways. Miri is grieving the loss of her wife, confronted with the fact that whatever has returned is not Leah.

This is a lesbian novel that forces the reader to confront the idea of grief and how it might present itself. It’s a tale of love and loss and loneliness and isolation. A truly original gothic novel.

Watch our full video review of Our Wives Under the Sea

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After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

After Sappho is the novelisation of a web of interconnected lives: queer women from around the turn of the 20th Century who pushed feminism and queer experiences into the limelight. This is one of the most kind, hopeful, and inspiring lesbian novels you could ever hope to read and enjoy.

We begin in Italy before tracing multiple threads across France, England, Ireland, and across to the US. The women here were all real: artists, writers, actors, philosophers, and travellers. Some you will be familiar with; others you won’t. All of them were inspired by Sappho, and in turn inspired one another to move, act, shake the world, and turn the status quo on its head.

These are women who didn’t conform to gender roles and expectations, who loved other women, who spoke out and inspired the women and queer people around them. The novel is told out of order, in small vignettes that traces these lives over and again; we move through time and across borders to paint a picture of change, growth and love. Beautiful, genius, and perfect.

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Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin

Translated from the Mandarin by Bonnie Huie

Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile is a few things: it is one of the quintessential Taiwanese novels of the twentieth century; it is also one of the most prominent and powerful lesbian novels of the past few decades. Separated into a series of notebooks, Notes of a Crocodile tracks the university years of a queer Taiwanese student who goes by the name Lazi.

Lazi is tormented by her love for a woman in the year above; their relationship is tumultuous and aggressive. She also spends time in queer circles populated by other emotionally unhealthy young people. This is a visceral tale of personal hatred and acceptance, of love and lust and danger. Reminiscent of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, this Taiwanese novel rips you apart unapologetically.

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Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens

Lucky Red is a historical sapphic novel set in the American Wild West of the late 19th century. Our protagonist, Bridget, is a beautiful young redhead whose childhood was plagued with bad luck, to say the least.

Bridget was raised by her dumb and useless father, who sold their house for nothing much at all. While on the road together, they take shelter and he is bitten and killed by a snake. Alone, Bridget wanders until she reaches the frontier town of Dodge, Kansas. There, she is taken in by the kind women of the Buffalo Queen brothel, where she works and finds a community.

She takes to the work well, enjoys having food and shelter, and builds strong bonds with the other women. And soon enough, she realises that men are work but women are what she loves and craves. Her first crush is a fellow sex worker, and her second is an infamous female gunslinger with whom she falls in deeply in love.

Lucky Red is a sapphic novel about sex, lust, love, and the bonds between women and small communities in a dangerous, difficult, hard world.

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The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

A special and beautifully written book that subtly evokes Scottish folklore while building an original and highly creative world. On a floating circus, in a world divided between those who live on land or at sea, North dances with her beloved bear, betrothed against her will to the ringmaster’s son. However, she’s harboring a secret that could destroy everything.

Meanwhile, Callanish, exiled to a solitary lighthouse, tends to the graves of those lost at sea. A chance encounter sparks a magnetic bond between the two women, offering the promise of a new life together. Perilous waters threaten to tear them apart. If you love theatrical and whimsical books then prepare to fall in love with this novel and its vibrant and endearing ensemble.

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Love Me Tender by Constance Debré

Translated from the French by Holly James

Like so many great sapphic and lesbian novels, Love Me Tender is a brash and punk piece of lesbian liberation.

Our protagonist is forty-seven, and three years ago she separated from her husband of twenty years when she realised she was gay. Now, she lives in a small studio flat in Paris, spending her days swimming, reading, getting new tattoos, writing in cafes, and sleeping with women. A life of freedom and hedonism.

What complicates this is the fact that she has a son, Paul, whom her homophobic ex-husband is weaponising against her. At just 160 pages, Love Me Tender is a novel that explores queer liberation and the ways in which heteronormativity, bigotry, traditionalism, and family can all feel like ghosts, shackles, stalkers, and abusers.

Our protagonist is a complex woman; from one angle she seems selfishly carefree, and is clearly suffering for that. From another, she’s enjoying her lesbian liberation. This is punk literature, through and through, and one of the most raw and exciting lesbian novels of recent years.

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Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

Pizza Girl is a coming-of-age story about an 18-year-old pregnant pizza delivery girl named Pizza Girl (she is never given a real name) who becomes obsessed with a stay-at-home mom named Jenny whom she delivers pizza to.

When we meet Pizza Girl, she is grieving the death of her alcoholic father, avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. She feels more in common with her dead father than she does with anyone else in her life.

As Pizza Girl and Jenny’s relationship deepens, she begins to question her own identity. She is attracted to Jenny, but she is also deeply afraid of becoming her. She sees in Jenny the future that she herself could have if she doesn’t make some changes in her life. This novel beautifully explores themes of identity, motherhood, obsession, grief, and loss and you truly feel devasted for her as the book goes on.

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Boulder by Eva Baltasar

Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches

Accomplished and celebrated Catalan poet Eva Baltasar has here written a raw and tender novella about love and pain, and how too often they are one and the same.

Our protagonist, nicknamed Boulder by her geologist girlfriend, spends her days floating from job to job. She’s a cook, and when we meet her she’s working on a ship at sea. Boulder is cold and uncaring; she’s as harsh and unforgiving as the sea upon which she currently works. But when she meets Samsa, she softens and gives into her lust and love for her.

The two move to Reykjavik, and Boulder eventually finds some success opening up a Spanish food truck. Life is solid, good, reliable, stable. Until Samsa, almost forty, insists that she wants a child and it must happen now, before it’s too late for her. Boulder doesn’t want to lose her, so she gives in and agrees.

We watch Boulder struggle with having a pregnant partner, and later a child she never wanted. This sapphic novel is told entirely from the perspective of Boulder, as a kind of diary, as she does nothing but voice her thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

It’s a sensual novel, but also a painfully raw and angry one. Queer and punk, this is one of the most harrowing and powerful lesbian novels you’re ever likely to read.

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Mrs. S by K. Patrick

Set in an old-fashioned boarding school, Mrs. S tells the story of a nameless Australian who has moved to England for work. There, she meets the headmaster’s wife, the titular Mrs. S, and begins a journey of growing obsession.

Our protagonist is unsure of herself. She wears a binder and enjoys being seen as masculine, but she doesn’t have the language to express how she feels or what she wants for herself. She identifies as a lesbian and begins to see Mrs. S as more than an object of obsession — perhaps this beautiful, charming woman might be able to guide our protagonist to her true self, unlock something in her.

Mrs. S has a very specific and rare style of presentation: run-on sentences and paragraphs that don’t differentiate between narration and dialogue.

Characters are named for their jobs and no proper nouns are used. The all-female school’s student body is described as a faceless mass which K. Patrick simply refers to as The Girls. This makes the characters and setting feel as though they are floating in a vacuum, outside of time and space. This is a nowhere place in which our protagonist is trapped, trying to understand herself and what she wants.

Her obsession with Mrs. S grows. She is lustful, jealous, curious, and eager to know this woman better, despite not knowing herself at all. Mrs. S is an answer, a distraction, a muse, so many things to her. There are few novels as captivating, intimate, claustrophobic, and sensual as Mrs. S; a true modern masterpiece amongst the best sapphic and lesbian novels.

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My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

Queer Dutch author Johanna van Veen’s My Darling Dreadful Thing is a work of gothic heartache. This sapphic horror-tinged drama will rip you apart in more ways than one. The novel follows Roos, a young woman barely out of girlhood, who has been working as a medium at her mother’s seances. While her mother is a cruel charlatan, Roos really does have a connection to the spirit world in the form of her ghostly companion, Ruth.

But when Roos meets Agnes—a young widow mourning the loss of her husband—the two form a quick bond and Agnes pays Roos’ mother to have Roos as her own companion at her crumbling estate. There, Roos discovers that Agnes has her own spirit companion, as well as a few dark secrets. And between chapters we read doctor/patient transcripts from after the events of the novel, which reveal that Agnes will not last the novel, and Roos is on trial.

The gothic elements of this story are turned up to eleven, with ever single gothic checkbox being ticked, and what makes this a real dramatic masterpiece is the intense, painful longing that Roos and Agnes grow to feel for each other. Their love blossoms through the novel but it is a flower blooming in a murky, ghost-infested place.

Chlorine by Jade Song

Chlorine is a sapphic coming-of-age story inspired by the author’s own experience as a competitive swimmer.

Our protagonist, Ren, is a Chinese-American girl with a deep love for swimming. We learn from the beginning that she is telling her story after having somehow transformed into a mermaid. We follow Ren as she grows through her teen years, experiencing puberty, sex, depression, friendship, and crises. All the while her friend Cathy, who holds a deep romantic love for Ren, remains by her side.

Occasionally, the narrative switches to Cathy’s perspective, expressed via letters which she has been casting out to sea in the hopes that they will reach the mermaid Ren.

The build up to Ren’s supposed transformation is one fraught with feelings of pain, stress, disappointment, dysphoria, violence, and more. The metaphor being played with can be interpreted in a variety of ways, as one which explores a general sense of truth and honesty, or more specifically feelings of dysphoria, sexual repression, and freedom from society.

This is a raw and difficult coming-of-age story, a tale of sapphic love and self-hatred. A story of frustration and pain; a difficult read that tackles many difficult themes with honesty and empathy.

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Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder leads the charge of unlikeable protagonists and difficult characters, especially amongst women writers. Historically, men are allowed to be unlikeable. Nobody bats an eye when male characters behave in an unlikeable way; and yet Melissa Broder stirs up a lot of ill feelings in certain readers by simply making her women complex, broken, selfish, distant, and difficult.

After the success of The Pisces, she brought us Milk Fed, one of the most daring and original lesbian novels of the last few years.

Milk Fed‘s protagonist is Rachel, a young Jewish woman from New Jersey who lives in LA and works at a talent agency while spending her nights doing stand-up comedy. Rachel has a lot of mummy issues that have instilled in her a lifelong and crippling obsession with calorie counting and weight watching.

Soon, Rachel meets Miriam: an overweight orthodox Jewish woman who loves food and loves her family. She is everything Rachel isn’t, and she soon becomes an unhealthy obsession for Rachel. Rachel lusts after Miriam, is inspired by her attitude towards life, and builds fantasies of sexual desire around her.

Milk Fed is one of the most daring and exciting lesbian novels of recent years.

Watch our full video review of Milk Fed

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X by Davey Davis

X is a sexy, kinky noir story about a non-binary lesbian searching the clubs and dungeons of Brooklyn for the elusive, enigmatic X. Our protagonist, Lee, spends their days working a corporate job and their nights going to punk shows, hooking up with people, and engaging in some amateur sadism.

Despite being a dom, Lee had a particularly exciting masochistic encounter with X a few weeks ago, and now they can think of nothing else but finding X again. However, the US government is systematically deporting immigrants, refugees, and queers, and Lee has heard rumour that X is about to be deported as well.

We spend the novel getting to know Lee, their life, their friends, their kinks, and their childhood traumas, all while we follow them on their hunt for X. This is a very exciting book amongst lesbian novels that really leans on kink. It’s bleak at times, occasionally funny, and unapologetically raw.

Buy a copy of X here!

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

Biography of X is an insightful and harrowing exploration of narcissism and its devastating impact on the lives of others, set against a dystopian backdrop that enriches the story and provides a unique perspective on the protagonist’s development.

After X, a renowned artist and writer, dies suddenly, her widow CM sets out to write a biography, uncovering a Pandora’s box of secrets and betrayals as she goes. We viscerally experience the obsession, disbelief, and anger CM feels as she uncovers X’s hidden past from her collaborations with Bowie and Waits to her hidden past in the fascist Southern Territory.

Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love, introducing us to an unforgettable character who shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves. While the pacing occasionally lags, the novel remains a compelling and thought-provoking read, and is a must for fans of challenging sapphic literature.

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Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Translated from the Norwegian by Marjam Idriss

Written by internationally acclaimed Norwegian musician Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot is a short, visceral, sensual novel about desire, temptation, and the human body. Textured, loud, coarse, and raw, Paradise Rot obsesses over the beautiful and the gross aspects of the female form: what it’s made of, what it creates, how it thrives, and how it decays.

Our protagonist is a young Norwegian woman named Jo who has just moved to a new country to attend university. She moves into a converted brewery and lives with a local woman. This shared space has no real borders; flimsy plywood walls create half-formed rooms and secrecy is non-existent.

These women obsess over each other, give into temptation, make each other jealous, and sexually awaken in each other’s company. This novel is alive, pulling the senses into focus and demanding your attention, even as it behaves in an alluringly crass and gross way. A truly addictive lesbian novel.

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Solo Dance by Li Kotomi

Translated from the Japanese by Arthur Reiji Morris

Few lesbian novels hit as hard as Solo Dance. Written by Taiwanese-born, Japan-based author Li Kotomi, Solo Dance follows a similar protagonist. Cho Norie grew up in Taiwan and left for Tokyo to pursue a master’s degree, learn the language, and get a job.

However, Norie is horribly depressed, carries heavy trauma, and obsesses over death. She reads the works of novelists who took their own lives and struggles to hide her sexuality for fear of being harassed. As a child, Norie lost a friend. At university, she suffered abuse. Now, as an adult working a corporate job in Tokyo, she struggles with day-to-day life as a lesbian immigrant in Japan.

If you are a queer person who has ever suffered (or feared) abuse, you will relate strongly to Norie and her experiences. You’ll find in her a companion, and perhaps even catharsis through how she struggles and grows and lives.

Solo Dance is not an easy book to read, but it is an extremely rewarding one. It illuminates, especially to cishet readers, the eggshells that LGBTQ+ people walk on every day. It also leans towards hope in the third act, but you have to go through a lot to get there.

Ultimately, queer readers who have faced depression and anxiety will find a friend and a companion in Norie. Solo Dance is one of the best lesbian novels you’ll ever read. Thank you, Li Kotomi.

Buy a copy of Solo Dance here!

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

A Dowry of Blood is a gothic romance for the ages. S.T. Gibson has gifted us the story of the cursed marriage between Dracula and his bride Constanta.

We learn on the very first page that Constanta will eventually kill her sire, but we must read on to see how this happens, and the centuries that pass in the meantime. This is a novel dripping with blood, love, and lust. Animal aggression and burning passion.

Soon enough, a second bride joins their marriage. a Spanish woman who becomes a source of burning desire for Constanta. She loves her like nobody else, and it’s their love that plays a part in Dracula’s undoing. The love, lust, and longing laced into this novel is spectacular. There is so much hate and spite and venom to enjoy as well, as with any good gothic romance.

Buy a copy of A Dowry of Blood here!

Night Shift by Kiare Ladner

In Night Shift, author Kiare Ladner paints a gritty picture of late-90s London. Here’s one of the grimiest and gnarly lesbian novels you’re likely to read; fiercely literary and often bleak, Night Shift will twist you as you grow more and more obsessed with its characters and their lives.

Our protagonist is Meggie, a young woman who presumes herself straight until she falls into an obsessive and unhealthy friendship with sexy Belgian Sabine. Meggie works night shifts and spends as much of her days as possible with her boyfriend, Graham, but Sabine steadily shows Meggie a different side of London, work, and life. Meggie is happy to go along for the ride as she questions and explores her sexuality.

Sabine represents possibility, mystery, new experiences, and a new way for Meggie to spend her days. She is intoxicating and illuminating. She is everything Meggie didn’t know she wanted to be, could be, and might yet be. Night Shift is one of the harshest, raw, and punk lesbian novels of today.

Buy a copy of Night Shift here!

Read More: Best Queer Graphic Novels and Manga

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is one of the boldest and most beautiful lesbian novels. Sara Collins’ debut novel is an homage to the gothic classics while also representing a bright and exciting new direction for the gothic genre as she places a Black lesbian front and centre.

This is a piece of genre fiction that gives readers everything they could want: an enticing mystery, an epic tale of freedom and love, an exciting historical context, an homage to the Brontës, and a tragic lesbian love story led by gothic fiction’s first Black female protagonist.

The titular Frannie Langton was born on a plantation in Jamaica, where she learns to read and write. From there, she moves to London and works in the house of a rich couple. After falling in love with Mrs Benham, however, she is put on trial for her murder. But did she do it? This is her story; these are the confessions of Frannie Langton.

Buy a copy of The Confessions of Frannie Langton here!

Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson

Bloom is a hypnotic descent from alluring sapphic romance into paranoid gothic terror. This short novel begins with a series of chapters in which our young professor protagonist finds herself drawn to a woman who sells her wares—cupcakes, soap, and more—at a farmer’s market. But as these women enter into an electrified and subtly toxic relationship, the darkness starts to creep in, looming and humming at the edges.

Ro went through a bad breakup with a guy in New York, and now she’s taken an assistant professor role at a small town university, and it’s there that she meets Ash, who lives in an isolated farmhouse that she inherited from her grandmother. This is Ro’s first experience of a lesbian relationship, and it’s exciting, but Ash is controlling and secretive. There are places Ro mustn’t go and rules she must follow.

The hows and whys of Ash’s behaviour are kept close to the chest until the eleventh hour, and all the while we watch on, unblinking, as this gothic drama of sapphic love and toxic tension unfolds. It is wonderfully refreshing to read a sapphic book with a toxic relationship that spirals into something truly terrifying at the end of it all.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

An abstract and beautifully lyrical sapphic love story unfolding through unique letters sent across time and space.

Two rival agents named Red and Blue come from opposite sides of warring factions of a time war and fall in love through the course of this novella. Their love grows through taunting letters that they leave for each other, and these letters appear anywhere and everywhere; from Shakespeare’s London to a far-flung alien war between warring mechs.

This is How You Lose the Time War is highly poetic and may not be for you if you prefer a structured plot and world-building, but this unstructured approach lends itself well to emphasising the fractured yearning and tenderness between these two agents.

The co-writing of This is How You Lose the Time War also means that the two agents have very distinct voices and personalities which makes their love all the more endearing. Beyond being a warming sapphic love story, this is also one of the best sci-fi novels of all time.

Buy a copy of How You Lose the Time War here!

The Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Winner of numerous awards, this beloved poignant lesbian novel is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1954, during the Red Scare, when openly exploring queerness isn’t an option.

Protagonist Lily secretly gathers photos of women with masculine qualities, is drawn toward ‘unfeminine; clothing and interests, and slowly recognises her lesbianism with her budding connection to Kathleen Miller, a white classmate. Last Night at the Telegraph Club seamlessly incorporates cultural touchstones and places with historic Chinese American significance alongside a beautiful and touching sapphic love story.

The inclusion of Mandarin and Cantonese language in the text with footnote translations was also a nice touch.

Buy a copy of Last Night at the Telegraph Club here!

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Translated from the Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre

In the great library of lesbian novels, never has there been such a glorious, unshackled celebration of queer love. The Adventures of China Iron is an Argentinian novel that laughs in the face of patriarchy and heteronormativity. It is a wild and wonderful ride from beginning to end.

The titular China Iron is still young, yet she has seen much tragedy. She was married to and then abandoned by a singer. She gave birth at age fourteen and gave her children up. Now, her story begins anew. At the novel’s outset, China meets Liz, a Scottish woman exploring the plains of Argentina. The two quickly fall deeply in love and head out on a wild journey together.

The Adventures of China Iron celebrates lesbian love, sex, and intimacy. It shrugs off the touch of men and shows the reader just how beautiful and alive queer love is. Few lesbian novels were written to be guiltlessly enjoyed this much. What a work of art.

Read our full written review of The Adventures of China Iron

Buy a copy of The Adventure of China Iron here!

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

Currently the only work featuring a lesbian relationship written by a woman to win a Pulitzer, this epistolary novel is a true classic that spans twenty years of protagonist Celie’s life.

It’s a beautifully written and important novel that can be difficult to read at times due to the subject matter, while explicitly a lesbian novel The Color Purple also tackles race, class, gender, sexual assault, domestic abuse, religion, and the South in the early 1900s.

Told through a series of letters to ‘God’ (and later her sister Nettie in Africa), Celie is fourteen at the beginning of the novel and is being physically and sexually abused by her father — she is desperately trying to protect her sister from a similar fate.

Later we are privy to the events of Celie’s abusive forced marriage to ‘Mister’ and also her developing relationship with Shug, Mister’s mistress, who shows her love and intimacy for the first time. It’s a very human book that will definitely stay with you.

Buy a copy of The Color Purple here!

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

One of the most popular Sarah Waters novels for good reason, the twists and turns in this book just don’t let up and just when you think you have a handle on what is going on, the rug is pulled from under your feet. If you have seen Park Chan’Wook’s Handmaiden film which is based on Fingersmith and think you will be prepared for the events of this novel don’t be fooled, the film deviates from the book in a big way at the end of part one.

This is an addictive read and at no point feels slow despite being a bigger novel. Protagonist Sue Trinder is raised by a group of scam artists in Victorian London and finds herself drafted into a plan to steal a fortune from an unmarried, rich young woman named Maud Lilly.

Things are never as straightforward as they seem, however. If you enjoy historical fiction or simply want a lesbian novel with endless backstabbing, revenge, and twists then Fingersmith is the one for you.

Buy a copy of Fingersmith here!

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson

Adapted liberally from Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (below) S.T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice is an exciting work of sapphic, vampiric dark academia. When the novel opens, its protagonist, Laura Sheridan, has moved to rural Massachusetts to attend the isolated Saint Perpetua’s College, and in her poetry class she meets the professor she will develop a deep obsession with—a woman named De Lafontaine—and the girl who will quickly become her rival.

This rival is Carmilla, De Lafontaine’s pet (in more ways than are initially implied). Aggravating Carmilla, Laura proves to be a formidable poet, and this is enough to snatch De Lafontaine’s attention from her. Competition for the professor’s affections grows more complicated with the revelation that De Lafontaine is a vampire, and soon the rivalry will flip on its head completely.

An Education in Malice is a sapphic enemies-to-lovers narrative in a teasingly oppressive dark academia setting. The kind of blood-soaked romance that you’ll find yourself unable to look away from.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

From the author of the highly successful Red, White & Royal Blue, we have another light-hearted and witty romance novel that successfully captures the fizzing energy of meeting someone for the first time and knowing that they are your person.

Unfortunately, when August meets Jane on the subway, it is not a straightforward romance since Jane is displaced in time from the 1970s and August has to help her. The interesting concept of One Last Stop offers a lot of insight into historic queer culture across the US during the 70s and keeps you hooked as you get more and more invested in a happy ending for these cute lovers.

Buy a copy of One Last Stop here!

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

Alexis Henderson’s second novel House of Hunger is a tumble into a frightening gothic fantasy world that gently shifts from grim and gory to sexy and sapphic as the pages turn.

Set in a fantasy world reminiscent of Victorian Britain, our protagonist Marion is a twenty-year-old maid living in the slums of a smog-filled city. Sick of her work as a maid to a cruel woman, and going home each night to a sick and cruel brother, she answers an advertisement for a new blood maid.

Blood maids are women who serve the powerful houses of the North, where counts and countesses believe that drinking the blood of others can help with their maladies. As she rises through the ranks of blood maids at the House of Hunger, the relationship between Marion and her countess blossoms into something far more intimate and romantic, though it remains frightening and unstable.

Buy a copy of House of Hunger here!

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

A lesbian book list wouldn’t be complete without another offering from Sarah Waters, just as beloved as Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet is another historical novel set in the late Victorian period.

The setting of this novel is delicious, treating us to an imagined lesbian cabaret underworld as we follow Nancy from the sleepy seaside town of Whistable to London as she pursues her lover Kitty. This book has a real sense of place, and it’s difficult not to be fully present in the world Sarah is creating even if you are not fully invested in the characters who can be unlikeable at times.

Buy a copy of Tipping the Velvet here!

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Published more than two decades before Stoker’s Dracula Le Fanu’s Carmilla was not only the first great vampire novel, it was also a daring work of sapphic gothic fiction. This short and tense novel opens with a genuinely unsettling chapter, establishing the bleak and empty world of its protagonist, Laura, before introducing us to her soon-to-be playmate and predator, the titular Carmilla.

Carmilla is left at Laura’s father’s castle by her mother, and while she is there she develops a deep bond with our protagonist. They play and explore, and soon Carmilla openly admits her love and affection for Laura. But there is something dark and monstrous lurking just beneath the surface.

Carmilla works both as a campy work of gothic fiction and as a truly chilling piece of 19th century horror fiction. And the sapphic mood created by the tension between Carmilla and Laura is nothing short of intense.

For that reason, succinct quotes about reading can inspire and comfort bookworms and appreciators of language and the written word.

For many, reading is not merely a pastime, but a passion that nourishes the soul and allows us to experience a life other than our own, if only for a short time.

From the hushed halls of ancient libraries to the cozy corners of modern bookshops, reading has always held a certain kind of magic, and writers have conveyed their love for writing many times; in many beautiful ways.

That expression from inspiring authors has given us some of the most beautiful quotes about reading you’re ever likely to read.

Inspiring Quotes About Reading

Attempting to encapsulate one’s love for reading and writing is a challenge, but here is a wonderful selection of quotes about reading from many cherished authors that will inspire and comfort you.

Here, you’ll find the most profound and inspiring quotes about reading from classic and contemporary authors, shedding light on the emotions and transformative experiences that books bring to our lives.

We love reading above all else, and so do these authors. Here are their most inspiring quotes about reading.

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

As you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle.” – Banana Yoshimoto

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” – Mortimer J. Adler

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” – Maya Angelou

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” – Stephen King

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway

Read More: Best Biographies Ever Written

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” – Mason Cooley

“When you become a writer, your heart and mind become divided between your many selves.” – Kazuo Ishiguro

“No two persons ever read the same book.” – Edmund Wilson

“A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” – Lemony Snicket

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.” – Terry Pratchett

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” – René Descartes

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami

“We read to know we’re not alone.” – William Nicholson

“There are many little ways to enlarge your world. Love of books is the best of all.” – Jacqueline Kennedy

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.” – Neil Gaiman

“Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.” – Ben Okri

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglas

Read More: Best Literary Fiction To Read Right Now

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” – William Styron

“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.” – Alan Bennett

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” – Joyce Carol Oates

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.” – Jeanette Winterson

“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.” – Mary Schmich

“The world was hers for the reading.” – Betty Smith

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” – Cassandra Clare

Video: Why Book Cover Art is Important

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles W. Eliot

“Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.” – Mark Haddon

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” – Oscar Wilde

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” – Jane Austen

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” – C.S. Lewis

“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis

“Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.” – Lloyd Alexander

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges

“Books break the shackles of time – proof that humans can work magic.” – Carl Sagan

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.” – P.G. Wodehouse

“Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.” – Jean Rhys

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.” – John Green

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” – Marcel Proust

“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.” – Astrid Lindgren

“Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.” – Jesse Lee Bennett

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” – Desiderius Erasmus

“Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.” – Arthur Helps

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” – Ezra Pound

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.” – Orhan Pamuk

If you enjoyed this list of bookish quotes, please consider sharing.

Many of these are works in translation, especially from Japan and Korea — countries with a great literary history, and a focus on the literary aspect of their fiction. Before we talk about the best literary fiction books for you to read, let’s define the term “literary fiction” for those new to the concept.

What is Literary Fiction?

Generally speaking, literary fiction is fiction with a focus on themes and form. Stories and novels that are about something very specific. Authors of literary novels use stories to explore a theme or idea that they are curious about, or that they wish to teach their readers about.

This often means that a literary novel will have one defining theme. Examples include: religion, love, growth, loss, family, tradition, power, change, prejudice. All of the themes listed here will be found in the literary fiction books below.

For this reason, literary novels are often political. They might be about feminism, racism, religious persecution, conservatism, class, money, or war.

The themes of literary novels are often embodied by their characters. Protagonists might exist to exemplify the themes which the author wishes to explore. For this reason, literary fiction books are often grounded in reality, set in the modern day, and lacking in fantastical elements. Relatability is often key.

This isn’t always the case, however, and one popular genre of fiction that often crosses into the literary is sci-fi, a genre whose books are so often about a specific theme or concept. Literary fiction is also often about form. Rather than being a simple past-tense, third-person narrative, the story might be epistolary or experimental in its form.

This might also mean a lack of punctuation, a nameless protagonist, an unspecified setting or time, a lack of chapter markers, run-on sentences. These choices of context and form are made with the express purpose of more clearly and eloquently presenting the themes and ideas of the novel.

Fantasy is a genre that rarely blends with the literary, because the purpose of fantasy is escapism, world-building, and sparking imagination. This is not to say that fantasy fiction is never literary, but it is rarer to find specifically literary fantasy books.

For this reason, adult fiction is sometimes divided into two broad camps: literary fiction and genre fiction. This isn’t always accurate or fair but dividing lines and labels have their uses. It might help to think about it this way: if you were to start writing a story, would you begin by imagining the world and the story, or would you focus on something you wish to teach the reader?

If your focus is on telling an exciting story in an exciting setting, you’ll probably come out with a thriller, a fantasy book, or a horror novel. If your focus is on encouraging the reader to think about a specific theme or topic, your novel would likely be considered literary.

Essential Literary Fiction Books

Here are some of the best literary fiction books ever written, from authors around the world who have used literature to explore vital political and social themes.

You’ll find great feminist texts, books exploring class and race dynamics, queer narratives, books about specific political themes, anti-war novels, and so much more. You’ll also find more intimate literary novels about family dynamics, personal growth, and self-discovery.

All of these literary fiction books have something to teach the reader, and all have been carefully and beautifully crafted by mastermind authors of literary fiction.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most prominent authors of literary fiction. What’s interesting about Ishiguro is that his novels lean into different genres in playful ways. He has written sci-fi, mystery, historical fiction, and fantasy, but all are primarily literary.

His novels are about people, first and foremost. About the fallibility of people; about regret; about loss; about change or the lack thereof. Ishiguro’s magnum opus, The Remains of the Day, is a literary novel that explores tradition, conservatism, and time’s effect on people.

The Remains of the Day begins with our protagonist and narrator, a butler named Stevens, setting out on a road trip. Stevens has worked at Darlington Hall for decades, and his new employer, a nouveau riche American, happily encourages him to take a well-deserved vacation.

Stevens plans to reunite with Darlington Hall’s former housekeeper, a woman for whom he clearly had deep feelings. Stevens, however, has always been married to his job. He is a rigid, unmovable, conservative traditionalist with a particular attitude towards life, work, and class.

He is a man stuck in the past, corrupted and dismantled by his politics, his attitude towards life, and his inability to move forward as time itself does. As such, Stevens is now, in his twilight years, learning of his own regret, seeing the wood for the trees, and wondering if it’s possible to face these facts. One of the great literary fiction books from the master of literary fiction himself, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Buy a copy of The Remains of the Day here!

1984 by George Orwell

Quite often, the best literary fiction books are the same books we studied in high school English, and there’s a reason for that. In high school, we study books that have particular themes to dig deep into, as a means of learning critical thinking and analysis skills. And this is why so many of us studied Goerge Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece 1984.

A warning against the willingness of corrupt politicians to hoard power and wealth, and to control the populace via misinformation and media language, 1984 is a perfect novel.

This is a novel that teaches readers to look for the warning signs of fascism as it rises. The world of 1984 is an England ruled by oligarchs who invade the privacy of all residents with cameras and microphones, and who change the news to suit their needs.

Our protagonist, Winston, seeks to resist the corrupting, brainwashing tactics of Big Brother and the UK government. One of the most powerful books of the 20th century and one of the finest literary fiction books you’ll ever read, 1984 is a staggering achievement from a visionary writer.

Buy a copy of 1984 here!

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

Elena Ferrante is one of the most beloved Italian authors of all time; a literary author whose works explore feminism, class, and family dynamics in fresh and deeply clever ways. The Lying Life of Adults follows Giovanna, a girl from a wealthy family that all live in a house which sits high up, overlooking the poorer, working class people below.

Her father came from rags to riches, and now works as a professor. His wife, Giovanna’s mother, is also a well-educated woman and they are all kind and compassionate on the surface. When her father, in an unthinkingly cruel act of sexism, compares his daughter’s looks to those of his awful, ugly sister, Giovanna is distraught.

To understand why her aunt is so hated, Giovanna visits her and gets to know her. From here, she is torn between the truths that her parents tell, and those her aunt tells. This is a novel about patriarchy and sexism, and about modern-day class divides and privilege. An incredible piece of literary fiction.

Buy a copy of The Lying Life of Adults here!

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Upon its release, The Vanishing Half saw an incredible amount of critical praise, all of which was wholly deserved. A novel of immense hype matched only by its scope of content and theme. The Vanishing Half tells two parallel stories of twin sisters who grow up to be very different women.

Born into a Black community in the deep south, twin sisters Stella and Desiree leave town at the age of sixteen. After spending a little time in New Orleans, one moves to DC and “becomes” Black, while the other ends up in the white suburbs of California and “becomes” white.

In a deeply literary way, The Vanishing Half examines what it means to perform Blackness and whiteness in a societal and cultural sense, beyond just skin colour. The Vanishing Half chronicles the choices and life events of these sisters, as well as those of their children as we move through the second half of the 20th Century.

It considers the relationships between place, race, and class, as well as how our relationships are defined by these seemingly immovable things. Spanning decades, this is a multi-generational novel that makes clear the visible yet ignored racial, political, and class divides of modern America. A masterpiece of Black American fiction and one of the best modern literary fiction books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of The Vanishing Half here!

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles

Yu Miri was born in Japan to Korean parents, and as such is a South Korean citizen and occasional recipient of racist bias and abuse in Japan. Despite this, she has had a phenomenally successful career in Japan as both a playwright and a writer of prose.

Although born in Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, she now lives in a small town in Fukushima, close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which suffered a meltdown following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which claimed thousands of lives.

Her novel Tokyo Ueno Station is a boldly raw and angry literary novel about class disparity and social injustice. Kazu, Tokyo Ueno Station‘s protagonist, was born in the same year as Japan’s emperor, and both men’s sons were born on the same day.

While the emperor was born into the height of privilege, Kazu was born in rural Fukushima, a place that would later be ravaged by destruction in 2011. While the emperor’s son would go on to lead a healthy life, Kazu’s son’s life would be cut short, and Kazu himself would live out his final days as one of the many homeless barely surviving in a village of tents in Tokyo’s Ueno Park.

A socialist novel about the unfairness of social standings and class divides. A novel that asks the reader to ponder just how fair it is that the time, place, and financial situation we happen to be randomly born into determines everything we will become.

Buy a copy of Tokyo Ueno Station here!

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Only a handful of authors lay claim to an entire genre, and Franz Kafka is one of those few. The Kafkaesque genre is defined by the specific themes and writing style that Kafka created. Sadly, he was entirely unknown in his day and died in misery and obscurity at a young age.

Kafka’s literary novels and short stories focus on the ways in which post-industrial European society undermines, confuses, and disempowers working men. His stories repeatedly examine the methods and tactics of law, bureaucracy, and social rules which render ordinary working class people frightened and impotent.

The finest example of this is his novel The Trial, which tells the story of a man named Josef K, who is one day very suddenly arrested. Josef has done nothing wrong, to his knowledge, and is not told what his crime is supposed to have been.

He is imprisoned, then freed, told to await instructions and further information, and failed over and over again by an absurd system. There is a bleak and dark humour to The Trial, as our man fails to ever understand what is happening to him, and nonsensical events continue to pile on top of one another.

Kafka is one of my own personal obsessions, and he has inspired so many great books and films over the past hundred years. The Trial remains a masterpiece that helped to forge an entire genre; one of the very best literary fiction books ever written.

Buy a copy of The Trial here!

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel has proven herself a modern master of blending genre fiction with lofty literary concepts. With The Glass Hotel, she created a compelling literary thriller. With Sea of Tranquility, she continued the tradition of blending the literary with incredible sci-fi storytelling.

But before those books, she provided readers with Station Eleven, a celebrated piece of literary fiction that turns the post-apocalypse on its head. Rather than this being another novel about human survival, and returning us to our base, animal selves, Station Eleven is a novel about holding onto human art and culture.

This is a pandemic novel about a group of travelling troubadours; a theatre troupe who roam North America bringing Shakespeare to those of us who are left.

Station Eleven celebrates the things worth holding onto: the art that humans created, and the culture which inspired, and was in turn inspired by that art. A beautiful and hopeful piece of literary fiction that encourages the reader to consider the importance of the art we create, and how it changes us.

Buy a copy of Station Eleven here!

The Wind that Lays Waste by Selva Almada

Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

Selva Almada is one of Argentina’s greatest living writers, and The Wind that Lays Waste is a powerful piece of literary fiction that viciously explores patriarchy, masculinity, and religion.

With The Wind That Lays Waste, Selva Almada has crafted a story with a setting and pace reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, and biting, cutting, rhythmic dialogue that keeps the momentum strong from page one to its almighty conclusion.

This novella takes place at the home and workshop of a mechanic — a quiet, withheld, level, and masculine man named Gringo Brauer — out in the rugged countryside of Argentina. When the nomadic evangelist Reverend Pearson breaks down, he seeks the help of Brauer to fix his car and offer them somewhere to stay for a day or so.

These two men each have a ward, and their wards are drawn by the words of the other man, while the two men — one a preacher and the other an atheist — butt heads time and again. Beyond simply being a book about religious narratives, it’s also a book about masculinity, as these two men move towards self-destruction due to their unshakeable bullheadedness.

Buy a copy of The Wind that Lays Waste here!

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

A generation-defining science fiction novel and one of the best pieces of American fiction to come out of the 20th century, Butler’s Kindred is a true literary masterpiece. Written by Black American author Octavia E. Butler, Kindred is considered by many to be her magnum opus, a piece of incredible literary science fiction.

Originally published in 1979 and set in 1976, Kindred follows a Black writer named Dana and her white husband Kevin as they find themselves inexplicably tethered through time to a plantation in the year 1815. When the novel begins, Dana and Kevin are unpacking after moving to a new house in California, when she finds herself teleported back 150 years to a plantation in Maryland and the sight of a drowning red-headed boy.

Dana saves the boy from drowning and immediately finds herself facing down the barrel of a white man’s gun, before being yanked back through time to her present in 1976. As it transpires, the drowning boy is Rufus, an ancestor of Dana’s who will father a child with one of his family’s slaves, and Dana is now caught in a loop: any time Rufus’ life is threatened, she is pulled back to save him.

Kindred is a literary sci-fi novel about cruelty and compassion, about the importance of education and empathy. A true masterpiece of the 20th century by one of the US’s most important literary voices, Kindred is a perfect blend of sci-fi concepts and literary political/social themes.

Buy a copy of Kindred here!

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo

Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 can be understood as the novelisation of the lived experiences of every ordinary Korean woman for the past forty-plus years.

Our protagonist is not one woman, but is rather a representation of the ordinary and expected experiences of your average woman in modern-day South Korea. The novel traces the life of a woman from early childhood to marriage and, eventually, motherhood.

Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 is a book that brings to light the everyday misogyny, sexism, ignorance, aggression, bias, and abuse (both active and passive) that women in South Korea (and, of course, the world over) suffer and do their best to survive in this modern world.

It is not a story with a view to entertaining us. It is a book that enlightens, and encourages anger in, its readers. A fantastic piece of feminist literary fiction. Kim Jiyoung is not a character to form a bond with. She is every abuse victim. She is every woman who has encountered sexism at home, at school, in the workplace, and on the street, and who perhaps never even realised it.

There is feminist rage stitched into every line of this incredible Korean book; a must-read that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best literary fiction books.

Buy a copy of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 here!

James by Percival Everett

James is a work of remarkable strength and spirit by one of the great American authors of today. The novel is a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave who accompanies Huck on his travels. James will likely stand as a timeless work of Black American fiction; a touching and poetic work of historical fiction that reminds us of the US’s rancid history.

Early in the novel, we see James teaching the younger slave children—including his own daughter—how to speak in a way that will keep them safe; not only the words and accents they should us, but also the tactics of their speech. It’s a moving scene that guides the tone of the rest of the novel, as James, while on the run, must use his wisdom and his savvy to outsmart the white men he meets, while also appearing dumb and useless.

James is a wholly different kind of adventure story that is not without its moments of humour, joy, and excitement—not to mention strangeness—but ultimately it is a tale of survival in a world of human ownership, dominance, and abuse. From the moment this novel was published, James became one of the great literary heroes of American fiction.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a curiously unknowable book; one which is very much up for interpretation with regards to its themes and morals. Many of the best literary novels offer no ambiguity at all, making their statements clear and their themes deep but also definitively opaque. Moshfegh is one of the other kind; an author whose works are more fluid and curious.

This novel tells the story of a young, wealthy woman who has graduated from Columbia. Her parents, having both died, left her an inheritance which provided her with a comfortable apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Having left a good job behind, and with plenty of money to sustain her, she has decided to put herself into a kind of forced hibernation; a drug-addled coma that will work as a year-long reset on her life.

She has a therapist who is, for all intents and purposes, mad. He prescribes her a hefty cocktail of medication: anti-depressants, tranquillisers, mood stabilisers, and more. With that in mind, this is a novel that cynically reveals the absurdity of the American pharmaceutical industry and its liberal approach to over-prescribing expensive medications.

This is also a feminist book that examines the traumas which women are subjected to at the hands of objectifying and abusive boyfriends, as well as by their parents in many different fashions. However, this is also a hedonistic and cathartic novel that says to us: there is no right or wrong way to live a life. You can do as you please; you are beholden to nobody unless you choose to be.

Regardless of her wealth and privilege, our protagonist is choosing to throw a year (and maybe more) away. That is her choice, her right, her freedom. This novel is a rebellion against society rules and expectations. A rich, attractive woman in the prime of her life is choosing to sleep through her “best years” and refuse the role that society has laid out for her.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a remarkable literary novel. One of the finest pieces of literary fiction we have.

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I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel

Sheena Patel’s debut novel is a dense piece of literary fiction that spans only 200 pages, and yet provides enough material and inspiration for entire essays to be written about it. The novel’s protagonist is a British woman of Indian descent who lives in London. She has a job and a boyfriend, but you learn next to nothing about them. Instead, her life is defined by two people with whom she is obsessed.

The first is a married man whom she is secretly sleeping with and wishes to be in a real relationship with. The other is an American social media influencer whom the married man is also sleeping with when he’s on business trips in her neck of the woods.

This influencer is a child of nepotism, and our protagonist has formed an intense, unhealthy parasocial relationship with her.

I’m A Fan serves as a diary of our protagonist’s thoughts and feelings about this woman, about the man she wants to be with, and about broader topics concerning capitalism, colonialism, nepotism, privilege, fame, feminism, immigration, and even more.

Her obsession with this woman leads to a critical obsession with influencer culture and how vapid and shallow it is; led by white people who pretend to be altruistic for attention. It’s a book full of unlikeable but undeniably relatable people who all represent different dark aspects of modern life.

I’m a Fan is cynical and incredibly eye-opening, peeling back the layers of the social aspects of modern life, both in person and online. An almost revelatory piece of critical literary fiction that must be read.

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Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Chain-Gang All-Stars is to prisoner justice what The Handmaid’s Tale (below) is to women’s autonomy. A literary novel that explores the racial injustice and capitalistic corruption of the American carceral system. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut novel is set in an America which has turned its prison system into a televised gladiator arena, and its prisoners into fighters who are encouraged to engage in blood sport.

While there is a broad cast of characters, our main protagonists are two Black women who are both teammates and lovers. They have been fighting for years and are close to earning their freedom. In this world there is high freedom and low freedom, with low freedom simply means dying in battle.

Chain-Gang All-Stars also features footnotes which relay facts and statistics about the American prison system, as well as about the police force. These footnotes reveal details about systemic racism, homophobia, and transphobia, and even reminds us of prisoners who died due to unjust circumstances involving the police or the prisons.

Chain-Gang All-Stars will stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside other great dystopian novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and the aforementioned The Handmaid’s Tale. An essential novel amongst the best literary fiction books.

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The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto

Translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda

Banana Yoshimoto is a cherished and revered Japanese author. Her literary books have been bestsellers across Japan and the rest of the world for decades, and they often tackle the themes of love and death in unique ways. Yoshimoto has told stories of love over and over, whether that love be romantic, familial, or something almost indescribable. And she does all of that here with The Premonition.

This is a short piece of literary fiction — a 110-page novella — that tells the story of Yayoi, a teenage girl who, as far as she is aware, has lived a comfortable life with her parents and brother in modern-day Tokyo. Yayoi also has a free-spirited and aloof young aunt named Yukino, who lives alone and works as a music teacher. Occasionally, Yayoi enjoys sneaking out of the house to visit her aunt and spend time with her.

During one visit, revelations hit Yayoi about her childhood, her family, and those pronounced holes in her memory. These reveals will twist her understanding of herself and her relationships in complicated ways. This is a wonderful piece of literary fiction about how unreliable our own memories can be, and how different kinds of love can manifest.

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Shy by Max Porter

Max Porter is a modern legend of literary fiction books; a leading example of how to writer literary fiction perfectly. He demonstrated this with his debut Grief is the Thing with Feathers. He continued that trend with poise and humour in Lanny, then with intense surrealism in The Death of Francis Bacon. But Shy might be his most complete, succinct, and perfect novel.

Shy tells the story of a teenage boy, the titular Shy, who begins the book by walking away from the “school for troubled boys” which he has been lodging at for a while now. As Shy wanders down the street in the dead of night, we are invited into his mind. We see his thoughts, memories, opinions, and internal conflicts all swirling around together.

This is a dreamscape of a novel that, like so many great literary books, plays with form and language and structure in order to express its themes and tone and emotions. We learn Shy’s backstory out of order as random memories surface and then vanish again. We learn what he thinks and feels, his justifications for certain behaviours and actions. We learn who he is from his perspective.

This is an exploration of how thoughts work, of how we see ourselves, of how our minds operate. It’s engaging, alluring, and thought-provoking, just like all the very best literary fiction books are.

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My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld

Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison

The author of The Discomfort of Evening returns with another striking, unsettling work of literary fiction told from the perspective of a rural vet who develops an immediate and all-encompassing obsession with a farmer’s daughter. The novel is told from the nameless vet’s perspective, and he speaks as though addressing the girl as he watches, admires and spends time with her.

My Heavenly Favourite is written as a feverishly intense stream of consciousness; every chapter is a single paragraph and often a single sentence. The lines between what he experiences and what he imagines blur and fade. But despite the intensity of his voice, she remains centre-stage: her unanchored imagination, her delusional view of the world, and her dysphoria are all given a voice. They dance with his obsession in a chilling yet hypnotic way.

This is a novel of exquisite prose; it is lit on fire from page one and that fire only spreads through the characters and events of the novel. And all of this is translated so magically by Michele Hutchison, who demonstrates a true talent for literary translation and expression. What a work of madness and jarring, discomfiting beauty.

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark’s phenomenal debut novel is a sweat-soaked literary fever dream about one talented young woman’s self-destructive tendencies, and just how far she is willing to go in order to fully ruin herself. Protagonist Irina is a twenty-eight-year-old Geordie who works at a pub half the time, and spends the rest of her waking hours picking up men to photograph in explicit ways for her ever-growing portfolio.

In her downtime, she watches bleak arthouse and horror movies and treats her few friends like crap. She isn’t like other girls, and she is on a path to burnout. Something from her past is troubling her; her mind and memories are fractured. But her fame is also growing; her art is getting her recognised and giving her opportunities. And there may even be a young man who cares for her. But does any of that matter?

Boy Parts is raw, wretched, and brilliant. A discomfiting, sometimes hilarious, often upsetting and unsettling literary novel but a powerful voice.

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason’s North Woods is a literary novel that traces the story of a New England home built in the earliest moments of colonialist settlement in what soon became known as the USA. We move through a collection of interconnected stories that gradually takes us through time until we reach the present day.

We begin by following a young couple in love; two Puritan runaways who make a home in this wooden cabin. Later, a settler woman escapes capture and flees to this cabin, where the woman of the runaway pair is now elderly. Soon after, we follow an English soldier who suddenly drops his rifle and instead builds an apple orchard on this land, and once he is gone we follow the lives of his twin daughters.

Gradually, we are watching the United States grow and change, all from the perspective of a single plot of land, the house that sits on it, and the many people who have called it home. These stories are presented partially as traditional prose, and other times as epistolary journals, letters, articles, and more.

North Woods is a staggering piece of historical literary fiction that traces the life of a nation, presented as the life of a home. An incredible feat of fiction writing.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History is, for many of us, the definitive dark academia novel. The Secret History is a twisted yet grounded tale that, on the surface, is about cults and murder but, beneath it all, is an exploration of class privilege, youthful arrogance, and ordinary evils.

A fantastic example of how to write compelling, enigmatic characters, a twisting-turning narrative, and a collection of important socio-political themes. The Secret History follows Richard Papen, newly enrolled at a college in Vermont. Richard is originally from a small California town, poor and uninteresting, but talented at Greek.

He quickly falls into a small class of hideously pompous and dysfunctional students who consider themselves to be their school’s elite. Slowly, this class reveals itself to be a mindless, murderous cult, projected forward by hedonism, carelessness, and arrogance.

The Secret History is a masterpiece, glued together by the internal social politics of its characters, their strained and toxic relationships, dangerous behaviours, and unpredictability.

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Much like Orwell’s 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel that exists as a warning against where certain political, religious, and economic roads might lead us. Dystopian fiction like this works simply and elegantly as literary fiction, with its themes presented through allegories that are clear and impactful.

Published in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale is a bleak look into a possible American future; a time in which women have been reduced to nothing but their anatomy and reproductive abilities. After fertility rates dropped to the point that they threatened human extinction, the US government decided to take the few men who were still fertile and give them power.

They then took fertile women and turned them into sex slaves living in the big houses now owned by the newly powerful fertile men and their faithful but infertile wives. Now known as Gilead, the US is a military dictatorship controlled by traditional Biblical ideals which strip women of all rights and privileges.

It’s a bleak literary novel, but, like 1984, remains one of the most important and influential works of the 20th century, a landmark work of feminist fiction, and one of the very best literary fiction books you’ll ever read.

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Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett & David Boyd

Breasts and Eggs is one of the best Japanese books of the 21st century, and an absolute masterpiece of feminist literary fiction. Breasts and Eggs follows the story of Nastsuko, an Osaka-born writer living in Tokyo who has spent her adult life trying to see her works get published.

The first half of this two-book novel focuses on a short visit by Natsuko’s more extroverted sister and that sister’s daughter. The daughter has fallen mute and her mother is in Tokyo for breast implants. We see the world from the perspectives of all three women, and they each have differing attitudes to womanhood and its place in society.

In the book’s second story, Natsuko has made it as an author but now dreams of being a mother, though she has no real wish for a partner to share her life with. Both stories explore how womanhood is defined and how women can find happiness, contentment, and strength in a patriarchal modern world.

This is very much a piece of hefty literary fiction about what womanhood is, what it can be, and what we are told it should be by patriarchy and tradition. Breasts and Eggs is a groundbreaking piece of feminist Japanese fiction, and a stellar work of literary fiction.

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To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the great American classics. Heralded the world over as a masterpiece, studied in schools, and a novel that stands the test of time. To Kill A Mockingbird, which has been adapted to the screen and the stage with enormous success, remains a true masterpiece of American literary fiction.

The story is told by a young girl, Jean Louise Finch, lovingly nicknamed “Scout” by her father, the iconic literary character Atticus Finch. Atticus is a widower, and raises Scout and her brother Jem alone, while working as a lawyer. While we follow the local neighbourhood antics of Scout and Jem, the main crux of the novel is Atticus being appointed as legal defender in a case of sexual assault.

A Black man named Tom has been accused of raping a young white woman, and Atticus, whose Black live-in cook has helped him raise his children, has accepted the role of Tom’s defense attourney. We see all of this play out from Scout’s young and naive perspective, and the novel explores American race relations in the South in many different ways: social, legal, and historical.

A great work of literary fiction about the relationship between the American legacy and the racism that is stitched into it.

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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi’s second novel is a short, tightly-woven literary novel that moves seamlessly from its protagonist’s childhood to her present-day life.

Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of Gifty, a girl born to Ghanian parents in the American south. She is their second child, and their first, Nana, was a sports prodigy — first in soccer, then basketball. Nana, however, succumbed to drug addiction and died of a heroin overdose.

Today, Gifty is a budding neurobiologist at Stanford University, studying the brain’s relationship to addiction; inspired by her brother’s life and death, as well as her mother’s relationship to God and the church. Transcendent Kingdom is an intimate family saga that explores the effects of migration, capitalism, and the promise of freedom in America.

It pits science and religion against one another. It examines the effects of addiction and depression on the mind and the family. It does so much so well; a perfect literary novel.

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A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro

Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle

A Little Luck is one of the most moving tearjerkers you’ll ever read. A beautiful piece of literary fiction from one of Argentina’s greatest living authors. Our protagonist, Mary, is originally from Buenos Aires, but has spent the past twenty years living in Boston, MA.

Mary’s American husband, Robert, has recently passed away, and now she must return to Argentina for a business trip. This will be her first time returning, and she is deeply afraid. We don’t know why she left but her fear of returning — the weight of her anxiety — tells us that she ran away from something and has continued to run for two decades since.

As we continue to read, we learn more about Mary, who she was, what her life in Argentina looked like, and, eventually, what she has been running from. A Little Luck is a powerful, poignant novel about motherhood, duty, and what we believe selflessness to be. There is grief, claustrophobia, and anxiety choking this novel, but there is also hope and beauty here, too.

A remarkable feat of literary fiction from a master storyteller and one of the best Argentinian novels of recent years.

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian tale that serves as a warning against the refusal and destruction of knowledge and stories. In a version of the USA where all books have been banned, we follow a fireman — someone who burns all remaining traces of literature — as he becomes disenchanted with his work.

After giving into temptation and taking a book from a home full of books which he has been ordered to burn, protagonist Guy Montag eventually switches allegiances and vows to preserve the written word and the knowledge it contains.

Inspired by the ways in which fascist regimes burn books, remove academics from positions of authority, and limit the spread of knowledge and information, Fahrenheit 451 carries a powerful and timeless message of warning. One of the most important American novels ever written, Ray Btadbury’s dystopian masterpiece stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other great dystopian literary fiction books.

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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was one of the great American writers, and his short masterpiece Of Mice and Men remains a flawless literary novel about the curse of the “American Dream”. Of Mice and Men follows two men — the sharp and savvy George, and the simple giant Lenny — who have been moving from farm to farm looking for work.

George wishes to free himself from the cycle of labour by saving enough money to eventually build a self-sustaining home and plot of land to call his own. However, this is the dream of countless men, and capitalism’s methods of entrapment guarantee that breaking from this cycle is almost impossible for most men.

But George is different; he has Lenny by his side to help him make more money and work harder than most men ever could. Of Mice and Men is an American tragedy; a savvy literary novel that keenly exposes the lies of the American Dream, and of the cycles of Western capitalism.

A true American masterpiece of literary fiction that works to expose the obvious lies and flaws within the modern capitalist system.

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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Keiko Furukura is thirty-six and has worked part-time in the same convenience store for eighteen years. She has seen eight managers — whom she refers to only by their numbers — and more co-workers than she could ever count. She is entirely content with her life, and has never asked for anything more; not a better job, more money, nor even a partner to share her life with.

She is a cog in the convenience store machine, as much a part of the furniture as the fluorescent bulbs and door jingles. As a result, this cog has never managed to fit the greater machine we call ‘modern life’. As Keiko is told in the novel, society is all about following a set path: part-time work leads to a career. Relationships lead to marriage and children and a mortgage.

But what happens if you’re content with what you have? No partner, no friends, no career path. Keiko is comfortable and happy, and that confuses everyone around her. Convenience Store Woman is a novel of rebellion, starring a character who isn’t trying to rebel at all; only to live her life in peace and simplicity.

A thought-provoking literary novel about the invisible rules of society that we all become trapped by, and what rebellion might look like. Sayaka Murata is a Japanese writer of revelatory fiction that frightens and challenges; a true visionary of literary fiction.

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Foster by Claire Keegan

Quietly beautiful and poignant; tragic yet hopeful. Foster is a small, perfectly-contained work of literary mastery from beloved Irish author Claire Keegan. This novella, set in the early 1980s, is told from the perspective of a young girl who has been taken by her father to stay with a married couple for the summer while her mother gives birth.

At first, our girl feels like an outsider and is nervous of what is expected of her. But over time, she learns to see home as something warmer, welcoming. A place of food and care and comfort. The couple — the Kinsellas — treat her with so much love and attention. They clothe her and take her into town; they take her to mass and they talk with her, laugh with her.

She comes to see this place and these people as home, but there is something unspoken that lies under the surface. Something she will eventually discover and have to understand. Foster is crafted with such care and composition, where every word carries weight and means something. Keegan is a sculptor of language and story, and that shines so clearly here in Foster. One of the great literary fiction books.

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Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These is a tiny miracle. A beautiful piece of literary fiction bound so tight, packed with many simple truths — some painful — that it is fit to burst. At its heart, this is a novel about the everyday acts of goodness performed by honest people versus the twisted, monstrous, ironically sinful behaviour of organised religion.

The sins of the church are only made worse by the collective silence of a complicit community who turn their noses up to beggars as they march themselves to Mass. It’s the run up to Christmas, 1985, and our protagonist is Bill Furlong, a simple man with a wife and five daughters. Bill spends these days delivering coal and wood to local homes and buying presents for his girls with his wife.

As this short novel progresses, we learn about Bill’s childhood; about how his mother had him young, how she claimed not to know who his father was, and how they were both saved by the kindly woman for whom Bill’s mother worked.

We spend a satisfying chunk of the novel in Bill’s childhood memories, while also learning about his work, his family, and his community. In these days leading up to Christmas, Bill begins to butt heads with the church. He finds the courage of kindness to stand up to their lies and their sins, in spite of the collective silence of his small community.

Small Things Like These is a powerful novel in a small package; a novel that shows how kindness is instinctive and infectious, and is not taught by the church.

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Penance by Eliza Clark

Penance is a remarkable subversion of the thriller; a meta-fiction presented as a piece of true crime nonfiction written by a man named Alec Z. Carelli. Carelli is a journalist-turned-crime writer, and after being embroiled in controversy, suffering the loss of his daughter to suicide, and his previous two books flopping, he decides to write about a tragic, infamous case of child murder.

That murder took place on the night of the 2016 Brexit referendum, in the fictional seaside town of Crow-on-Sea in North Yorkshire. Three teenage girls, who all attended the same high school, tortured their classmate — Joan Wilson — inside a beach chalet, before dousing her in petrol and setting her alight.

Penance is fiction presented as investigative journalism, written in a mostly epistolary style: a collection of interviews, accounts, transcripts, and blog and social media posts. The novel opens with a detailed account of the evening of the murder, before then spending the rest of its time telling the stories of the three murderers.

Penance is a remarkable piece of crime fiction. A book that brilliantly captures the myriad experiences of British teenagers, both at home and at school. It explores the effects that pop culture has on us, that the Internet has on us; the often dizzying divide between our online and offline worlds and experiences.

It also cynically investigates the concept of true crime writing and the effects that it has, both on narratives and broader culture and, more specifically, on the lives of those involved. Penance is a novel like no other; its epistolary style and savvy examination of the effects of true crime make it one of the most unique and impressive literary fiction books of recent years.

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Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Following the enormous success of her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield’s Private Rites is a more subtle and literary affair, yet one that is also far larger in scope. This is an apocalypse novel set in a Britain that has been flooded by rising sea levels and endless rainfall. Yet, unlike many apocalypse stories, this one depicts a slow, almost dull collapse, and there is something so chilling and bleak in that.

Capitalism remains; people still commute and work their day jobs, only they must do so with difficulty. Everything is too expensive now, and travel is almost impossible. Our protagonists are three sisters from a King Lear-inspired family. Their father—an architect who designed homes that can adapt to the changing climate—has died, and that death forces these near-estranged sisters back together.

Family drama meets apocalyptic tale, Private Rites is a deeply bleak tale that settles into your bones. Written with heft and poetic consideration, it is a novel that will surely be studied in the future.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Irish author Sally Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, became an overnight literary sensation upon its publication. Called a modern day Jane Austen by some readers and critics, Rooney is a writer exploring the ebb and flow of modern-day relationships within the context of capitalism and class.

Normal People follows two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, who develop a fraught kind of romance over the course of the novel. While at school, Connell is popular and admired, and Marianne is meek and unassuming, outside of school Connell is a working class lad and Marianne comes from privilege.

Both are well-read and intelligent, and end up attending university together, where they shift and change and struggle in different ways. Normal People is a literary romance novel about class divides, social struggles, and the rapid ways in which we grow, learn, and change as individuals and within our relationships.

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Second Place by Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk’s Second Place is a stunning literary exploration of one woman’s place in her own world, reminiscent of the style and tone of Virginia Woolf. Our protagonist, M, once fell in love with the paintings of a man known only as L. Years later, M lives with her husband Tony on a remote and marshy patch of English coastland.

Now that their daughter is at university in Germany, and they have a “second place” on their land where guests can stay, M and Tony invite this great painter to stay with them and paint the local landscape. M second-guesses her life, comes to see herself as something else. Or rather, she examines herself closely for the first time and doesn’t love what she sees.

For much of the novel, we come to know M through her opinions of others, through her examination of the world around her; but we learn almost nothing about M herself. Second Place has us considering what a person is made up of; how we define ourselves, fit into the world, find our place in it, take up space in it, especially as women.

Second Place is one of the more subtly feminist literary novels you’re likely to read, but it is all the more impactful and beautiful for that subtlety.

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Violets by Kyung-sook Shin

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Kyung-sook Shin is one of South Korea’s most beloved and revered authors, and Violets is a subtle work of feminist literary fiction. This novel is a story about female friendships in the modern day, and about the insidious, quiet, eerie, near-invisible ways in which men subtly abuse women on a daily basis.

Violets begins with its protagonist, San, as a young girl in 1970. San was born and raised in a small rural village and, growing up, was a lonely social outsider. In the book’s first chapter, San shares a moment of tender intimacy with her best friend. For San, this is an awakening. For her friend, it is frightening and wrong.

As an adult in Seoul, San takes a job as a florist. There she develops a sweet friendship with her coworker, who soon moves in with her. But San also learns about the power and violence of men. She comes to see how men violate the spaces and bodies of women on a daily basis, in a way that seems almost invisible. With their voices and motions and posture, men invade women’s worlds without a thought.

Violets is a smart feminist literary novel that has the power to reshape how we all see the social dynamics at play between men and women. The physical and verbal weapons softly used by men to scare, suppress, and intimidate the women in their lives. Violets is a piece of literary fiction that leaves a mark, but also provides readers with a tender and beautiful narrative.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was a genius of postmodern 20th century literature, and his experiences as a World War II veteran and survivor inspired his 1969 magnum opus, Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, who saw the same traumas of war that Vonnegut saw, but was also abducted by aliens and put in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war literary science fiction novel that utilises absurdism, time travel, and alien abduction to make its point. It is a deeply moral and philosophical literary novel, detailing the effects of war on the human psyche. It asks big questions related to purpose, life, and death.

There is nothing quite like Slaughterhouse-Five, one of the great anti-war novels and a true masterpiece of American literary fiction.

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Sinking Bell by Bojan Louis

Written by Diné Native American poet, writer, and teacher Bojan Louis, Sinking Bell is a short collection of eight literary stories which explore and expose the raw and difficult lives of Navajo people in the modern day. All of these stories are set in and around the town of Flagstaff, Arizona, and the tell the stories of labourers, addicts, artists, wanderers, and even ghosts.

One story centres around a relapsed addict who attends a writing workshop and becomes enamoured with a white woman whose prose is undeniably electric. Another follows a labourer who is, in Of Mice and Men fashion, looking for a way to break free of the capitalistic cycle that has ensnared him. One follows the tragic life of a boy whose parents separated, leaving him desperate for money and willing to do whatever he has to for it.

These are discomforting and honest tales about people struggling to keep themselves and their families together, moving in and out of poverty, and facing racism at every turn. They are powerful, unflinching stories of truth and reality that will affect you on the deepest level.

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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon is a perfect example of how literary themes and form can be used within the context of science fiction, blending the two splendidly. The novel for which Daniel Keyes is best remembered is a true masterpiece of science fiction, using the genre to explore themes of value, intelligence, and human rights.

Our protagonist, Charlie, is an “intellectually disabled” man in his thirties who works in a bakery. Charlie is soon made a test subject for intellectual development. The first test subject was the titular Algernon, a mouse who underwent experimental surgery with impressive results, and Charlie will be the first human test subject.

As the novel — written in an epistolary style as Charlie’s diary — progresses, we see his intelligence grow, and with it his observations, his relationships, and his vocabulary. Charlie’s development from a man of lower-than-average intelligence to one of genius status leads us to question the ways in which we treat one another based on our intelligence.

This is a sci-fi novel with valuable themes to consider, and the ways in which Keyes explores those themes also tug viciously at the reader’s heartstrings. A remarkable masterpiece of the genre, Flowers for Algernon is one of the best sci-fi novels ever written, and likewise one of the greatest literary fiction books of all time.

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What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma

Translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey

What I’d Rather Not Think About is a beautiful but harsh and difficult piece of literary fiction from an incredible Dutch author, told from the perspective of one half of a pair of twins. Our nameless narrator was born 45 minutes after her twin brother, and the two of them have been inseparable ever since. Growing up as best friends, they both moved to Amsterdam when they turned eighteen.

After her brother came out as gay, the twins remained close, sharing dinners with partners and living close to each other. They had dreams of moving to New York before they hit thirty, which never materialised, and when they were thirty-five, our narrator’s brother took his own life.

This Dutch literary novel, presented as a series of tiny vignettes, digs into a life shared, and considers how a life can be lived when it feels as though half of you has died. Told out of order, as a collection of thoughts and memories, and with a minimalistic form and style, this is a raw literary novel that confronts death without apology.

At turns warming, funny, and heartbreaking, What I’d Rather Not Think About takes us on a journey across the emotional spectrum as we are faced with death, loss, separation, and isolation.

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Bellies by Nicola Dinan

Bellies, the debut novel from London-based transgender author Nicola Dinan is at once a story of love and an inversion of love, presenting readers with a complex tale of evolving queer relationships in the modern day. When the novel begins, Ming and Tom are two boys at university together. Tom is newly out, and Ming has dreams of being a playwright.

They hook up and soon fall in love, spending the rest of their uni years growing ever closer. But when they start living together after graduation, Ming begins to change in ways that scare and confuse Tom. These changes build and create a harsh tension, until Ming at last comes out as a trans woman, and from here the love between them will be tested.

Told from both characters’ perspectives, Bellies is an intimate tale of growth, self-discovery, and understanding. Feelings of confusion, betrayal, and hurt must be unpacked and confronted. This is a novel led by emotion, as these characters grow into themselves, face themselves, and find the strength to better understand each other.

Tender and raw, Bellies speaks to the heart of modern queer culture and queer romances. A necessary piece of transgender literature by an amazing, fresh new trans author.

Much like Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Bellies demonstrates how contemporary culture and queerness have pushed literary fiction to grow, seamlessly blending affecting themes with an emotional tale of love, friendship, and self-discovery.

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No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene

Inspired by the author’s own life events, relationships, and his unique way of seeing the world around him, No Longer Human is a heartbreaking masterpiece of Japanese fiction. Our protagonist, a stand-in for Dazai himself, sees ordinary society as something impossible to navigate.

He paints horrifying pictures, eventually turns to drink, and becomes entirely self-destructive and abusive once he reaches adulthood.

This is a novel about a desperately sad person, ill equipped for even surviving daily life. He doesn’t understand people and people don’t understand him. He is selfish, gross, and unlikeable. But at his core, he is desperately sad and doomed to die.

No Longer Human is a meditation on life and death which begs the question: if we cannot fit in, are we doomed to die? A true literary fiction masterpiece.

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In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Ascension is a literary sci-fi masterpiece that has the potential to change the way you think and feel about the world around you, about what we are, where we came from, and where we might go. In the novel’s first part, Leigh, a Dutch biologist, joins an expedition to the north Atlantic ocean, to explore a deep sea vent that might house lifeforms we’ve never glimpsed before.

The life in this undersea vent, untouched for billions of years, has the potential to behave like a time capsule, taking us back to the earliest forms of life on this planet. What Leigh discovers in the vent takes her to the Mojave Desert, to a job working with a NASA-like space agency that is using a newly-discovered form of fuel to send people to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond.

The questions that In Ascension poses, and the incredible discoveries made, ask the reader to deeply consider that old cliche: we are all made of star stuff. In Ascension is a modern sci-fi novel that takes us from the most inaccessible parts of the deepest darkest ocean to the furthest point in our solar system.

And, as we explore these places old and new, big and small, we ask ourselves what we are, where we came from, where we will go, and how it is ultimately all the same. We are all star stuff.

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang’s Babel is a dense piece of historical fiction, an urban fantasy novel, and one of the best dark academia books you’ll ever read. A perfect example of how literary fiction and genre fiction can not only co-exist but also go hand-in-hand in both form and function.

Set in an alternative Oxford of 1836, Babel follows a boy named Robin who was born and raised in Guangdong, China.

When disease leaves Robin without a family, a rich and educated British man sweeps him away to London, educates and raises him, and sends him off to Oxford. There, he studies translation within the walls of Oxford’s tallest building, Babel.

Babel is the beating heart of not only Oxford University, but the entire British empire, the place where precious silver bars are infused with magic, created through the study and manipulation of language.

Robin’s life at Oxford is made more complicated by the illegal actions of a radical group who aim to disrupt and dismantle the British Empire’s silver industry from the inside. As he learns more about the Empire’s international crimes and evils, Robin becomes interested and works with Hermes as their inside man, helping them take small jabs at Babel and its silver-smithing industry.

Babel is an anti-imperialist novel about the ways in which the spread of one nation’s economic and cultural power has laid waste to the rest of the world. It is not subtle; it is undeniably angry, and that anger is justified and brilliantly well-expressed in this incredible piece of literary fiction that blends multiple genres together masterfully.

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Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd & Lucy North

Diary of a Void is a biting, sarcastic, witty, and dark literary novel about the ways in which society’s treatment of women depends on their situation and what gives them value.

Our protagonist, Shibata, is a twenty-something office worker who, by virtue of being the only woman in her office, is treated like a dog’s body who must fetch coffee for the men. Driven to breaking point, she one day lies and says she can’t do this anymore because she’s pregnant (which she isn’t).

Committed to this new lie, Shibata starts noticing her life improve. Men treat her with more kindness; she is given permission to gain weight and look after herself.

In reality, nobody wants her to look after herself, but rather the baby. This novel reminds us that society sees cis women as vessels for carrying the future, rather than part of the present. A bleak and angry, but sometimes funny feminist piece of literary fiction from Japan.

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This is a literary novel for the digital age; a novel about how people live and work and love now, in a world of entertainment and capitalism. Taking place through the boom of the video games industry in the 1990s, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows two friends-turned-colleagues, Sam and Sadie.

They first met in an LA hospital as kids, bonded over video games, fell out, and later reunited in Boston. One is at MIT, the other at Harvard. And the novel tracks their lives as they begin to design and develop video games together, first as budding indie creators, and later as successful owners of their own company.

This is a commercial and literary novel about the complexities of our relationships, and about the waves that life moves through. The murkiness of love, sex, work, and friendship, and how these different kinds of relationships evolve, break down, and build back up again.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a wonderful piece of contemporary literary fiction that reflects how our lives and our loves behave in the modern day.

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Magma by Thora Hjörleifsdóttir

Translated from the Icelandic by Meg Matich

Magma is the debut novel by Icelandic poet Thora Hjörleifsdóttir: a 200-page feminist literary novel written in small vignettes which record the life of a young woman named Lilja. Lilja has entered into a new relationship with a quietly toxic and emotionally manipulative man who remains unnamed, and who becomes something of a gothic monster as the book progresses.

Her partner represents not only the toxic and gaslighting men of the world, but all toxic friends and partners that we have suffered with throughout our lives, regardless of gender or sexuality. Each tiny chapter of Magma jumps forward a little, recording a new moment or stage in their relationship, as Lilja becomes unable to leave, feeling strangely attached to him and convinced that she is in love.

All the while, he controls her, gaslights her, and builds a shell of paranoia around her until she feels cocooned, trapped, lost, and dependent. It’s dark, difficult, and too familiar for many of us. Magma is a mesmerising work of feminist literary fiction that warns us all against the power and tactics used by toxic people to remove our autonomy and grind us down.

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Death Valley by Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder’s third novel is the most intimate, confessional and literary novel she has ever written. Death Valley tells the story of a protagonist who feels very much like an author surrogate. She is an author, forty-one years old, and struggling to handle the limbo state her father is currently in.

Sick and in hospital, he is close to death but we have no idea if and when he will die. Her mother is being a nuisance and she herself feels like a nuisance to her father. She also has a husband back home who has been struggling with a unique illness for almost a decade.

Using the excuse of needing to do research for her new novel — one which sounds suspiciously similar to the very thing we are reading — she heads out into the California desert to get away and clear her head. She hikes the trails and begins to experience feverish and surreal things.

The imagery and themes explored here are myriad, and very much up for interpretation, but this is a very personal novel that is clearly wrangling with the idea of a person having a role to play when it comes to the death of a loved one.

A departure from her previous works, Death Valley is a deeply raw story, through which Broder has exposed her insecurities, doubts, and self-hatred. An excellent work of literary fiction.

Buy a copy of Death Valley here!

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

It’s common for literary fiction to blend with genres like sci-fi and dystopia, but far less so when it comes to horror. Though there’s no reason for this, literary horror is a rarity. The Grip of It, however, shows why literary horror should be a far more popular thing. This is a modern-day haunted house story written with weight and beauty. Its language shifts between evocative and enigmatic.

We follow Julie and James, a married couple who decide to leave the city and buy their first house in the countryside. They are spurred to leave by James’ gambling addiction; looking to widen the gap between him and temptation. Once settled into their house at the end of a road and the edge of a forest, Julie and James begin to forget the name of the estate agent they worked with, and which one of them did the research and viewings for the property.

They also hear strange and conflicting stories about the house and its previous residents from new friends and colleagues in town. Soon enough, the house itself begins to haunt them. Rooms appear and disappear; noises start and stop without a source; gaps, holes, and pillars are discovered but have no purpose.

And then there’s their elderly and reclusive neighbour who watches everything they do and never leaves his home. The Grip of It shifts perspective back and forth between Julie and James, with both of their narratives written in the first person and present tense, creating an immediacy and inertia to the novel’s pacing.

And with the chapters averaging 3-4 pages each, the momentum of this literary horror novel is intense, making for a fantastic page-turner.

Buy a copy of The Grip of It here!

Mrs. S by K. Patrick

Set in an old-fashioned boarding school, Mrs. S tells the story of a nameless Australian who has moved to England for work. There, she meets the headmaster’s wife, the titular Mrs. S, and begins a journey of growing obsession. Our protagonist is unsure of herself. She wears a binder and enjoys being seen as masculine, but she doesn’t have the language to express how she feels or what she wants for herself.

She identifies as a lesbian and begins to see Mrs. S as more than an object of obsession — perhaps this beautiful, charming woman might be able to guide our protagonist to her true self, to unlock something in her. Mrs. S has a very specific and rare style of presentation: run-on sentences and paragraphs that don’t differentiate between narration and dialogue.

Experimental form and style like what we see in this novel is part-and-parcel of literary fiction, as is a lack of character names, but these elements don’t work for all readers. Characters are named for their jobs and no proper nouns are used. The all-female school’s student body is described as a faceless mass which K. Patrick simply refers to as The Girls.

This makes the characters and setting feel as though they are floating in a vacuum, outside of time and space. This is a nowhere place in which our protagonist is trapped, trying to understand herself and what she wants. Her obsession with Mrs. S grows. She is lustful, jealous, curious, and eager to know this woman better, despite not knowing herself at all. Mrs. S is an answer, a distraction, a muse, so many things to her.

There are few literary fiction books as captivating, intimate, claustrophobic, and sensual as Mrs. S; a true modern masterpiece of queer fiction.

Buy a copy of Mrs. S here!

Finger Bone by Hiroki Takahashi

Translated from the Japanese by Takami Nieda

Finger Bone is one of those rare novels that transcends its genre; a masterpiece of Japanese war fiction that encourages us to wrestle with that age-old question: where is the good in warfare? It’s 1942, and our nameless protagonist is a young, Japanese soldier in Papua New Guinea. As this short novel progresses, we watch him make and lose friends, connect with frightened locals, and shrug off injury and illness.

Taking place half in a field hospital and half in the thick of the jungle, Finger Bone is beautifully, harshly reminiscent of the poems of Wilfred Owen. A raw tale about the darkest, bleakest aspects of warfare. This is about innocent men suffering fatal wounds, struggling to overcome malaria, forging bonds, and watching those bonds get severed without warning.

At no point are politics discussed in real detail, and that’s what makes us ponder the grand purpose of war. All we see here are men suffering, and trying to keep their spirits high, as well as those of their friends and comrades. Few war novels have such a raw, powerful, painful effect on the reader as Finger Bone does, and it does so in such a short space of time. Read it in one sitting, and it’ll change you forever.

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The Delivery by Margarita García Robayo

Colombian-born, Argentina-based author Margarita García Robayo has written several celebrated novel, including the excellent Holiday Heart, and The Delivery is perhaps her finest achievement.

A deeply thoughtful, borderline surreal piece of literary fiction, The Delivery presents us with a nameless narrator-protagonist who was born in Caribbean, lives in Buenos Aires, and is hoping to relocated yet again to the Netherlands.

She regularly talks with her sister, who remained living at home with their mother and has very little of interest to discuss, but she does occasionally send our protagonist frequent care packages. When the novel begins, she has sent over an enormous crate, which our protagonist doesn’t even want to deal with. Before she has a chance to get rid of it, however, it opens itself up and inside is her mother.

From this strange and disarming moment, the novel takes on a subtly surreal sheen, as our protagonist goes on with her daily life as a freelance writer, and her mother lives there like a ghost, bringing up or reframing memories from the past.

The Delivery is a wonderful piece of literary fiction that calls into question the role of family, and that of memory. It asks us to wrangle with our own human needs for space, for distance, for a world of our own, and the things that we must separate ourselves from in order to achieve what we think we need or want.

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Many of the great novels that we call modern classic books today were written in the 20th century. And beyond that, into our 21st century, there have been many novels published that are already being considered modern classic books, and rightly so.

If you’re interested in the greatest classic books of old, from literature’s earliest beginnings in Greece and Japan to the classic novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries, you can find them right here. What you’ll find below are many of the best modern classic books, written between 1950 and today. And, since today is always moving forwards, expect this list to grow often. So, be sure to check back regularly!

While you’ll find many familiar and beloved classics from Europe and the US, you’ll also find many incredible works of 20th and 21st century Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fiction, as well as Latin American masterpieces. Here are the best modern classic books for you to read right now, from the second half of the 20th century to right now.

Note: This list has been divided into the best modern classic books of the 20th century’s second half, and the best modern classic books of the 21st century.

The Best Modern Classic Books (20th Century)

Published between 1950 and 1999, these modern classic books defined genres, created modernist writing styles, and popularised the concept of literary fiction. These are modern classic books that defined their time, reflected their politics, and have been inspiring readers and writers for decades.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Much like with 1984 (above), here’s little left to say about The Handmaid’s Tale that hasn’t already been said. Published in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale is a bleak look into the USA’s future; a time in which women have been reduced to nothing but their anatomy and reproductive abilities.

After fertility rates dropped to the point that they threatened human extinction, the US government decided to take the few men who were still fertile and give them power.

They then took fertile women and turned them into sex slaves living in the big houses now owned by the newly powerful fertile men and their faithful but infertile wives.

Now known as Gilead, the US is a military dictatorship controlled by traditional Biblical ideals which strip women of all rights and privileges.

It’s a bleak novel, but, like 1984, remains one of the most important and influential works of the 20th century, a landmark work of feminist fiction, and one of the very best modern classic books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale here!

Red Sorghum by Mo Yan

Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

Mo Yan is a fascinating writer with an incredible career. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature back in 2012, his pen name translates to ‘Don’t Speak’, which was inspired by a repeated warning from his parents about the dangers of speaking out.

Red Sorghum is not only Mo Yan’s most famous novel but also one of the most successful and beloved Chinese novels of the past hundred years.

Similar to Jung Chang’s historical biography Wild Swans, this Chinese novel spans three generations and begins during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s, the most famous incident of which was the Rape of Nanjing.

China saw so many political crimes and social tragedies throughout the 20th century, both from without and within, and Mo Yan found the strength to capture that in his works.

Mo Yan is one of the great Chinese writers of the 20th century, and Red Sorghum is one of the very best modern classic books to have come out of China.

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Kindred by Octavia Butler

A generation-defining science fiction novel and one of the best pieces of American fiction to come out of the 20th century, Butler’s Kindred is a true masterpiece.

Written by Black American author Octavia E. Butler, Kindred is considered by many to be her magnum opus, a piece of incredible literary science fiction.

Originally published in 1979 and set in 1976, Kindred follows a Black writer named Dana and her white husband Kevin as they find themselves inexplicably tethered through time to a plantation in the year 1815.

When the novel begins, Dana and Kevin are unpacking after moving to a new house in California, when she finds herself teleported back 150 years to a plantation in Maryland and the sight of a drowning red-headed boy.

Dana saves the boy from drowning and immediately finds herself facing down the barrel of a white man’s gun, before being yanked back through time to her present in 1976.

As it transpires, the drowning boy is Rufus, an ancestor of Dana’s who will father a child with one of his family’s slaves, and Dana is now caught in a loop: any time Rufus’ life is threatened, she is pulled back to save him.

Similarly, if she is put in harm’s way while in the past, she is sent back to 1976. On her third journey back to 1815, her husband is dragged back with her.

Being a Black woman married to a white man, Dana is assumed a slave, and Kevin her owner. Kindred is a sci-fi novel about cruelty and compassion, about the importance of education and empathy.

A true literary masterpiece of the 20th century by one of the US’s most important literary voices, Kindred is one of the most important and best modern classic books.

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Beloved by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of all time. Her novels set a standard for American fiction that is hard to match.

Beloved, one of her most celebrated books, was written in 1987 and set in 1873, after the end of the American Civil War.

Our protagonists are former slave Sethe and her teenage daughter Denver. Their home is haunted by a ghost which they believe to be that of Sethe’s own eldest daughter.

When a former slave from the same plantation on which Sethe once worked, a man named Paul D, turns up at their home, he drives the ghost away.

Paul D then invites the mother and daughter to a carnival, and when they return home, a young woman named Beloved is waiting for them on their front porch.

Beloved is a story of slavery, of its traumas and the ways in which it defines a person, their family, and their community. It is a classic of American fiction, a true masterpiece, and one of the very best modern classic books of the 20th century.

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The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy of fantasy novels is the most important and influential work in the fantasy genre. With these books, Tolkien took what he began with his children’s novel The Hobbit and turned it into an entire world — a world with its own deep history, lore, and languages.

In fact, in many ways these books are a showcase in building an entire, fully realised fictional landscape. The scope of Tolkien’s Middle Earth is unmatched in fiction even to this day.

This is also the series that took aspects of European folklore and mythologies and turned them into staples of the genre.

Races like elves and dwarves; settings like mines and mountains; multiple language systems; wizards; royal lineages; armies of light and darkness. All of this began with Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.

If you love what the fantasy genre has given you — if you love its themes and settings and tropes — these books are where it all began.

The Lord of the Rings is the greatest achievement of the fantasy genre, and of world-building and epic storytelling.

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Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin

Translated from the Chinese by Bonnie Huie

Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile is a few things: it is one of the quintessential Taiwanese novels of the twentieth century; it is also one of the most prominent and powerful lesbian novels of the past few decades.

Separated into a series of notebooks, Notes of a Crocodile tracks the university years of a queer Taiwanese student who goes by the name Lazi.

Lazi is tormented by her love for a woman in the year above; their relationship is tumultuous and aggressive. She also spends time in queer circles populated by other emotionally unhealthy young people.

This is a visceral tale of personal hatred and acceptance, of love and lust and danger. Reminiscent of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, this Taiwanese novel rips you apart unapologetically.

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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin was a 20th century author who did so much for the science fiction and fantasy genres.

She was an incredible writer of great moral integrity. She loved art, and felt strongly about giving voices to the voiceless.

There aren’t many authors as revered for their works in both the science fiction and fantasy genres, but Le Guin was truly special in this regard (and many others).

Ursula Le Guin’s sci-fi masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness is a vital piece of feminist science fiction literature.

The Left Hand of Darkness  follows protagonist Genly Ai, an envoy from Earth who travels to a strange world called Gethen. Ai hopes that Gethen will join the confederation of planets, which her home planet of Earth is a part of.

Our protagonist, however, quickly becomes shaken and surprised by the fact that Gethen’s population are “ambisexual”, which means they have no fixed gender.

This concept exemplifies the novel’s core theme of exploring ideas surrounding sex and gender, and how we allow them to affect modern society’s social and political laws.

Ai has arrived on a planet entirely unburdened by the societal segregation of gendered groups, a world of Le Guin’s own imagination.

The Left Hand of Darkness has touched many readers on a deep emotional level, as it asks questions about the impact of gendered society and how gender divides work to isolate us as groups and as individuals.

It’s also, quite simply, an exceptional piece of science fiction; a blend of Star Treke-sque space opera and speculative, philosophical sci-fi. Amongst science fiction novels, this is one of the true masterpieces of its century, and one of the best modern classic books of its time.

Buy a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness here!

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie was, and always will be, queen of the murder mystery novel. Her books are true classics of the genre, heralded as the best crime novels ever written.

One of Christie’s later works, Endless Night, is also one of her few standalone novels — that means no Poirot or Miss Marple to be seen.

Written in 1967, Endless Night is a gothic-inspired mystery thriller, and one of the best novels Christie ever wrote.

The book takes place in a small English village, in which a young chauffeur named Mike meets a wealthy American heiress named Ellie, and the two quickly fall in love.

They buy a house in this village, one which the locals insist is cursed, and employ a famous architect to restore and renovate it to their liking.

The house’s curse begins to show itself, as do strange and suspect supporting characters, including Ellie’s long-time companion Greta.

Endless Night is a claustrophobic gothic mystery novel, one of the Queen of Crime’s finest works, and one of the best modern classic books of the second half of the 20th century.

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Dune by Frank Herbert

There are sci-fi novels, and then there’s Dune. An enormous space opera full of intricate and political world-building, Dune is a thematically dense creature that explores enormous social and political concepts.

These concepts stretch from those of power and autonomy all the way to tackling the toxic tropes and habits of narratives and storytelling.

Dune is daunting in its size and scope, both in terms of the galactic world it presents us with, and also the themes it aims to explore and tackle.

Set in a far-distant future, the world of Dune harkens back to mediaeval Europe, in which noble houses control certain areas of space. Our protagonist, Paul Atreides, is the son of one such noble house, and that house has just been given stewardship of the planet Arrakis.

Arrakis is a desert planet rich in something called “spice”, a drug that is vital for so many aspects of life in this world. But Arrakis is also a dangerous and almost inhospitable place.

The novel takes us on a journey across the planet, as we learn about complex political games, subterfuge, manipulation, and Shakespearean backstabbing.

Few science fiction novels are as detailed, well-plotted, well-considered, and well-formed as Frank Herbert’s Dune. The pinnacle of 20th century epic sci-fi and one of the best modern classic books of the past several decades.

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We Have Always Live in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Like the UK’s Daphne du Maurier, the US’s Shirley Jackson was a pioneer of 20th century gothic literature.

Famously reclusive, Jackson wrote several beloved short stories and novels, the finest of which is her gothic masterpiece We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

An inversion of the tropes of the gothic in many clever ways, We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows the youngest sister of an isolated family at the edge of town.

Merricat lives with her sister and uncle; shunned by the townsfolk and hidden away in their big house, Merricat has set up superstitious tokens as wards around their property.

Her sister Constance never leaves the property, and their uncle Julian is confined to a wheelchair as he obsessively writes his memoirs.

The rest of the family died by arsenic poisoning, and now Merricat is the only one who ever leaves the house to go shopping, but she is not welcomed by the locals.

This is a masterpiece of tension and unease; a mesmerising gothic novel that drips with paranoia and upset. Few gothic novels hit as hard, yet as subtly, as We Have Always Lived in the Castle; one of the very best modern classic books.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was an unmistakable genius of postmodern 20th century literature.

Before becoming a writer, Vonnegut served in World War II, was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, and survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in the meat locker of a slaughterhouse. It was these experiences that inspired Vonnegut’s 1969 magnum opus, Slaughterhouse-Five.

The novel tells the story of American man Billy Pilgrim, who saw the same traumas of war that Vonnegut saw, but was also abducted by aliens and put in a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. Slaughterhouse-Five is an anti-war science fiction novel.

It is deeply moral and philosophical, detailing the effects of war on the human psyche. It asks big questions related to purpose, life, and death.

There is nothing quite like Slaughterhouse-Five, one of the great anti-war novels and a true masterpiece of 20th century fiction.

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To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

When asked to name an American classic, most readers would quickly turn to Harper Lee’s masterpiece To Kill A Mockingbird. And they’d be right to do so.

To Kill A Mockingbird, which has been adapted to the screen and the stage with enormous success, remains a true masterpiece of American fiction.

The story is told by a young girl, Jean Louise Finch, lovingly nicknamed Scout by her father, the iconic literary character Atticus Finch. Atticus is a widower, and raises Scout and her brother Jem alone, while working as a lawyer.

While we follow the local neighbourhood antics of Scout and Jem, the main crux of the novel is Atticus being appointed as legal defender in a case of sexual assault.

A Black man named Tom has been accused of raping a young white woman, and Atticus, whose Black live-in cook has helped him raise his children, has accepted the role of Tom’s defense attourney.

We see all of this play out from Scout’s young and naive perspective, and the novel explores American race relations in the South in many different ways: social, legal, and historical.

Few, if any, American novels have had the legacy of Harper Lee’s classic, making To Kill A Mockingbird one of the best modern classic books in history.

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Read More: Inspiring Quotes About Reading

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian tale that serves as a warning against the refusal and destruction of knowledge and stories.

In a version of the USA where all books have been banned, we follow a fireman — someone who burns all remaining traces of literature — as he becomes disenchanted with his work.

After giving into temptation and taking a book from a home full of books which he has been ordered to burn, protagonist Guy Montag eventually switches allegiances and vows to preserve the written word and the knowledge it contains.

Inspired by the ways in which fascist regimes burn books, remove academics from positions of authority, and limit the spread of knowledge and information, Fahrenheit 451 is a powerful warning.

One of the most important American novels of the 20th century, Ray Btadbury’s dystopian masterpiece stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other best modern classic books of its age.

Buy a copy of Fahrenheit 451 here!

The Bell by Iris Murdoch

Irish-British novelist Iris Murdoch wrote many compelling and beautiful books, the most celebrated of which is arguably The Sea, the Sea, which won her the Booker Prize.

However, the one which holds a special place in my heart is The Bell, a captivating novel about a small religious community in rural England.

Our protagonist is Dora, an unhappily married woman who has travelled with her husband to Imber Court, which sits beside a lake.

On the other side of the lake is Imber Abbey, a convent which is home to Benedictine nuns. There is a legend attached to the abbey which explains why the abbey’s bell tower has no bell.

The story goes that a 12th century nun broke her vows and fell in love, which cause the bell to escape its tower and sink to the bottom of the lake.

This is a beautiful novel about secrecy, purity, and belief that stands the test of time and remains one of Iris Murdoch’s finest works.

Buy a copy of The Bell here!

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Like many of the best modern classic books of the 20th century, A Clockwork Orange is often overshadowed by its (admittedly astonishing) film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick, starring Malcolm McDowell.

But Burgess’ original novel has a unique flavour all its own. A surreal black comedy set in a strange dystopian world that could be anywhere in Europe.

Legend goes that Burgess wrote this novel in just three weeks; whether that’s true or not, what we have is a remarkable work of satirical fiction.

A Clockwork Orange is set in a future dystopia where violent criminal gangs of youths have the run of the city, and they speak in a kind of slang dialect that Burgess himself created for the novel.

Our psychopathic protagonist and gang leader, Alex, narrates the story and gleefully tells us of his love for classical music, as well as for unjust and unjustifiable acts of violence.

A Clockwork Orange is a bleak novel; often called sadistic, but undeniably original, inventive, and beloved. A real modern classic of 20th century fiction.

Side note: I have a vivid memory of picking this book up in a school staff room while training as a teacher, and reading it during my free classes. A haunting by escapist experience.

Buy a copy of A Clockwork Orange here!

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear

Published in 1967, The Master and the Margarita is a Russian novel that was written gradually over years during Stalin’s regime as leader of the Soviet Union, and Bulgakov didn’t live to see it published. The Soviet Union was officially secular, and this novel set out to challenge the Union’s attitude towards religion with a visit from the Christian devil, embodied by a professor called Woland.

The Master and the Margarita is a darkly satirical novel that deeply criticises the Soviet Union from within, exposing the hypocrisy and greed of its leaders.

And this is only the first half, with the novel’s second part taking place in the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate and his trial of Jesus Christ. Dark, daring, satirical, and savvy, The Master and the Margarita stands entirely alone as a stunning and radical work of fiction, and one of the best modern classic books of its time.

Buy a copy of The Master and the Margarita here!

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Written by 20th century Scotland’s greatest author, Alasdair Gray, Poor Things is at once an homage to the gothic legacy of Victorian fiction and a pseudo-feminist satire of the genre. On its surface, Poor Things is a creature stitched together by Lolita, Flowers for Algernon, and, appropriately, Frankenstein. But there is much beneath the surface of this great Scottish novel.

Poor Things is framed as a true account written by a 19th-century doctor named Archie McCandless — a book lost to time, rediscovered, and then edited back together by Gray himself. It also features a letter by McCandless’ wife which refutes everything narrated to the reader in the story proper.

That story is about McCandless befriending a monstrous-looking surgeon at medical school, and being privy to the fact that this surgeon, Baxter, had recovered the dead body of a pregnant woman, replaced the woman’s brain with that of her unborn child, and revived her. When McCandless falls in love with Bella, a darkly comedic journey across Europe ensues. This is a wildly strange and funny gothic parody.

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The Shining by Stephen King

Stephen King will forever be known as the master of American horror, having penned some of the most revered and best-selling novels of the 20th and 21st centuries. Choosing a novel to represent his enormous library of works is impossible, but The Shining is certainly one of his finest, and most widely-read. And let’s not forget Kubrick’s iconic 1980 film adaptation.

The Shining begins with our protagonist, an unemployed recovering alcoholic, finding employment as a caretaker at the remote and imposing Overlook Hotel over the deserted winter period. The now iconic protagonist Jack Torrance drags his wife and son along for company, but they aren’t the only guests at the hotel. There are guests here who don’t want the family to ever leave.

A legendary horror story about isolation and psychosis, The Shining perfectly balances is creeping dread with an upsetting combination of psychology and pure, supernatural terror. Of all the fantastic horror novels of the 20th century, this one stands out as one of the smartest, most original, and most beloved by fans of the genre, and of King’s work. A true modern classic novel.

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Written when she was only 29 years old, Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History is, for many of us, the definitive dark academia novel. The Secret History is a twisted yet grounded tale that, on the surface, is about cults and murder but, beneath it all, is an exploration of class privilege, youthful arrogance, and ordinary evils.

The Secret History follows Richard Papen, newly enrolled at a college in Vermont. Richard is originally from a small California town, poor and uninteresting, but talented at Greek.

He quickly falls into a small class of hideously pompous and dysfunctional students who consider themselves to be their school’s elite. Slowly, this class reveals itself to be a mindless, murderous cult, projected forward by hedonism, carelessness, and arrogance.

The Secret History is a masterpiece, glued together by the internal social politics of its characters, their strained and toxic relationships, dangerous behaviours, and unpredictability.

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Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua

Translated from the Chinese by Andrew Jones

Yu Hua is one of the most prominent and daring Chinese authors of the past several decades. Crafting stories through a satirical, critical lens as he does, writing for Yu Hua is a dangerous and defiant act.

In his book China in Ten Words, Yu discusses how lax slander and libel laws in China mean his words can be co-opted and manipulated with terrifying ease.

Yu’s novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant tells a heart-wrenching tale of a man simply trying to survive during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a period of Chinese history where a famine led to the deaths of countless millions.

Our protagonist relies on selling his own blood to the local blood chief in order to find the money to support his family.

This becomes increasingly dangerous and is further complicated by the shame that comes from learning that one of his children is not actually his own blood.

This is a moving and desperate Chinese novel that captures a life and a moment in time where simply living a life was at its most difficult.

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The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, a dear friend of beloved fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien (above), was a born-again Christian who penned some of the most cherished children’s books of all time. This series, The Chronicles of Narnia, began with its most famous book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

(Although, if readers were to pick up a new collection of the series now, they’d find the sixth book, The Magician’s Nephew, placed first in the series. This is because, chronologically, it is the first in the story, serving as a prequel to the other six books).

The story follows four children who are evacuated during World War II and relocated to a large country house.

There, via a portal in a wardrobe, the children visit the magical land of Narnia, and embark on a series of fantastical journeys.

Widely known to be a biblical allegory, with the titular lion Aslan being a stand-in for Jesus, The Chronicles of Narnia has been a classic series of children’s books for decades.

Buy a copy of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe here!

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The novel for which Daniel Keyes is best remembered is a true masterpiece of science fiction, using the genre to explore themes of value, intelligence, and human rights.

Our protagonist, Charlie, is an “intellectually disabled” man in his thirties who works in a bakery. Charlie is soon made a test subject for intellectual development.

The first test subject was the titular Algernon, a mouse who underwent experimental surgery with impressive results, and Charlie will be the first human test subject.

As the novel, written as a diary from Charlie’s perspective, progresses, we see his intelligence grow, and with it his observations, his relationships, and even his grammar.

Charlie’s development from a man of lower-than-average intelligence to one of genius status leads us to question the ways in which we treat one another based on our intelligence.

This is a sci-fi novel with valuable themes to consider, and the ways in which Keyes explores those themes also tug viciously at the reader’s heartstrings.

A remarkable masterpiece of the genre, Flowers for Algernon is one of the best sci-fi novels ever written, and as such one of the best modern classic books of its time.

Buy a copy of Flowers for Algernon here!

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Currently the only work featuring a lesbian relationship written by a woman to win a Pulitzer, this epistolary novel is a true classic that spans twenty years of protagonist Celie’s life. 

It’s a beautifully written and important novel that can be difficult to read at times due to its bleak subject matter.

While explicitly a lesbian novel The Color Purple also tackles race, class, gender, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and religion.

Told through a series of letters to ‘God’ (and later her sister Nettie in Africa), Celie is fourteen at the beginning of the novel and is being abused by her father. She is desperately trying to protect her sister from the same fate. 

Later we are privy to the events of Celie’s abusive forced marriage to ‘Mister’ and also her developing relationship with Shug, Mister’s mistress, who shows her love and intimacy for the first time.

The Color Purple is an American masterpiece, an incredible piece of queer Black fiction, and one of the very best modern classic books.

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Lord of the Flies by William Golding

It’s good to be critical of Lord of the Flies — a novel so often lauded for its depiction of a world without societal structures.

This is because we often forget that Golding’s novel is fiction, and when a real-life Lord of the Flies event actually occurred, it didn’t resemble the book at all.

That event was discussed in the phenomenal history book Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and it highlights dark and depressing cynicism of Golding’s novel.

All of that aside, however, Lord of the Flies does remain a fantastic work of fiction in its own right. As a former teacher, I always thoroughly enjoyed teaching the novel. Teenagers are often so rapt by it.

Lord of the Flies is set during World War II, when a group of English schoolboys are stranded on a deserted island after their plane goes down.

The boys quickly descend into tribalist behaviour, begin to believe in and worship a beast that lives on a hill, and eventually turn to violence against one another.

It’s an excellent novel, and certainly one of the best modern classic books of its era; but it’s also important to remember that Golding was overly cynical when it comes to human behaviour, and it is just a novel.

Buy a copy of Lord of the Flies here!

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The only novel by celebrated American poet Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar is a modern classic of feminist fiction.

The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical novel inspired by Plath’s own life and her descent into the throes of mental illness.

The novel follows the life of college graduate Esther who lands an internship at a women’s magazine in New York City. Disenchanted and hollowed out, Esther feels little joy and only increasing disorientation and suffocation.

The Bell Jar a novel that explores the role of a woman in 20th century society, and the titular bell jar is a symbol of suffocation, both from a feminist angle and one of mental illness.

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Published in 1961, Catch-22 is a satirical anti-war novel set between the years of 1942 and 1944. Our protagonist is John Yossarian, an American captain of the 256th US Army Air Squadron.

Moving freely and out of chronological order, Catch-22 mostly follows the events of Yossarian’s life during World War 2, primarily set on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa.

Inarguably one of the great American novels of the 20th century, Catch-22 has had an impact that is hard to measure.

Satirising the absurdity of warfare and the lives of military soldiers on the battlefield, Catch-22 is the quintessential American war novel and one of the best modern classic books of its time.

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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Revered American author wrote many bestselling books, and his own life has almost become mythology at this point.

But the most famous and frequently discussed Hemingway story will always be The Old Man and the Sea, a short and quiet novella published in 1952.

This classic American novella tells the story of an old and unlucky fisherman named Santiago, and opens with his former trainee helping him get ready for yet another fishing trip out at sea.

Much of the story depicts the old man’s persistent physical struggle with reeling in a large fish he has hooked; a struggle that lasts through the night.

The Old Man and the Sea was heralded and celebrated by critics of the time as Hemingway’s masterpiece; his finest work.

Since then, the story has continued to have a lasting legacy, and now stands as one of the best modern classic books of the American canon.

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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita has always been a fascinating novel; a work of aesthetic and literary beauty, written in some of the most stunning and vivid prose you’re ever likely to read.

However, the novel has repeatedly been marred by venomous criticism for its depictions of a dark, taboo, and arguably evil subject matter.

That clash of beauty and disgust is remarkable in its own right, and the discussions that Lolita encourages amongst its readers and critics are also lively and worthwhile.

The novel presents us with a famous example of the unreliable narrator: a professor who becomes obsessed with an underage girl whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses, calling her Lolita.

Few novels have ever been written in such illustrious and breathtaking prose, and have dared to explore such subject matter so brazenly and with such complexity.

Lolita is like no other novel that exists, and remains one of the most daringly unique and best modern classic books of all time.

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A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A curious classic of modern American literature, A Confederacy of Dunces is a fantastic dark comedy that is a favourite of many readers.

Our protagonist is a loser who would describe himself as anything but. He considers himself a scholar and the smartest person in the room.

Ignatius J. Reilly is thirty and lives with his mother. Over the course of the novel, we see him get into various dreadful social and professional situations that are exacerbated by his inflated ego.

There is a perpetual air of sadness surrounding this novel, however. Its author never lived to see its publication.

After several failed attempts to see his work published, Toole ended his own life, only to be posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize a decade after his death.

Decades after the novel’s publication, A Confederacy of Dunces stands tall amongst many of the best modern classic books to come out of the United States in the 20th century.

Buy a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces here!

The Best Modern Classic Books (21st Century)

The 21st century has already seen some of the best novels of all time, which is a truly incredible statement to make. We are living in a golden age of fiction writing, and it’s glorious.

Of course, we have to be careful when labelling a book a “modern classic”, because we may well be wrong. The book might not stand the test of time. Because of this, the modern classic books you’ll find here have all been critically acclaimed, won awards, been adapted to film, and are already beloved by countless readers. Enjoy!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Never Let Me Go is Ishiguro’s masterpiece. His magnum opus. And Ishiguro himself also happens to by my favourite author.

Never Let Me Go is a science fiction novel set in the modern day. It’s a novel with a central mystery that, if you’ve never had it revealed to you, should absolutely not be spoiled.

Our narrator is Kathy, a woman who works as a carer. Who or what she cares for isn’t clear. Kathy spends much of the novel reminiscing about her childhood at a secretive English boarding school called Halisham.

We become familiar with her old friends and quietly unnerved by the elephant in the room, even though we don’t know the name of the elephant or why it’s there. As the story unfolds and secrets are revealed, tragedy sets in.

Never Let Me Go is a truly astonishing work of literary magic. One of the great works of literary fiction and science fiction. One of the best modern classics of our time.

Buy a copy of Never Let Me Go here!

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall manages to be many things. For many readers, it is the defining book of the historical fiction genre. For others, it’s not only one of the best modern classic books, but one of the best books ever published.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and its direct sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, both won the Booker Prize, while the final book of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize.

The Guardian newspaper called Wolf Hall the best novel of the 21st Century (so far), and we certainly agree that it deserves to be high on that list.

Wolf Hall is, undeniably, a masterpiece of historical fiction, and general fiction. It’s dense and its language can be challenging, but it is beautiful, clever, and enthralling.

Telling the fictionalised biography of the legendary English politician Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall throws readers into the fraught and frightening world of Henry VIII’s court.

We watch Cromwell rise from being the abused son of a blacksmith to the man at Henry VIII’s ear; the man with the real power in England.

Mantel paints Cromwell as a more sympathetic character than history has done, and uses that altered perspective to tell one of the most engaging historical novels ever penned.

Few novels have made as much of an impact on their respective genres as Wolf Hall has; unquestionably one of the best modern classic books.

Buy a copy of Wolf Hall here!

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

Elena Ferrante is one of the most beloved Italian authors of all time; a literary author whose works explore feminism, class, and family dynamics in fresh and deeply clever ways.

The Lying Life of Adults follows Giovanna, a girl from a wealthy family that all live in a house which sits high up, overlooking the poorer, working class people below.

Her father came from rags to riches, and now works as a professor. His wife, Giovanna’s mother, is also a well-educated woman and they are all kind and compassionate on the surface.

When her father, in an unthinkingly cruel act of sexism, compares his daughter’s looks to those of his awful, ugly sister, Giovanna is distraught.

To understand why her aunt is so hated, Giovanna visits her and gets to know her. From here, she is torn between the truths that her parents tell, and those her aunt tells.

This is a novel about patriarchy and sexism, and about modern-day class divides and privilege. An incredible piece of fiction that stands tall as one of the best modern classic books.

Buy a copy of The Lying Life of Adults here!

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel has proven herself a modern master of blending genre fiction with lofty literary concepts, and for this she has written many of the best modern classic books we have.

With The Glass Hotel, she created a compelling literary thriller. With Sea of Tranquility, she continued the tradition of blending the literary with incredible sci-fi storytelling.

But before those books, she gave us Station Eleven, a celebrated piece of literary fiction that turns the post-apocalypse on its head.

Rather than this being another novel about human survival, and returning us to our base, animal selves, Station Eleven is a novel about holding onto human art and culture.

This is a pandemic novel about a group of travelling troubadours; a theatre troupe who roam North America bringing Shakespeare to those of us who are left.

Station Eleven celebrates the things worth holding onto: the art that humans created, and the culture which inspired, and was in turn inspired by that art.

A beautiful and hopeful piece of fiction that encourages the reader to consider the importance of the art we create, and how it changes us, and one of the best modern classic books on the shelves.

Buy a copy of Station Eleven here!

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Irish author Sally Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, became an overnight literary sensation upon its publication, and it remains beloved by countless readers. This novel turned her into a star of the publishing world.

Called a modern day Jane Austen by many readers, Rooney is a writer exploring the ebb and flow of modern-day relationships within the context of capitalism and outmoded class systems.

Normal People follows two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, who develop a fraught kind of romance over the course of the novel.

While at school, Connell is popular and admired, and Marianne is meek and unassuming, outside of school Connell is a working class lad and Marianne comes from privilege. Both are well-read and intelligent, and end up attending university together, where they shift and change and struggle in different ways.

Normal People is a literary romance novel about class divides, social struggles, and the rapid ways in which we grow, learn, and change as individuals and within our relationships.

Easily one of the most beloved and cherished novels of the 21st century so far, Normal People is unquestionably one of the best modern classic books we have.

Buy a copy of Normal People here!

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett & David Boyd

Breasts and Eggs is one of the best Japanese books of the 21st century, and an absolute masterpiece of feminist literary fiction.

Breasts and Eggs follows the story of Nastsuko, an Osaka-born writer living in Tokyo who has spent her adult life trying to see her works get published.

The first half of this two-book novel focuses on a short visit by Natsuko’s more extroverted sister and that sister’s daughter. The daughter has fallen mute and her mother is in Tokyo for breast implants. We see the world from the perspectives of all three women, and they each have differing attitudes to womanhood and its place in society.

In the book’s second story, Natsuko has made it as an author but now dreams of being a mother, though she has no real wish for a partner to share her life with.

Both stories explore how womanhood is defined and how women can find happiness, contentment, and strength in a patriarchal modern world.

This is very much a piece of hefty literary fiction about what womanhood is, what it can be, and what we are told it should be by patriarchy and tradition.

Breasts and Eggs is a groundbreaking piece of feminist Japanese fiction, and one of the very best modern classic books. A must-read for readers the world over.

Buy a copy of Breasts and Eggs here!

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo

Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 can be understood as the novelisation of the lived experiences of every ordinary Korean woman for the past forty-plus years.

Our protagonist is not one woman, but is rather a representation of the ordinary and expected experiences of your average woman in modern-day South Korea. The novel traces the life of a woman from early childhood to marriage and, eventually, motherhood.

Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 is a book that brings to light the everyday misogyny, sexism, ignorance, aggression, bias, and abuse (both active and passive) that women in South Korea (and, of course, the world over) suffer and do their best to survive in this modern world.

It is not a story with a view to entertaining us. It is a book that enlightens, and encourages anger in, its readers. A fantastic piece of feminist literary fiction.

Kim Jiyoung is not a character to form a bond with. She is every abuse victim. She is every woman who has encountered sexism at home, at school, in the workplace, and on the street, and who perhaps never even realised it.

There is feminist rage stitched into every line of this incredible Korean book; a must-read that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best modern classic books of the past several decades.

Buy a copy of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 here!

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Upon its release, The Vanishing Half saw an incredible amount of critical praise, all of which was wholly deserved, and immediately cemented it as a true modern classic of American literature.

A novel of immense hype matched only by its scope of content and theme. The Vanishing Half tells two parallel stories of twin sisters who grow up to be very different women. Born into a Black community in the deep south, twin sisters Stella and Desiree leave town at the age of sixteen.

After spending a little time in New Orleans, one moves to DC and “becomes” Black, while the other ends up in the white suburbs of California and “becomes” white.

In a deeply literary way, The Vanishing Half examines what it means to perform Blackness and whiteness in a societal and cultural sense, beyond just skin colour.

The Vanishing Half chronicles the choices and life events of these sisters, as well as those of their children as we move through the second half of the 20th Century.

It considers the relationships between place, race, and class, as well as how our relationships are defined by these seemingly immovable things. Spanning decades, this is a multi-generational novel that makes clear the visible yet ignored racial, political, and class divides of modern America.

A masterpiece of Black American fiction and one of the best modern classic books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of The Vanishing Half here!

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles

Yu Miri was born in Japan to Korean parents, and as such is a South Korean citizen and occasional recipient of racist bias and abuse in Japan. Despite this, she has had a phenomenally successful career in Japan as both a playwright and a writer of prose.

Although born in Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, she now lives in a small town in Fukushima, close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which suffered a meltdown following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which claimed thousands of lives.

Her novel Tokyo Ueno Station is a boldly raw and angry literary novel about class disparity and social injustice. Kazu, Tokyo Ueno Station‘s protagonist, was born in the same year as Japan’s emperor, and both men’s sons were born on the same day.

While the emperor was born into the height of privilege, Kazu was born in rural Fukushima, a place that would later be ravaged by destruction in 2011.

While the emperor’s son would go on to lead a healthy life, Kazu’s son’s life would be cut short, and Kazu himself would live out his final days as one of the many homeless barely surviving in a village of tents in Tokyo’s Ueno Park.

A socialist novel about the unfairness of social standings and class divides, and one of the most outstanding modern classic books to read right now.

A novel that asks the reader to ponder just how fair it is that the time, place, and financial situation we happen to be randomly born into determines everything we will become.

Buy a copy of Tokyo Ueno Station here!

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 

Carnegie Medal and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All The Light We Cannot See has become one of the giants of American literature in the 21st Century, making it one of the best modern classic books we have.

Set against the backdrop of war-ravaged France, All The Light We Cannot See tells the story of Marie-Laure, a blind French woman and the path that leads her to the orphaned Werner, a member of the Hitler Youth.

The glue that holds this WW2 novel together is its lovable cast of characters, including Marie-Laure’s father, a miniaturist and keeper-of-keys at the Museum of Natural History.

The relationship between him and his daughter is a deeply moving one, as is the story of young Werner, who witnesses the effects of Nazism from the inside, and from a young age.

All The Light We Cannot See is, inarguably, one of the most powerful, moving, and satisfying American novels of this century so far, and one of the best books on World War 2, without question.

Buy a copy of All The Light We Cannot See here!

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a sincerely beloved novel; an epic family saga that takes the reader on a soulful journey through early 20th century Korea and Japan, and which has quickly become a true modern classic of literature.

Four generations of a Korean family take us through their lives in the midst of the tragic and tumultuous annexation of Korea by the Japanese Empire.

Today in post-empire Japan, many zainichi Koreans continue to live, descended from those Koreans who were forced to move to Japan in the years leading up to World War II.

This fact gives Pachinko a sense of weight; its characters and events, what they went through, the tragedies they experienced, it all continues to reverberate into the modern day.

We begin with Sunja, a young and poor Korean who is pulled mercilessly in different directions by the actions and choices of men.

As we read, we travel from rural, coastal Korea to both the highest and lowest parts of Japanese society. Pachinko is an incredible family saga and one of the best modern classic books of our time.

Buy a copy of Pachinko here!

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s masterpiece The Underground Railroad won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

This is an amazing piece of American historical fiction that reimagines the titular Underground Railroad as an actual underground network of train lines.

We follow Cora, a slave in the 19th century American South, who escapes her Georgia plantation with the help of fellow slave Caesar.

The pair hunt for the Underground Railroad and encounter both friends and enemies along the way. They commit desperate deeds to ensure their survival.

This is an incredible work of American fiction that has since cemented Colson Whitehead as one of the great American writers of the 21st century, and this one of the best modern classic books, period.

Buy a copy of The Underground Railroad here!

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters has made a name for herself as an author of queer historical romance novels, mostly set in or near the 19th Century. And the beefy Fingersmith is, by far, her most popular and finest work.

Serving as the inspiration for Korean film director Park Chan-wook’s masterpiece The Handmaiden, Fingersmith is a work of absolute beauty. One of the most iconic historical novels in existence.

The titular fingersmith is a London thief named Sue; an orphan and a survivor raised to steal from the rich. When her enigmatic associate, known to everyone as Gentleman, comes to her with a job, she gladly accepts.

The job takes Sue to a country estate, wherein she must play the role of maid to a naive young heiress while Gentleman slowly begins to court her for a fortune that he will eventually split with Sue.

Unfortunately, Sue begins to fall in love with the rich heiress, and what follows is an incredible series of impossible-to-predict twists and turns.

Fingersmith is one of the most gorgeously-written historical novels ever published. Poetic prose dances on the page. And it is a celebration of raw, queer love, to boot. A masterpiece amongst modern classic novels.

Buy a copy of Fingersmith here!

The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada

Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

Argentinian author Selva Almada has written several great works of feminist literature, and The Wind That Lays Waste is her finest achievement.

Set in the rugged wilds of the Argentinian countryside, this novella presents us with a travelling preacher and his daughter, whose car breaks down and is fixed by a lonely roadside mechanic and his apprentice.

While the car is being fixed, the preacher and his daughter stay with the mechanic, and the two men begin to discuss religion, with the mechanic being an immovable atheist and the preacher being, well, a preacher.

In a style and setup reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, the isolated story escalated gradually, with the younger characters each intrigued by the other’s perspective and way of living.

This is the story of bullheaded men coming to blows over their beliefs, as the rest of us watch on and the world falls away around them. An incredible piece of Argentinian fiction and one of the best modern classics you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of The Wind That Lays Waste here!

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Across his celebrated career as a writer of novels, children’s books, comics, and screenplays, Neil Gaiman has reshaped the world of fiction writing more than once. And American Gods remains his finest work. A true masterpiece amongst modern classic books.

American Gods follows Shadow, a man newly released from prison at the same time that his wife is murdered. Recruited by a man known as Wednesday, Shadow takes an odd road trip across the US, seeing all the stranger sights along the way.

Dripping with a rich and detailed atmosphere, this novel provides readers with a journey that absorbs them completely. You live Shadow’s journey wholly and completely, and what a thrill ride it is.

American Gods also has a truly masterful central concept. Gods need people to invent them, worship them, and dedicate their lives to them. Without people, gods disappear.

So, what happened when Europeans moved to the New World? Some brought their gods with them while others got abandoned. There are also new gods; new things to worship: TV and internet and microwaves. There is a war brewing between the old gods and the new, and Shadow is caught in the middle.

This is a fascinating and gripping premise that makes for a perfect novel. American Gods is Neil Gaiman’s best work, and one of the great modern classic novels.

Buy a copy of American Gods here!

Human Acts by Han Kang

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

Han Kang, the legendary Korean author, was celebrated the world over for her daring and subversive novel The Vegetarian, which won the International Booker Prize in 2017. Her subsequent novels The White Book and Greek Lessons have also stolen our hearts.

But it’s her experimental and bleak novel Human Acts, set amidst the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, that presents her work at its most brazen and difficult.

The Gwangju Uprising was a moment of intense political change, as the people of South Korea rose up against their government’s military dictatorship.

Our protagonist is the dead boy Kang Dong-ho, and this short novel takes us from 1980 to the present day via the people who knew him and the lives they have led.

Feverish and strange, but also raw and heart-wrenching, Human Acts stands alone amongst other best modern classics of this century.

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The Broken Earth Series by N.K. Jemisin

This staggering trilogy of epic fantasy books by American author N.K. Jemisin represents a vital and necessary turning point in fantasy fiction.

These fantasy novels, narratively and conceptually, are unlike anything that exists in the realms of fantasy and science fiction literature. Their breadth and scope is exceptional.

For proof of the impact these books had upon their release, every single book in the trilogy took home the Hugo Award for Best Novel in its respective year, making it the only trilogy to ever accomplish this.

The first novel in this trilogy of best fantasy books, The Fifth Season, follows three separate protagonists, all living in slightly different times on a massive continent called the Stillness.

Essun is a middle-aged mother who sets out on a journey of revenge after she comes home to find that her husband has killed their son and taken their daughter away.

Essun herself is secretly able to manipulate the earth itself; this is a skill that a small percentage of people — known as orogenes — possess.

The second protagonist is Damaya, a young orogene whose parents have organised to be removed from their home and put into the hands of an organisation — known as the Fulcrum — that can train and weaponise her.

And the third protagonist, Syenite, is a member of the Fulcrum who has been sent out on a mission with the world’s most powerful orogene.

The worldbuilding and character writing of this phenomenal trilogy is what sets it so far apart from all other fantasy books, making them some of the best fantasy books ever written.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, nothing else in the world of fantasy has managed to marry intimate character moulding with political and social allegories and ingenious worldbuilding quite like the Broken Earth trilogy.

For these reasons, The Fifth Season is easily one of the biggest and best modern classic books we have; a book that has reshaped the entire landscape of fantasy fiction.

Buy the trilogy here!

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft

Olga Tokarczuk is a Nobel Prize-winning Polish author, and writer of some of the best modern classic books of this (or any) century. A true genius and an unparalleled visionary writer.

Her novel, Flights, catapulted her into the public eye of the English-speaking world when it was published by indie press Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2018.

Flights is both a fictional travelogue that philosophically muses on time, movement, and inertia, and an historical examination of life and the human body.

This is a book that blends history and philosophy, fact and fiction, memory and essay. Much of it is spent in stories of migration, of nomadism, of wandering.

Other stories take us back through time to strange occurrences, such as the story of how Chopin’s heart was transported after his death. There is nothing in the world like Flights, like the writings of Olga Tokarczuk.

Buy a copy of Flights here!

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

When Oliver Marks is released from a decade of prison (for a murder he may not have even committed), he is immediately greeted by the detective who got him convicted.

Now, the detective wants Marks’ truth from ten years back. Marks is one of seven college students deeply entrenched in a love of The Bard.

They are a small society of Shakespeare fanatics who live and breathe his works. They are also darkly obsessed with one another, shutting out the rest of the world.

When emotions run this high, however, it only takes a small glitch to throw their dynamic into catastrophe and, eventually, even death.

The experience of reading If We Were Orphans will undeniably be enhanced for anyone with their own love for the works of Shakespeare. It’s not required, but it certainly helps.

A Shakespeare-inspired murder-mystery dark academia novel that has so quickly defined itself as one of the best modern classic books we have.

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Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Written by one of the most talented and insightful literary authors of today and published in 2022, Small Things Like These is a modern classic that will go down in history as one of the great novels of our time.

At its heart, this is a novel about the everyday acts of goodness performed by honest people versus the twisted, monstrous, ironically sinful behaviour of organised religion.

It’s 1985 and we follow our protagonist, father of five Bill Furlough, and he works and visits his neighbours and goes shopping in the days leading up to Christmas.

As we get to know his family and his community, we are also shown glimpses of Bill’s childhood, and how his single mother was saved from a difficult life by the simple acts of kindness by those around her.

Bill has seen kindness, and is proof that it is infectious. Against the grain of his community, who are complicit in the sins of the church, he does what is right and considers it his moral duty as a living human. As he does so, he exposes the harmful, damaging actions of the church.

Small but powerful, this literary Irish novel is a work of magic, and one of the best modern classic books of our time.

Buy a copy of Small Things Like These here!

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

George Saunders is celebrated for his craft as a writer of short stories, but his debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, immediately struck a chord with readers and went on to win the Booker Prize.

A bizarre and charming piece of historical fiction which I have read multiple times, Lincoln in the Bardo follows the son of Abraham Lincoln, William, as he is caught in a space between life and death.

This space, the titular bardo, is part of buddhist belief, and here is used by Saunders to explore the grief of Lincoln, and as a means of flexing the author’s craft as a storyteller.

As we follow young William, we meet other ghosts caught in the bardo whom he befriends, and we also see glimpses of the world of the living, and how Honest Abe is coping with the loss of his son.

This is a beautiful and delightfully unique piece of contemporary fiction that is unlike anything else you’ll ever read. Surreal but not off-putting, this is one you’ll never forget, and one that stands strong amongst the best modern classic books of this century.

Buy a copy of Lincoln in the Bardo here!

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Where thrillers are concerned, Gone Girl might be the most famous, successful, and celebrated novel of this century so far. This is a book that has redefined the thriller genre. What The Fifth Season (above) did for fantasy, Gone Girl has done for thrillers. A truly exceptional modern classic novel.

The fame this novel saw was hugely bolstered by the massive success of David Fincher’s excellent film adaptation; perfectly paced, with an immaculate tone and incredible performances.

Fincher really knows how to direct a thriller, and you couldn’t find a better pairing than his directorial eye and Flynn’s original story.

Gone Girl focusses around the disappearance of Amy Dunn, a woman who vanished on her fifth wedding anniversary.

All eyes are on her husband, Nick. Public consensus is that he was involved in her disappearance, but how? What role did he play? Where is she? Is she even alive?

This is a novel of two halves, with an enormous midpoint twist separating it into two distinct narratives.

In the first half, we follow a pretty standard investigation, with public interest in the case gaining steady momentum, and Nick in the spotlight. But that twist changes and refocusses everything we thought we knew.

Few thrillers nail their execution and pacing as well as Gone Girl does, making it a real masterpiece of the genre, and one of the best modern classic books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of Gone Girl here!

This list of the best classic books of all time is divided into two categories: classics published before 1900, and classics of the first half of the 20th century. If you’re interested in modern classics, published from the second half of the 20th century until today, you can find them right here.

Must-Read Classic Books (Pre-20th Century)

These are classics that have shaped the world of literature for more than a century. In some cases, hundreds of years. Many of these classic novels started genres, documented moments from times long since passed, and cemented their authors as timeless artists to be remembered for ages to come. These are the best classic books of all time, every one of them an unmissable gem in the world of literature.

The Odyssey by Homer

Translated by Emily Wilson

The Odyssey, along with The Iliad, is one of the oldest works of literature still widely known and read to this day, even still receiving new translations into various languages. Homer was an Ancient Greek poet, and it is widely assumed that he was the author of these texts. Rather than a typical novel, The Odyssey is an epic poem, divided into twenty-four chapters, or “books”.

The Odyssey follows Greek hero Odysseus as he returns to his home nation of Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War. Along with The Iliad, The Odyssey has been adapted dozens of times in various forms of media and literature.

The events and players of The Trojan War are some of the most recognisable in the Western literary canon, and have remained so for an incredible 2,800 years. It’s difficult to overstate the power and influence of this text within the world of fiction and storytelling across all of Western history.

Buy a copy of The Odyssey here!

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Translated from the Japanese by Kencho Suematsu

Not only was The Tale of Genji the first Japanese novel, but it is widely considered to be the first novel ever written anywhere in the world. That alone makes it one of the most important and best classic books, as well as the impressive fact that it was written by a woman.

Penned by the Kyoto noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century CE, The Tale of Genji takes us on a journey that follows the son of an emperor: Hikaru Genji. Genji is no longer in the line of succession and spends much of the novel’s story forming and then ruining relationships with various women in Kyoto. 

The novel is a fascinating insight into the lives of Japan’s nobility back when Kyoto was the capital of Japan. It’s also a witty and smart novel that still holds up as one of the best classic books of all time, anywhere in the world.

Buy a copy of The Tale of Genji here!

Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en

Translated from the Chinese by Julia Lovell

Journey to the West is perhaps the most beloved and iconic Chinese novel ever written. A 16th Century classic of Chinese literature, Journey to the West has been adapted countless times. Wu Cheng’en’s classic Chinese novel is a wild and rollicking adventure story that begins with the hilarious and ridiculous antics of the powerful titular ruler Sun Wukong the Monkey King.

Sun Wukong travels and studies and gets ever stronger until he has mastered death itself and ends up picking a fight with every angel in heaven. He is then sealed beneath a mountain for 500 years by the great Buddha himself. The rest of the novel follows the titular journey to the West, as a young monk is tasked by heaven to deliver some scriptures from China to India.

Early on his travels, he stumbles across the sealed Monkey King, frees him, and takes him on as an apprentice in an attempt to reform the untameable Sun Wukong. There is so much raw energy and hilarious banter poured into every line, making this new abridged translation of Journey to the West a must-read, and one of the best classic books of all time.

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Crime and Punishment by Fyodr Dostoyevsky

Translated from the Russian by Michael R. Katz

Written in pre-revolutionary Russia by legendary 19th century Russian author Fyodr Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment is a classic and a masterpiece. While Notes from Underground was his breakout work of fiction, Crime and Punishment, his first full novel, propelled him to fame.

Our protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, is planning to kill an elderly woman for the valuables in her home, in order to climb out of poverty and rise to greatness. However, after killing her, he is distraught and traumatised by his own actions.

Much like Dostoyevsky’s other works, this remains a classic of Russian fiction. A book that encourages contemplation and societal observation.

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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear

19th century Russian author Leo Tolstoy is primarily remembered for two classic works of fiction: War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The latter is a Russian epic novel published in 1878, set against a backdrop of change and progress in Russia and across the world. The titular Anna Karenina is a wealthy socialite who is engaged in an affair with a count named Vronsky.

The novel follows this affair, as they leave for Italy and Anna leaves her child behind, before eventually returning to face gossip and scandal.

This is a deeply political novel that explores the roles and behaviours of people in the Russian upper classes, as well as how invention and political change alters the social landscape of Europe. An enormous epic and a classic of Russian literature, Anna Karenina remains one of the best classic books ever written.

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Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Perhaps better known today is Schönberg and Boublil’s perfect musical adaptation of Les Miserables, but Victor Hugo’s original novel also remains a literary masterpiece.

Les Miserables follows the life of released former convict Jean Valjean, originally imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family. We follow Valjean’s struggles over the course of several years, beginning in 1815, as he meets other memorable and, at this point, iconic characters.

As fans of the musical will know, the novel eventually takes readers through to the French Revolution and the June Rebellion of 1832. This is an enormous epic French novel about social class, French history, law, and so much more. One of the greatest novels of all time, Les Miserables remains a must-read classic of French literature.

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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Translated from the Spanish by J.M. Cohen

Often considered the very first modern novel, the Spanish epic Don Quixote is a staple of the European literary canon. Published in two parts, ten years apart (the first in 1605 and the second in 1615), Don Quixote is to literature what Shakespeare is to theatre.

Generally considered to be a comic novel, Don Quixote follows the story of a Spanish nobleman named Alonso Quijano.

Quijano has lost touch with reality after reading too many stories of romantic chivalry, and reinvents himself as a knight-errant, the titular Don Quixote. He takes a farm labourer as his squire and sets out on a series of adventures in order to restore chivalry to the land.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein is one of the best classic books ever written, and is also this writer’s favourite novel of all time. Widely considered to be the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein is also a key piece of literature within the gothic canon. Beyond that, it’s also a biting allegory for parental failure and abandonment.

The titular character Victor Frankenstein is an arrogant young student of science who has been traumatised by the death of his mother. While studying natural philosophy, Frankenstein takes it upon himself to build a man out of body parts exhumed from local graveyards.

When he succeeds in bringing life to that man, he is immediately frightened by his creation and flees, leaving the creature to wander alone and discover the world for himself. Frankenstein is a true masterpiece of gothic and science fiction literature; a work of beauty and power and perfection.

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Another essential work of 19th century gothic fiction, Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte’s only published work; a novel that is now considered a classic and a masterpiece.

Wuthering Heights is a gothic tragedy that twists the concept of romance into uncomfortable shapes. Set in the rugged and wild moors of Yorkshire, the novel takes place in a pair of homes. Our protagonists are a dysfunctional family of cruel and jealous people who love, hate, lust after, take revenge on, and even haunt one another.

The book begins with a trio: brother and sister pair Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and their adopted brother Heathcliff. Cathy and Heathcliff gradually fall in love while Hindley treats Heathcliff like a slave. But their love is fated to fall apart, leading to so much death and despair.

The writing in Wuthering Heights is explosive in its poetic drama, and these characters are monstrous and cruel people. A true gothic masterpiece, Wuthering Heights is one of the best classic books ever written.

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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

One of the most beloved 19th century novels, Jane Eyre tells the story of the titular Jane as she takes a job as a governess at the remote manor Thornfield Hall. Her employer, Edward Rochester, is an enigmatic man with whom she gradually falls in love. But Rochester harbours a bleak and horrible secret that will eventually wrench them apart.

Before she takes the job, we follow Jane’s childhood and years of study, where she is constantly rejected by both her family and her classmates.

In many ways, Jane Eyre is both a sorrowful and a hopeful novel, toeing the line between the romantic and gothic genres of 19th century literature. A beautiful, eventful novel Jane Eyre remains one of the best classic books of all time.

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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a romantic drama full of scandal, humour, excitement, lust, aggression, and entertaining exaggeration. It’s also one of the first feminist novels; the story of an autonomous woman raising a child alone in a rundown gothic house, painting, and making a living to support herself and her son.

Helen is a single mother, a presumed widow, who has taken up residence in the cold and derelict gothic manor: the titular Wildfell Hall. As our narrator-protagonist, Gilbert Markham, gets to know her, he gradually falls in love.

His infatuation comes in spite of every other member of their community distrusting Helen and spreading horrid rumours about her. And when Gilbert finds a reason to believe those rumours, Helen presents him with her diary. From there, the novel switches to Helen’s perspective, as we learn the story of who she was and how she ended up in this place.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is far less gothic and bleak than Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and instead toes a line between the signature Brontë gothic vibes and the wit-soaked romance of Jane Austen.

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The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf

Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

Published in German in 1842, The Black Spider is the most celebrated work of Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf. A 100-page gothic horror novella with bleak, dark religious themes.

Like many other gothic works of its time, The Black Spider begins with a framing device: a community in an idyllic valley are celebrating the baptism of a newborn babe. During the celebrations, an elderly man — who has lived in the same house in the valley all his life — is caught staring ominously at a particularly old and blackened wooden post in his home.

Encouraged to tell the story of the house, he gives in and tells the tale of an evil lord, his knights, and the peasants who suffer under him. The lord’s serfs have been forced to build the lord’s castle, while their own crops suffer. The peasants are then tempted by the aid of a mysterious hunter, dressed all in green, who offers to help them in exchange for the valley’s next newborn child — a child which must not have been baptised.

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Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels is one-of-a-kind. A weird and wonderful work of satire by a writer of impressive imagination.

Published in 1726, in the midst of European global colonisation, Gulliver’s Travels follows the strange journeys of titular protagonist Lemuel Gulliver. In the book’s first part, Gulliver washes ashore on the land of Lilliput, home to a people who are less than six inches tall.

In its second part, the inverse occurs when he discovers the land of Brobdingnag, in which he is now tiny and the residents stand at more than seventy feet in height. Gulliver’s Travels is a fantastic satire of the adventure story, and remains one of the most beloved classics of the English canon.

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Too often overshadowed by its contemporaries — namely the works of the Brontes and Jane Austen — Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South remains one of the best classic books of its period. This novel is Pride and Prejudice with teeth; equal parts romance and political drama.

The titular north and south are our protagonists, the rich and entitled southerner Margaret Hale and the heartless capitalist northerner Mr. Thornton. Over the course of the novel, their romance takes some ugly turns while the unionisation and revolt of Thornton’s factory workers takes centre-stage.

North and South is a Victorian novel that, much like the works of Charles Dickens, shines a light on the lives, struggles, and conditions of working class people in industrial England.

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Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

French author Jules Verne is considered one of the godfathers of science fiction literature, and rightly so. His books are true classics of the genre, and his classic tale Journey to the Center of the Earth is my own personal favourite; a short sci-fi novel that elicits repeated reactions of excitement and wonder from the reader.

The story follows a German professor and his nephew, who, after translating an old Icelandic text, set out on an expedition to find a crater in Iceland that might lead to the centre of the planet.

What they find is real, and as they journey deeper, they see impossible wonders; the most memorable of which is a vast ocean inside a cavern. While traversing this subterranean sea, our protagonists come into contact with prehistoric creatures: an ichthyosaurus and a plesiosaurus.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a thrilling adventure of discovery, one of the great works of Victorian sci-fi and one of the best classic books of all time.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

It’s not often that we at Books and Bao talk about children’s fiction, but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a true classic. This is a surrealist masterpiece, a book that pays tribute to the wild and unpredictable imaginations of children. A strange tale of colourful characters, impossible events, and a delightful lack of logic.

Everyone knows the story of Alice; this is a book that has been adapted countless times, into animation, film, comic books, and even video games.

All for good reason. In many ways, this is the perfect children’s story. A girl tumbles into a world where anything is possible and imagination reigns supreme. One of the best classic books of all time, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland really is a book to stoke the imagination.

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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Austen remains one of the most beloved authors in English history, and for good reason. While she wrote a handful of outstanding books, it’s her second novel, Pride and Prejudice, that remains her magnum opus.

Pride and Prejudice is a sharp, witty, sarcastic, biting, scathing, sardonic gem on a novel that relentlessly pokes fun at everything from the class system to patriarchal values; from stuffy English tradition to family life.

While it takes pleasure in being scornful and cynical, Pride and Prejudice is also a perfectly-written, joyously-executed novel of budding friendship and romance. The story of prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet and proud Mr Darcy really is a compelling, engaging, and captivating tale of love against all logic.

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Emma by Jane Austen

While Pride and Prejudice (above) unequivocally remains Austen’s most famous and beloved work, Emma is also a strong fan-favourite. An often laugh-out-loud funny satire of middle-class social behaviour.

Like Pride and Prejudice, Emma has seen multiple adaptations (perhaps most famously Amy Heckerling adored 1995 movie Clueless). The novel tells the story of the titular Emma Woodhouse, a busybody who prides herself on her immaculate matchmaking skills.

Much of the plot involves Emma’s goading of her friend Harriet Smith to romantically pursue their local vicar, Mr. Elton, despite Harriet’s preferred interest in the farmer, Robert Martin, who wishes to propose to Harriet. Emma’s interference backfires when the vicar falls in love with her instead, and expresses disgust at any idea of romantic involvement with Harriet.

Emma is a fantastic pseudo-romantic social satire that paints a vivid picture of a small world of social climbers in rich detail. One of the most beloved and best classic books of its time.

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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was the most prolific and beloved author of Victorian England; a man whose legacy is deservedly staggering. Dickens wrote sixteen novels and many great short stories, several of which were themed around Christmas.

Of all these timeless tales, his most famous and celebrated novel is Great Expectations. Written later in his life, Great Expectations was Dickens’ thirteenth novel. In it, we follow Pip, an orphaned boy whom we first meet in a graveyard. We follow Pip’s strange life as he aids an escaped convict and falls in love with the adopted daughter of a woman who lives in her wedding dress.

We continue to follow Pip as he comes into money and moves from Kent to London, studies, grows, and encounters both struggles and heartbreak. A true classic of Victorian fiction, Great Expectations is one of Dickens’ greatest achievements, and one of the best classic books of the 19th century.

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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Another beloved Dickens novel is David Copperfield. In fact, this was often said to have been Dickens’ own personal favourite; the novel he was proudest of having written, what he called his “favourite child.” It is also a semi-autobiographical novel about Dickens’ own life, from childhood to adulthood; what he himself called “a very complicated weaving of truth and invention.”

Told in the first person, the novel follows Copperfield’s life from birth — raised by a single mother after his father died before his own birth — into his childhood. A fight with an abusive stepfather lands David in a boarding school. While there, his mother dies in childbirth and soon enough David is sent to work in a factory, as Dickens himself did as a child.

The novel continues to follow Copperfield’s life into his adult years, and we meet a broad cast of colourful characters along the way, as one would expect in a Dickens novel. David Copperfield remains one of the most famous and admired works of British literature and one of the best classic books of all time.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

Since 1897, when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published, the novel has morphed our cultural zeitgeist with regards to vampires, mythology, and monsters in general. An entirely epistolary tale, written from myriad perspectives, about an intensely alien and evil force that can work as a stand-in for so many things, thematically.

On the surface, Dracula is an exciting horror-thriller about a young Englishman named Jonathan who is held prisoner in the castle of a strange Romanian count, and at one moment almost eaten alive by the strange vampire women who live there.

From there, perspectives shift and we frantically turn the page as Dracula escapes aboard a ship, slowly picks apart the crew, and arrives in England to terrorise the town of Whitby. And one of his victims is the friend of the fiancée of Jonathan, Dracula’s initial captive.

But this is also a novel about shifting times, about immigration, about the role of the woman in society and in the family. It’s about the queer, the other. It’s a lot of things, and that has helped the novel and the vampire itself remain relevant and imaginatively exciting for more than a century.

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

This little gothic novella was penned by Scottish author Robert Louis Stephenson, who is perhaps best known for his children’s book Treasure Island. Published in 1886, decades after the likes of Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a short but powerful and impactful gothic sci-fi story.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know the basic premise of this story: a scientist who drinks a potion to turn himself into an angry, monstrous thing.

Despite its length, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde packs in a lot of characters and events, and is written with a poetic and dramatic flair which the gothic genre all but demands. Much like Frankenstein before it, this is a novel that blends the gothic and the science fiction to create one of the most iconic and best classic books ever written.

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Silas Marner by George Elliot

Written by Victorian author Mary Ann Evans, who wrote all of her novels under the pseudonym George Elliot, Silas Marner is a beloved classic of its time.

Elliot was known for her realism, setting all of her novels in small towns and villages in the English countryside. Her novels remark, in detail, on the intimate lives of provincial people in Victorian England.

Silas Marner, her second novel, was published in 1861 but set several decades earlier, and follows the troubled life of its titular protagonist, a man named Silas Marner. Marner is a weaver who lives a secluded life in a small rural community where nobody pays him much mind.

However, he was once a member of his local church in a larger town some miles away, but he was falsely accused of stealing his church’s funds. Losing so much in the process of these accusations, Marner uplifted his life and retreated into obscurity. Silas Marner is a fantastic novel about the drama of small-town Victorian life, and remains one of the best classic books of the English canon.

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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is generally considered to be the first English novel, and was originally published with its protagonist as the author, leading early readers of its first edition to assume it a piece of nonfiction.

Written in a biographical style, Robinson Crusoe tells the story of a castaway who finds himself stranded for almost thirty years on an island where he encounters cannibals and mutineers. In the book’s early parts, we learn about Crusoe’s obsession with the sea which, despite having already been shipwrecked as a child, draws him back to grand adventure.

This adventure eventually leads him to Brazil, and then eventually to the infamous wrecking on an isolated island off the coast of Venezuela where he is stranded for twenty-eight years. Robinson Crusoe is a true classic of English literature, especially with it being considered the very first English novel.

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The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole was a delightfully eccentric man. For example, he converted two London cottages into his own gothic castle. And it was in this house that Walpole had the dream which inspired The Castle of Otranto, which most consider to be the very first gothic novel, published in 1764.

The novel’s story centres around Princess Isabella, whose young betrothed is suddenly crushed by a giant knight’s helmet, which inexplicably falls from the sky. She must then escape before Manfred, her fiancé’s father and lord of the castle, divorces his current wife and forces Isabella to marry him instead.

Reading this novel, it’s amazing to see how the gothic genre continued to grow and evolve, how its tropes were solidified and further explored. As the fist ever gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto remains one of the best classic books of all time.

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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

A beloved American children’s novel, Little Women has charmed readers of all ages for generations. Over and over again, no matter how many years go by, children read this book and become enchanted by its characters and events, without fail.

Based on the author’s own childhood growing up with her own sisters, this is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story that has delighted readers for generations.

The March sisters are icons of American literature, with countless readers identifying with a particular sister and finding comfort and camaraderie in their small adventures. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy experience so much adversity, loss, sorrow, and hope throughout the novel.

And Little Women continues to be adapted to the big screen by filmmakers every generation or so, rekindling our love for Louisa May Alcott’s original novel. A true classic American tale, Little Women is one of the most beloved and best classic books of all time.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Beloved Irish writer Oscar Wilde has an enormous legacy. While he wrote many wonderful plays and poems, The Picture of Dorian Gray was Wilde’s only novel.

This is another story so well-known in popular culture that most of us know its premise: a man who doesn’t age has a portrait of himself in the attic that ages on his behalf. Outside of its powerful premise and the exciting moral decline of its titular protagonist, the beauty of this gothic novel lies in its writing.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a magical tale. You can open up any page, read a line, and be captivated by its poetic beauty. A staggering achievement that doesn’t waste a single word, feeling, or moment; The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of the very best classic books ever written.

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The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Often overshadowed by his more successful contemporary, Charles Dickens, Victorian author Wilkie Collins remains an incredible force within English literature. And his magnum opus is, without a doubt, The Woman in White. This is a work of dark detective fiction; one of the earliest of its genre. A novel which paved the way for so much great detective fiction in the years and decades to follow.

The Woman in White begins in London, with the first of several point-of-view characters, the teacher Walter Hartright helping the mysterious titular woman in white find her way. He is soon informed that this distraught woman has escaped from an asylum, and so the mystery begins to unfold.

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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

It’s incredible to consider that time travel stories have a point of origin, and that this origin dates back to 1895. Wells’ original science fiction novel set the stage for all the great time travel stories that would soon follow.

An inventor builds himself a time machine, and that machine carries him forward in time. Our scientist arrives in the year 802701 CE, an eerie future in which human evolution split into two very different groups. The first group are the naive, child-like Eloi, who live in blissful peace and harmony, with all their needs provided to them. The other group live underground, and they are the cannibalistic Morlocks, who feed on the Eloi.

Wells was critical of many aspects of European society during his time, and his novels were allegorical of the things he disagreed with. This can be be seen here, with The Time Machine being a critique of class disparity and social inequality. An incredible and indispensable science fiction story and one of the best classic books of the 19th century.

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The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

French author Alexandre Dumas is best-known for his novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. The second of which is an adventure novel, originally serialised in the mid-1840s.

Set during the time of the Bourbon Restoration, The Count of Monte Cristo tells the story of a young first mate about a ship called the Pharaon. Edmond Dantes is falsely accused of treason by several members of the ship’s crew, and is imprisoned in a fortress.

There, he is told of a treasure by a fellow prisoner who eventually dies. Once Dantes is released, he hunts down this treasure and uses it to exact his revenge as the titular Count of Monte Cristo. A beloved French novel and one of the very best books of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo remains a must-read.

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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Written by American author Herman Melville and published in 1851, Moby-Dick is a novel whose premise and themes have become embedded in public consciousness. Everyone knows the concept of a person’s “white whale”, and most people know the general plot of Moby-Dick.

A crewman aboard the whaling vessel Pequod recounts the story of his captain, Ahab, a man with a single-minded ambition to take revenge on an enormous white whale. That whale, named Moby Dick, took Ahab’s leg, and now the captain can think of nothing but getting the revenge he seeks. The white whale is his obsession, and it blinds him to everything else.

But Moby-Dick is also a love letter to the sea and to sailing, full of so much detail about life as a sailor. One of the great American novels, Moby-Dick remains a must-read and one of the best classic books of the 19th century.

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Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Written and published towards the end of the 19th century, Tess of the d’Urbervilles remains a classic of English literature. A surprisingly bleak and morose novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles remains a classic of English literature to this day.

The novel follows the titular Tess as she goes from tragedy to tragedy. She suffers abuse, loses her child, toils in obscurity, falls in love, and suffers heartbreak and betrayal. Not for the faint of heart, Tess of the d’Urbervilles remains a classic but is certainly not an easy read.

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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Published in 1850 and set two centuries earlier, The Scarlet Letter is an early work of American historical fiction. The titular scarlet letter is a brand forcibly worn by the book’s protagonist, Hester Prynne, after she gives birth to a child out of wedlock.

The scarlet letter, an A which stands for adultery, brands her an outcast in the puritan colony where the novel is set. A classic piece of American fiction which looks back at the history of American colonialism and religious puritanism.

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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Much like his contemporary, English author George Elliot (above), 19th century French author Gustave Flaubert was a celebrated author of the realism genre of his period.

The most celebrated and well-remembered of his works is Madame Bovary. The novel begins with Charles Bovary, a young medical practitioner who marries a spiteful woman. When she dies, he is able to court a young woman named Emma whom he had previously met while treating a patient.

Emma is a romantic young woman with dreams of luxury and social excitement, but her marriage to Charles quickly becomes stale and she is left disenchanted. Madame Bovary is a novel about escaping boring provincial life with the hopes of finding a more exciting life. A classic of the French literary canon and one of the very best classic books from France.

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Essential Classic Books of the 20th Century

These books were all published during the first half of the 1900s, and have gone on to become true classics. Staples of high school classrooms and university lecture halls, these are true classics of the modern world. Many of these classics are American and British, but you’ll also find classics from around Europe and Asia, too. If you’re looking for the best classic books from after the turn of the 20th century, these are your must-read novels.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Kafka’s novels and short stories focus on the ways in which post-industrial European society undermines, confuses, and disempowers working men. His stories examine the methods and tactics of law, bureaucracy, and social rules which render ordinary working class people frightened and impotent.

The finest example of this is The Trial, which tells the story of a man named Josef K, who is one day very suddenly arrested. Josef has done nothing wrong, to his knowledge, and is not told what his crime is supposed to have been.

He is imprisoned, then freed, told to await instructions and further information, and failed over and over again by an absurd system. There is a bleak and dark humour to The Trial, as our man fails to ever understand what is happening to him, and nonsensical events continue to pile on top of one another.

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Ulysses by James Joyce

Written in 1922 and covering an impressive 700 pages, the modernist Ulysses follows a single day in the life of the iconic protagonist Leopold Bloom. Throughout the novel, Bloom continues to be on the move, journeying between various appointments and encounters across Dublin.

The novel’s title, the romanised name for Odysseus, title character of Homer’s The Odyssey, establishes the similarities between the events and emotions of Bloom and Odysseus. A wonderfully strange and simple masterpiece of modernist fiction, Ulysses remains one of the best classic books of all time.

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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was one of the great American writers, and his short masterpiece Of Mice and Men remains a flawless novel about the curse of the “American Dream”.

Of Mice and Men follows two men — the sharp and savvy George, and the simple giant Lenny — who have been moving from farm to farm looking for work. George wishes to free himself from the cycle of labour by saving enough money to eventually build a self-sustaining home and plot of land to call his own.

However, this is the dream of countless men, and capitalism’s rules and methods guarantee that breaking from this cycle is a rarity, if not an impossibility. But George is different; he has Lenny by his side to help him make more money and work harder than most men can.

Of Mice and Men is an American tragedy, a novel that keenly exposes the lies of the American Dream, and of the cycles of Western capitalism. A true 20th century masterpiece and one of the best classic books ever written.

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, set and published during the roaring twenties, is a short novel that has enchanted readers for a century. The novel follows Nick, a Yale alumnus who has moved to New York City and rents a place on Long Island beside a luxurious estate.

This grand house is owned by the enigmatic and eccentric Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man who hosts frequent soirees but never actually appears at them himself. As the novel progresses, Nick eventually meets and befriends Gatsby, and learns his life story.

Gatsby’s endeavours, and the wealth he has accrued, have all been in service to his obsession with a woman who lives nearby, a lost love from his youth named Daisy. The Great Gatsby is a masterful novel about the American Jazz Age, class, and the American Dream. A beautiful novel that continues to mesmerise new readers.

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Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is a legend of 20th century English literature. A modernist writer and member of the famed Bloomsbury Group. Alongside her other novels Orlando and The Waves, Mrs. Dalloway is a classic of the modernist genre.

The novel takes place over the course of a single day in the life of a privileged woman, the titular Mrs. Dalloway. We begin in the morning, as she busies herself with preparing for a party she is due to host that same evening. Over the course of the novel, we learn about her life, her childhood, and her marriage.

Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, was one of the great works of English literature from the early 20th century and remains one of the essential classic books of British literature.

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Like many of the best works of dystopian fiction, Brave New World presents ideas and warnings that remain as poignant and thought-provoking today as they did when the book was published a century ago.

The biggest and most obvious political theme that Huxley’s novel tackles is eugenics. In the future World State which he imagines, humans have formed a dystopian society based on an intelligence-based hierarchy. This has become possible through reproductive engineering that uses artificial wombs and the philosophy of eugenics to create a caste system in which various classes of people are placed and kept.

In this world, the assembly line is revered as one of the great technological and political leaps forward, and so the calendar is marked by its invention. Despite its age, and how far technology has advanced since its publication, it is truly remarkable how much Huxley anticipated and presented in this book, both about technology and about various political philosophies.

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1984 by George Orwell

One of the great literary treasures of the 20th century is George Orwell’s 1984. While his Russian Revolution allegory Animal Farm, and his charming memoir Down and Out in Paris and London each remain masterpieces, it’s 1984 that stands tallest.

A warning against the willingness of corrupt politicians to hoard power and wealth, and to control the populace via misinformation and media language, 1984 is a perfect novel. This is a novel that teaches readers to look for the warning signs of fascism as it rises.

The world of 1984 is an England ruled by oligarchs who invade the privacy of all residents with cameras and microphones, and who change the news to suit their needs. Our protagonist, Winston, seeks to resist the corrupting, brainwashing tactics of Big Brother and the UK government.

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No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene

Inspired by the author’s own life events, relationships, and his way of seeing the world around him, No Longer Human is a heartbreaking masterpiece of Japanese fiction, written shortly before Osamu Dazai committed suicide.

Our protagonist, a stand-in for Dazai himself, sees ordinary society as something impossible to navigate. He paints horrifying pictures, eventually turns to drink, and becomes entirely destructive as an adult — towards himself and those around him.

This is a novel about a desperately sad person, ill equipped for even surviving daily life. He doesn’t understand people and people don’t understand him. He is selfish, gross, and unlikeable. But at his core, he is desperately sad and doomed to die.

No Longer Human is beautifully written, and one of the best classic books to have come out of Japan in the first half of the 20th century.

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Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

German author Hans Fallada remains one of Germany’s most prestigious writers. From his autobiographical The Drinker to this, his magnum opus, Fallada was one of the great European writers of the 20th Century. Alone in Berlin is a dense and epic novel, originally published in Germany in 1947 (the same year as No Longer Human).

Set in Berlin in 1940, Alone in Berlin follows the story of a working class couple, Otto and Elise Hampel. Fallada’s novel explores the frightening spread of fascism from the inside out, as privacy becomes impossible and the threat of arrest is a daily possibility.

Alone in Berlin is less about war than it is about how the average German attempted to resist the rise and spread of Nazism, risking their life to rebel and stem the tide of fascism. An amazingly tense and chilling novel, Alone in Berlin is a masterpiece of tone and plotting that remains one of the best modern books of the 20th century.

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The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

Often compared to the works of the pre-revolution Russian masters, as well as revered British authors like Jane Austen, The Makioka Sisters is a Japanese masterpiece. Set in Osaka, published during World War II and set in the years before its outbreak, Junichiro Tanizaki’s magnum opus is a family drama epic about class divides and societal shifts.

The novel follows the titular Makioka family, a once wealthy and large Kansai family whose fortune has rapidly declined. This is also the case for many families, as Japan’s class system and societal traditions begin to shift due to globalisation and the looming spectre of war.

While the eldest two of four Makioka sisters are married, the family’s future hangs on the successful marriage of third sister Yukiko. Junichiro Tanizaki was, and remains, one of Japan’s most celebrated and revered 20th century authors, and The Makioka Sisters is his great masterpiece.

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

In Daphne du Maurier’s magnum opus, the titular Rebecca is dead; this is the first tantalising thing to know.

Our protagonist is the nameless second wife of Maxim de Winter, a wealthy Englishman who resides in the country estate of Manderley. His first wife, Rebecca, died, and her memory haunts every corner of Manderley, as well as the thoughts and behaviours of the husband whom she was survived by.

Our protagonist feels constantly at odds with the dead Rebecca, having to live up to her legacy, especially as she is undermined by the hateful housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. Danvers loved Rebecca, and Maxim is troubled by thoughts and memories of his deceased first wife, and our protagonist must survive in this toxic and tense world.

Few gothic novels have the power and the legacy of Rebecca, a true masterpiece of the 20th century and one of the very best classic books of the gothic genre.

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Endless Blue Sky by Lee Hyoseok

Translated from the Korean by Steven D. Capener

The story of Korean novel Endless Blue Sky begins with our protagonist, the writer Ilma, travelling up to Manchuria for the umpteenth time for business and, while he is there, engaging with a Russian dancer, Nadia, whom he is deeply enamoured with.

Conversing mostly in English, their relationship blossoms quickly; and Nadia, through Ilma, has fallen in love with the fascinating world of Joseon, demanding to be stolen into it so that she might discover its fashion, its theatre, and its art for herself.

Lee Hyoseok was one of the more fascinating writers of early 20th century Korea; a man of thrilling political philosophies and a delightfully European approach to storytelling.

Endless Blue Sky is a joyous Korean novel, full of eccentric characters and a love story that twists and turns with real human depth and agency as it moves on at a swift click. A forgotten but essential Korean novel that stands strong alongside the best classic books of its period.

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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie was the queen of the murder mystery novel; an author of crime fiction, gothic fiction, and thrillers. Her career as an author spanned half a century, and amongst all of her great works, And Then There Were None is often heralded as her finest achievement.

While many of her books star the legendary Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, this is a standalone Christie novel, set on an isolated island off the coast of Devon. Our protagonists have all been drawn there by a letter. When they arrive, a recorded voice is played, claiming that each of them has committed a murder.

From here, the guests begin to die one by one, and so a game of survival and escape begins, all the while their enemy and captor is unknown.

Short and swift, moving at a brisk pace, And Then There Were None is one of the most exciting thriller books you’ll ever read. An exciting, bloody, and stressful read; this novel is the definition of a page-turner, and is one of the greatest works of crime and thriller fiction ever written; one of the best classic books of its genre (if not the very best).

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The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Comparable to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’ Adventures in Wonderland in terms of its global popularity, The Little Prince has inspired young readers for decades.

Published in the 1940s and full of iconic lines that are still regularly quoted today, The Little Prince tells the story of a spacefaring boy, the titular little prince. Alongside our narrator, who has crash-landed his plane, we meet our little prince in a desert. There, after befriending the narrator, he tells us his curious life story.

This story concerns growing flowers on tiny planets and visiting worlds full of problems caused by adults acting carelessly. It’s an uplifting tale of friendship and loneliness that has resonated with readers for many years, and remains one of the best classic books of the 20th century.

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Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

Yasunari Kawabata was one of the great authors of 20th century Japan. This Nobel Prize-winner hand endless love for the world around him and its aesthetics. Many of his novels have the feel of a bell chime, opening with a loaded image that continues to resound throughout the rest of the story before drawing to a close with the final pages of the book.

Snow Country opens with a train ride through the mountainous countryside in which the narrator, staring out the window, superimposes the reflected face of a beautiful female passenger onto the darkening night sky and landscape outside.

Kawabata’s sparse yet wholly poetic opening is a masterstroke of foreshadowing in a novel that will confront the relationship between art, beauty, lust and love We are presented with a near ethereal landscape, shown through a fragmented narration in which the main character finds himself unable to truly feel present before the beautiful geisha he has an affair with.

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The Stranger by Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher. His first and most famous novel, The Stranger, is divided neatly into two halves. In the first, our protagonist, Merusault, learns of his mother’s death and attends her funeral.

He doesn’t mourn or feel anything at all, and over the next several days, the indifferent and detached man enters into a new relationship, makes acquaintances, and commits a murder. In the novel’s second half, Merusault is in prison, and his indifference and his acceptance of the random chaos of things is closely examined.

This was the first work to explore Camus’ absurdist philosophy, and remains a classic of French literature and one of the best classic books of our modern age.

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But, of course, the UK has a particular affinity for historical fiction, so many of the novels you’ll find on this extensive list are British. This is a celebration of historical fiction, showcasing the breadth and scope of the genre; how creative its authors are and what they can do with our rich histories.

Must-Read Historical Novels

You’ll find here novels that explore periods as well-trodden as the two World Wars, and ones as rich as China’s Ming Dynasty. Through these historical fiction books, you’ll meet Henry VIII, William Shakespeare, Madame Tussauds, Abraham Lincoln, and so many more.

You’ll spend time in a French asylum, on the wide plains of Argentina, and the battlefields of Ancient Greece. These are some of the best historical fiction books you’ll ever read; books that will take you across so much of this world’s rich, vibrant, and tumultuous history.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall manages to be many things. For many readers, it is the defining book of the historical fiction genre, at least in the UK.

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and its direct sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, both won the Booker Prize, while the final book of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. The Guardian newspaper called Wolf Hall the best novel of the 21st Century (so far).

Wolf Hall is, undeniably, a masterpiece of historical fiction. It’s dense and its language can be challenging, but it is beautiful, clever, and enthralling. Telling the fictionalised biography of the legendary English politician Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall throws readers into the fraught and frightening world of Henry VIII’s court.

Mantel paints Cromwell as a more sympathetic character than history has done, and uses that altered perspective to tell one of the most engaging historical novels ever penned. Few novels have made as much of an impact on their respective genres as Wolf Hall has; unquestionably one of the best historical fiction books of all time.

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Little by Edward Carey

Edward Carey is a true talent, and his books are a gift to contemporary literature. Little, a fictionalised biography of Madam Tussauds, is his finest work.

Little follows the life of Marie Grosholtz, from her birth in Alsace, France in 1761, through her adolescence and deep into her adulthood. We follow Marie, nicknamed Little, as she loses her father, and soon after her mother, before spending most of her life as the ward, student, and apprentice of an eccentric anatomist.

Dr. Curtis teaches Marie everything there is to know about human anatomy, and the two travel through much of central and western Europe before eventually settling in Paris. As Little progresses, we experience the French Revolution and see the deepest innards of the Palace of Versailles, all through the eyes of the woman who would become Madame Tussauds.

Both an intimate and subtly gothic novel and a wildly epic biography, Little is one of the very best historical fiction books ever written.

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Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, is a fictionalised retelling of the life of Agnes Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, as well as the tragically short life of their son Hamnet, whose death inspired the creation of the play Hamlet.

Gorgeously crafted, Hamnet shifts between the wider biography of Agnes as she meets and marries The Bard, and shorter chapters that detail the final days of Hamnet’s life. There are supernatural whispers throughout; the framing and pacing jolts and twists unapologetically; Shakespeare himself is never given a name, with the prose remaining firmly on the other people in his life.

Hamnet is a personal favourite novel of mine, especially within the genre of historical fiction. It does so much so well. Expertly plotted, gorgeously written, with dynamic and tragic characterisation. A must-read historical fiction book.

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Love and Fury by Samantha Silva

Like Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, Samantha Silva’s Love and Fury is a historical novel that shines a light on a woman often overshadowed by someone close to them who found greater fame. In this case, that person is pioneer feminist and mother of Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Often simply contextualised as the Frankenstein author’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft is also credited as being one of the Western world’s first feminist writers, having famously penned A Vindication on the Rights of Woman.

Beyond that, however, little is ever said about Mary Wollstonecraft. As Love and Fury demonstrates, however, she had an incredible life of her own. Wollstonecraft spent most of that life educating — and fighting for the education of — young British women at a time when women’s education was seen as pointless at best by the men in power.

Love and Fury is a historical novel that shows the true strength of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and deeds beyond the book she is most famous for.

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The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Written by my own personal favourite author, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day is a historical novel about regret and human malleability. The Remains of the Day begins with our protagonist and narrator, a butler named Stevens, setting out on a road trip across England.

Stevens has worked at Darlington Hall for many years and his new employer, a nouveau riche American, happily encourages him to take a vacation while he himself is away in the US on business. Stevens plans to reunite with Darlington Hall’s former housekeeper, a woman whom he clearly had deep feelings for.

Stevens, however, has always been married to his job. He is a rigid, unmovable traditionalist with a particular attitude towards life, work, and class; one that he deems right and proper. This stern and conservative outlook has cost Stevens so much potential joy, and now he has a chance to right those wrongs.

This is a truly elegant and beautiful literary masterpiece, and a must-read piece of historical fiction.

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An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

Before he wrote The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro focussed his attention on the country of his birth, and wrote the heart-wrenching historical novel An Artist of the Floating World. This novel takes us to a time shortly after the end of World War II and the fall of the Japanese Empire, and its story follows the life and memories of an aged and once-renowned ukiyo-e painter named Ono.

Ono has had a long and revered career as an ukiyo-e artist but, when war began brewing, he strayed from the teachings of his master and turned his hand to making propaganda posters. With the war over, Ono and his works are now a symbol of embarrassment. His family, neighbours, and old friends look at him with shame.

An Artist of the Floating World is a masterpiece, not only in its setting and its themes of shame, political corruption, and time’s ability to change us. An Artist of the Floating World presents a challenge of perspective and sympathy rarely explored so well in literature. This Ishiguro novel is another masterpiece of literary fiction and historical fiction.

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All The Light We Cannot See, which won the Carnegie Medal and Pulitzer Prize, has become one of the giants of modern American literature. Set against the backdrop of war-ravaged France, All The Light We Cannot See tells the story of Marie-Laure, a blind French woman, and the path that leads her to the orphaned Werner, a member of the Hitler Youth.

The glue that holds this historical novel together is its lovable cast of characters, including Marie-Laure’s father, a miniaturist and keeper-of-keys at the Museum of Natural History. The relationship between him and his daughter is a deeply moving one, as is the story of young Werner, who witnesses the effects of Nazism from the inside, and from a young age.

All The Light We Cannot See is one of the most powerful, moving, and satisfying American novels of this century, and one of the best historical fiction books we have.

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

Babel is one of the most raw, powerful, politically aggressive, and savvy historical novels you’ll ever read; one that also mixes in dark academia and a sprinkle of urban fantasy. Set in Oxford, 1836, Babel tells the story of a boy from Canton (Guangdong) China who narrowly escapes dying of cholera with the rest of his family as he is whisked away by a rich and powerful white man.

This man is Professor Lovell, an English academia who brings Robin to London, teaches him Greek and Latin, encourages his studies in translation, and then sends him off to Oxford University.

There, Robin is enrolled in the Royal Institute of Translation, housed in the tallest tower in Oxford, the titular Babel. Robin is also recruited into the ranks of a radical political group known as Hermes, who seek to disrupt the British Empire and its economic powers in order to free its annexed and strangled nations.

Babel is a masterpiece of historical fiction that tackles the monstrous, inhuman actions of the British Empire head-on. It’s a novel with teeth and claws, and an absolute must-read.

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Perfume by Patrick Süskind

Translated from the German by John E. Woods

What begins with one of the most alluring opening lines soon spirals into a gorgeously twisted tale of death and strangeness, written and translated with staggering beauty. Perfume tells the tale of the 18th century French orphan Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who slipped from his mother while she worked at a fish market and then promptly died. And while his beginnings are bleak, he soon grows into an unusual kind of monster.

Grenouille has the uncanny ability to identify smells from miles away. His nose is unnaturally attuned, and he will eventually kill for the smells he desires most. We watch him grow up, become apprentice to a perfumer in Paris, and eventually leave when he grows tired of other people. But the smells of certain women drive him to commit terrible crimes in this blend of historical fiction and poetic fantasy.

Perfume is a grotesque novel about the intersection between death and obsession, as well as the corruption of power and dominance. An unsavoury yet addictive work that proves to be an entirely compulsive read.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati

While we at Books and Bao love ourselves some Greek Mythology, and there are many great retellings of the Greek classics out there right now, this is about historical fiction. And one of the best of these historical novels set within Ancient Greece is Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra.

This is a dark, angry, intimate, epic that follows the life of the titular Clytemnestra, a Spartan princess who is known for being the wife and murderer of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae.

Clytemnestra begins with our protagonist’s youth, growing up alongside her sister Helen, falling in love with a decent man, and eventually having his son. But we know that, eventually, she will be married to the bloodthirsty tyrant king Agamemnon; her sister Helen will marry his brother and be stolen to Troy by Paris, thus beginning the Trojan War.

This masterpiece of historical fiction covers all of this and so much more, sparing none of the tragedy that befalls our protagonist. A tense, angry feminist masterpiece of a novel, Clytemnestra is a must-read; one of the most essential historical fiction books on the shelves right now.

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Read More: The Best History Books Ever Written

Nettleblack by Nat Reeve

Nettleblack is the debut novel by non-binary British author Nat Reeve; a laugh-out-loud funny and delightfully charming novel in so many surprising ways. Taking influence from Shakespeare, Dickens, and Agatha Christie, and also reminiscent of the settings found in the film Hot Fuzz and the show Schitt’s Creek, Nettleblack is an absolute delight.

Nettleblack is set in the late 19th Century and tells the story of Henry Nettleblack, youngest daughter of a family who made their fortune developing a medicinal tincture. When Henry’s eldest sister wishes to marry her off into the gentry, she runs away from home, and an absurd twist of fate lands her in the ranks of a quirky, odd local vigilante group who call themselves the Dallyangle Division.

There, she meets and works clumsily alongside a host of eccentric characters with names that would make Dickens jealous and personalities lifted from Shakespeare’s finest comedies. One of these characters is Pip Property, a wonderful dandy of a non-binary character.

Nettleblack warms and entertains in equal measure; it is a celebration of strangeness and difference. It congratulates those of us who don’t fit the status quo and gives us a wonderful world to escape to.

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In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Alice Winn’s debut novel feels, in its tone and execution, like a time capsule. The feeling of public schoolboy life, the forbidden love between two young men on the verge of adulthood, and the cruel, cold, uncaring nature of life in the trenches of the Great War — all of it is brought to life through thoughtful language that dances between unrelenting, unapologetic viscerality and witty, friendly banter.

This is the story of Gaunt and Ellwood, upper-class lads in their teens, arrogant and charming, each madly and secretly in love with the other. When Gaunt’s German mother persuades him to enlist in order to stop the rumours that their family are spies, Ellwood follows him into the trenches. What follows is a romance that blossoms in the unlikeliest of places.

In Memoriam is a war novel that is as kind as it is unkind, written with gusto and humour. The love and friendship on display is comforting, and the exposure of war and trench life is exactly as harrowing and discomfiting as it should be. A powerful piece of historical war fiction.

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The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Kiran Milwood Hargrave is one of the most exciting and beloved authors of the UK today. Having written several celebrated YA novels, The Mercies was her first novel for adults, and it made waves upon its publication.

Inspired by true events, The Mercies is set in 1617 Norway — specifically the island of Vardo. The book begins with a freak winter storm taking the lives of every man from the island community — all were fishermen, and all were tragically at sea when the storm suddenly hit.

Vardo is now an island of women. Soon enough, a man of God arrives from Scotland to “take control”. He has brought with him his wife, a woman inspired when she finds a community devoid of men. The Mercies is written with astonishing prose. A truly gorgeous novel, from beginning to end. It is the perfect length, expertly paced, utterly flawless in its writing and atmosphere.

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The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Kiran Milwood Hargraves’ follow-up to The Mercies was the riveting and strange The Dance Tree: a historical novel about patriarchy, superstition, and oppression.

Set in 16th Century Strasbourg, The Dance Tree follows Lisbet, a young woman who has been struggling to carry a child to term. She is pregnant again, and desperately praying that this one will last. Her husband’s sister was sentenced to seven years of penance for a sin nobody will mention, and she is set to return during this blisteringly hot summer.

Amongst these big changes, the town has also been taken by a strange “disease” as women walk into the town square and start to dance. They dance for days until collapsing, and then dance some more. Kiran Millwood Hargrave continues to prove herself an author of some of the very best historical fiction books coming out of the UK right now.

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The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

The Confessions of Frannie Langton  is one of the most impactful historical novels of recent years; all the more impressive considering it is a debut novel. Sara Collins is a Black British writer and ex-lawyer who also penned the screenplay for the TV adaptation of her novel.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton begins with our protagonist on trial for murder. It’s 1826, she was born and educated on the plantations of Jamaica, and she has since worked as a maid for the wealthy Benham family in London. Mrs Benham, a woman Frannie dearly loved, is dead, and it’s Frannie who stands to hang for the murder. But did she do it? And if so, why?

A truly mind-bending tale of race, class, empire, love, queerness, and so much more. A true modern classic amongst the very best historical fiction books.

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The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Laura Shepherd-Robinson has made a deserved name for herself writing historical thrillers, but The Square of Sevens is a larger beast than that. While still a novel led by mystery and intrigue, it is less of a thriller and more of an historical drama set in the Bath and London of the 1730s and ’40s.

Our protagonist is a girl named Red, who grew up travelling the roads of England with her father, performing cartomancy using the pseudo-mythical art known as the square of sevens. She never knew her mother, and early in the novel her father dies, but not before urging a kindly and wealthy man to take his daughter in.

This man, Antrobus, raises Red as “Rachel” in a life of comfort, until her life becomes unravelled when she turns sixteen. As she searches for the truth about her parents — specifically who her mother might have been — Red is soon forced to flee to London.

There, she uses her skills to survive and follow a trail that will hopefully lead her to the truth of her family, and so much more. The Square of Sevens is a lengthy and dense historical mystery novel full of intrigue, delivering constant twists and turns that keep the reader on their toes.

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Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens

Lucky Red is a sapphic historical novel set in the American Wild West of the late 19th century. Our protagonist, Bridget, is a beautiful young redhead whose childhood was plagued with bad luck, to say the least. Bridget was raised by her dumb and useless father, who sold their house for next to nothing. Then, out on the dusty road together, the father and daughter take shelter where he is bitten and killed by a rattlesnake.

Alone, Bridget wanders until she reaches the frontier town of Dodge, Kansas. There, her luck changes as she is taken in by the good and kind women of the Buffalo Queen brothel, where she works and finds a community. She takes to sex work easily, enjoys the gift of food and shelter, and builds a solid bond with the other women at the Queen. And soon enough, she comes to realise that, while men are her work, women are what she loves and craves.

Lucky Red is an exciting historical novel about sex, lust, love, and the bonds between women in small communities where the world is a dangerous, difficult place.

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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a sincerely beloved novel; an epic family saga that takes the reader on a soulful journey through early 20th century Korea and Japan. Four generations of a Korean family take us through their lives in the midst of the tragic and tumultuous annexation of Korea by the Japanese Empire.

Today in post-empire Japan, many zainichi Koreans continue to live, descended from those Koreans who were forced to move to Japan in the years leading up to World War II.

We begin with Sunja, a young and poor Korean who is pulled mercilessly in different directions by the actions and choices of men. As we read, we travel from rural, coastal Korea to both the highest and lowest parts of Japanese society. Pachinko is an incredible family saga and one of the best historical fiction books of all time.

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Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Lady Macbeth is Ava Reid’s feminist reimagining of both Shakespeare’s iconic character and the events of the play itself. Reid’s Lady M, Roscille, is a young French princess who has been sent by her father to marry the Thane of Glammis. There, she is met with brutality—both in the desolate landscape and in the men who roam the halls of Macbeth’s castle. Young and savvy, she must find a way to survive amongst all this hopelessness.

Roscille is believed to be witch-kissed, cursed to doom any man who lays eyes on her; and so she is constantly veiled and behaves in a reserved manner. But she is also savvy, and she will use her intelligence to do more than just survive. She will come to understand and tame this blood-soaked landscape and the murderous men who wage wars on it.

Roscille is a far cry from Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Rather than being the power-hungry puppetmaster, poking and prodding at her cowardly husband, she is a woman out of her depth who must learn to bend this place and its men to her will. Calling this a feminist retelling is a little misleading, since Lady M has always been a beacon of feminine strength. Instead, Roscille is simply a different kind of heroine; one a little more true to history, perhaps.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers, and rightly so. Her novels set a standard for fiction that is hard to match.

Beloved, one of her most celebrated books, was written in 1987 and set in 1873, after the end of the American Civil War. Our protagonists are former slave Sethe and her teenage daughter Denver. Their home is haunted by a ghost which they believe to be that of Sethe’s own eldest daughter.

When a former slave from the same plantation on which Sethe once worked, a man named Paul D, turns up at their home, he drives the ghost away. Paul D then invites the mother and daughter to a carnival, and when they return home, a young woman named Beloved is waiting for them on their front porch.

Beloved is a story of slavery, of its traumas and the ways in which it defines a person, their family, and their community. It is a classic of American fiction, a true masterpiece, and one of the very best historical fiction books.

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Finger Bone by Hiroki Takahashi

Translated from the Japanese by Takami Nieda

Novels about World War II are a dime a dozen. Some are excellent; some are forgettable and even offensive (looking at you, John Boyne, you terrible, terrible writer). Finger Bone is one of those rare novels that transcends its genre. This is a masterpiece of Japanese war fiction that encourages us to wrestle with that age-old question: where is the good in war?

Our protagonist is a young, nameless Japanese soldier in Papua New Guinea. As this short novel progresses, we watch him make and lose friends, connect with frightened locals, and survive injury and illness.

Taking place partly in a field hospital and partly in the thick of the jungle, Finger Bone is wonderfully reminiscent of the poems of Wilfred Owen. A raw tale about the darkest, bleakest moments of warfare. This is about innocent men suffering fatal wounds, struggling to overcome malaria, forging bonds, and watching those bonds get cut in the blink of an eye.

Few war novels have such a raw, powerful, painful effect on the reader as Finger Bone does, and it does so in such a short space of time. Read it in one sitting, and it’ll change you forever.

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For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

Easily one of the most raw, beautiful, and poetic historical fiction books you’ll ever read, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain is a true triumph of feminist literature. This 160-page novel tells the story of two medieval women who existed at the same time, both of whom wrote two valuable texts that were almost lost to time — one of which was the first known book written in English by a woman.

Julian saw a series of visions of Christ at a young age. This, and the loss of so many loved ones to disease, led her to become an anchoress, locked away in a church cell for decades. In this holy and revered, but dismal and oppressive role, Julian hears the stories and confessions of those who visit her window.

Margery, a younger woman, has also seen visions of Christ, and even takes to the street to share them with the public. This behaviour is risky, and makes her a villain to friends and strangers alike. A truly beautiful piece of feminist historical fiction, this novel is one-of-a-kind and a must-read, whether you’re a fan of historical fiction books or not.

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Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill

For their debut novel, Scottish author decided to write a spiritual sequel to Frankenstein. That kind of choice takes guts to make, but C.E. McGill proved they could do it.

Set in the 1850s, at a time of scientific change and advancement in Europe, Our Hideous Progeny follows Victor Frankenstein’s great niece, Mary. She and her husband are desperate to make names for themselves in the world of science — specifically geology and palaeontology.

At a time when the newly-discovered fossils of prehistoric creatures have taken the world by storm, for a woman to discover that her great uncle, mad though he may have been, might have been able to reanimate a dead thing and conquer death, is a very exciting thing to learn.

Mary and her husband Henry also have their own marital issues. She lost a newborn child and he has been secretly gambling away their money instead of dealing with his grief. Then there’s the subtly growing friendship, and potentially romantic bond, between Mary and her husband’s younger sister.

Our Hideous Progeny is a novel that juggles so much — speculative science, gothic themes and atmosphere, whispers and backstabbing, betrayal and hope and, perhaps most importantly, dinosaurs.

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At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

At Night All Blood is Black, which won the International Booker Prize in 2021, is a heartrending historical novel by Senegalese-French author David Diop. This World War I novel tells the story of Alfa, a Senegalese man stationed in the French trenches.

When the novel opens, Alfa is cradling the dying body of his friend Mademba, whose body has been torn open. From here, At Night All Blood is Black uses the backdrop of trench warfare to explore the relevant themes of racism, humanity, and masculinity.

This is a story of binaries: the in-group and out-group; us vs. them; Black and white; hero and coward. This is a French historical novel that explores the toxic side of male camaraderie and how racism continues to live and thrive even while staring death in the face.

While you do need a steeled mind and a strong stomach to read it, At Night All Blood is Black is certainly one of the best historical fiction books of recent years.

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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Jessie Burton’s debut novel, The Miniaturist, remains her most beloved and successful novel; a piece of historical fiction that propelled her into the realm of admired and respected contemporary British authors. Set in Amsterdam, 1686, at the height of the Dutch East India Company’s power, The Miniaturist follows Nella, the young wife of the successful merchant trader Johannes Brandt.

As a wedding gift, Brandt presents Nella with a detailed and beautiful miniature copy of their home, which she is invited to decorate and add to by visiting an enigmatic local miniaturist who will provide what she needs.

The Brandt home is one of secrets and paranoia. Johannes’ sister Marin also lives there, and she is a particularly venomous and closed-off woman whom Nella is fearful of. As revelations come to light and Nella begins to understand her husband and his family better, her world begins to shift and fall off its axis.

The Miniaturist is an exciting, exhilarating read, defined by its twists and revelations. One of the most successful historical novels of this century, and for good reason.

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Ithaca by Claire North

Renowned author of science fiction novels Claire North (pseudonym of Catherine Webb) turned her attention to Greek history and mythology to bring us a feminist retelling with Penelope, wife of Odysseus, at its heart. Odysseus has been absent for eighteen years. He sailed with an army to fight in the Trojan War, and while other leaders and warriors returned, he never has. And so, the suitors have come knocking.

As she sits and weaves a funeral shroud, Penelope is inundated with suitors looking to marry her and take Odysseus’ place on the throne of Ithaca. Her son, Telemachus — who never knew his father — insists that Odysseus will return, and raiders are threatening the delicate peace of Penelope’s kingdom.

The story of Ithaca is told by the goddess Hera, and she provides us with a host of colourful, mostly female, characters, fleshing out the world of Ithaca and the life of Penelope. Ithaca is an excellent piece of Greek mythology retold with a feminist twist, and one of the best historical fiction books of recent years.

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The Bewitching by Jill Dawson

Written by renowned author Jill Dawson, The Bewitching is a literary historical novel based on real events which took place in the Cambridgeshire village of Warboys in the late 1500s.

After village local Alice Samuel visits her new neighbours, the Throckmortons, she is inexplicably accused of witchcraft by their daughter Jane, who has recently been suffering from fits. Though her accusation is strange and baseless, it planets a seed, and the family begin to wonder if Alice has in fact somehow cursed Jane and other members of the Throckmorton family.

We watch their suspicions grow through the eyes of their faithful maid, Martha, while also occasionally turning to Alice to better understand her life, her husband, and the village itself. This is a beautiful literary novel about paranoia, suspicion, patriarchy, and power; one of the smartest and best historical fiction books of recent years.

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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Historical fiction, by its definition, can take us almost anywhere in time, but many often focus on more recent centuries.

Ken Follett’s colossal historical epic, The Pillars of the Earth, takes us all the way back to 12th century Britain. Its sequels jump forward in time until we reach the Elizabethan period. Despite its setting, the town of Kingsbridge, being fictional, many of the novel’s other elements are factual and delightfully detailed.

This is a novel that follows the building of a cathedral in the aforementioned town, and is set against a civil war known as the Anarchy, which was fought between England and Normandy. The war lasted for fifteen years and serves as the backdrop for this novel, with many historical events, such as the infamous sinking of the White Ship, being captured in this novel.

Much like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, this is a novel that dramatises the politics and people of a time in British history that is so far from us today, it almost feels like legend. An incredible epic, and one of the most beloved and successful historical fiction books to have ever come out of the UK.

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The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore

The Manningtree Witches, one of my own personal favourite novels, begins in 1643, in a place almost devoid of men, after so many went off to fight in the English Civil War. We follow Rebecca West and her bitter mother Beldam West, as they come face-to-face with the Witchfinder General.

This is a novel which reveals the blackest hearts of men and the true power and reason behind the witch hunts of Europe and America. But The Manningtree Witches is also a novel about family ties and female friendships; about the power of community bonds in the face of oppression.

We follow a battle between the powerful and the vulnerable, the men and the women, the suspicious and the suspect, the strong and the weak. The Manningtree Witches is a beautiful short novel about patriarchy, written with wit and strength and stunning language that evokes the time period perfectly. One of the most poetically beautiful and best historical novels you’ll ever read.

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The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore

A.K. Blakemore’s second historical novel continues her immaculate trend of injecting poetry into prose, and writing tales of tragedy and hardship with so much beauty and elegance.

The Glutton is based on the real-life story of Tarare, a young Frenchman born near Lyon in the year 1772. When the novel begins, Tarare is in his late twenties and on his deathbed, telling his tale to a nun who believes him an offence; an abomination, but who is curious enough to listen and learn about The Bottomless Man.

Tarare is said to have been a scrawny man with an unslakable hunger; a man who gained fame by publicly eating live animals, household objects, and possibly even a human child. All of this hearsay is injected into the novel, and we read on as Tarare is born, raised, leaves home, and wanders headlong into the French revolution.

The Glutton is a stunningly written tale full of gruesome events, visceral language, and unforgivable acts. But it’s also a politically-charged tale of class and poverty. This is the unbelievable tale of a young man growing up, being beaten and abandoned, finding a family, and witnessing a revolution. Easily one of the best historical fiction books of recent years.

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The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

For fans of Pachinko (above), The Mountains Sing is a sweeping family saga set against the tumultuous and disastrous backdrop of change and war in 20th century Vietnam. Here, we follow the Tran family across decades of political shifts, beginning with their relocation from their own rural farm to the city of Hanoi during the rise of Communism.

This leads to the beginnings of the Vietnam War, which tears the Tran family apart as some of the men travel to Ho Chi Minh to bear arms and fight. Nguyen Phan Que Mai herself has discussed the difficulties of writing this novel in English, and the pride she felt in writing something so comprehensive.

She has mentioned how the family’s matriarch is the grandmother she had always wished for, and how this novel was born from her own experiences living through the Vietnam War. A wonderfully personal tale, but also one that takes us across generations and landscapes, painting a vivid and uncomfortably real image of 20th century Vietnam.

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The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezon Camara

Translated from the Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre

Another favourite of mine, The Adventures of China Iron is a unique kind of historical novel; one that prioritises queer joy in the face of patriarchy. Set against the wild and rugged landscape of 19th century Argentina, this is the story of a young woman, after all hope has left her, finding love and adventure in spite of the odds.

The titular China Iron was abused. She married and sired the child of a singer who left her. She gave that child up. Now, she is alone on the road, with nothing to her name.

As her true story gets underway, China is picked up on the road by a Scottish woman named Liz, who is looking to make her fortune in this new and mysterious land. Soon after their journey begins, China begins to crave Liz. She is a woman who feels a great deal – she lusts and yearns; she wants to love and be loved.

The Adventures of China Iron is a proudly queer and feminist book that, rather than getting angry, laughs in the face of the rigid, conservative, patriarchal status quo.A wonderful adventure across a picturesque landscape, a tale of queer and feminist liberation, and one of the best historical fiction books you’ll ever read.

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The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff’s intensely emotive and visceral novel about a nameless English girl taken across the ocean to the New World, only to continue her life of servitude and confront both deathly cold and famine, before escaping into the wilderness, is one of the most immersive historical novels you’re ever likely to read.

This is a transportive novel that is light on plot. Instead, it simply places us in the mind of a girl in the 17th century who has fled her colonialist settlement in the dark of night. We follow her as she battles the cold and her own hunger, as she marvels at the natural world, and as she muses on her relationship to her land, her people, and her faith.

Through flashbacks, we learn about her life in London, the people she served, and what happened to cause her to flee. Groff’s language stuns and immerses; it is harsh and poetic. This is a truly immersive and transportive tale of survival, fear, grief, and god. A difficult read but a sincerely stunning one.

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The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

When we think of Pompeii, most of us think of its destruction by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but here in The Wolf Den, Elodie Harper presents us with the Pompeii that was. The Wolf Den tells the story of a brothel and a woman named Amara, sold after the death of her beloved father. This is a story of one woman’s survival; Amara uses her own wits, wiles, and strengths to live against the odds.

The Wolf Den is a staggeringly successful piece of historical fiction that explores the unique strengths of a woman, rather than painting her as strong by the archetypal male standards and frameworks.

This is a book that puts the spotlight on sex workers, reminding us of their strengths, their tenacity, their fight. It’s also a novel about friendship, as Amara makes friends for different purposes, as cynical means of survival and also as bonds to keep herself and others alive and proud. The beginning of an epic trilogy, The Wolf Den is one of the most refreshingly unique and spirited historical fiction books out there.

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The Court Dancer by Kyung-sook Shin

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Based on a true story — set in the final years of 19th century Korea as China, Russia, and Japan are threatening the nation trapped between them — The Court Dancer is a love story. This is the romantic tale of a man and a woman from two different worlds, colliding in a moment of beauty.

And while that is true, this is also the tale of a woman born without a family, adopted into the courts of the Joseon Dynasty, romanced by a French diplomat, and whisked away across the waves to foreign shores. All the while, she is trying to find the time to understand who she is, what she is, and what she wants out of a life that has never really been hers.

Written by one of South Korea’s most beloved and celebrated authors, The Court Dancer is a story about the commodification of cultures, their art, and even their own people. It is about the ways in which colonists and powerful men wilfully forget the humanity of those they treat like toys and property.

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Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein

Translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein is a dedication to the life and the genius of Mary Shelley by Dutch author Anne Eekhout, set across two different summers during the teenage years of the Frankenstein author’s life. The first of these summers is 1812, when Mary was only fourteen. The second is 1816, the infamous summer spent at Lake Geneva with her husband and their friend Lord Byron.

That summer of 1816 led to the creation of Frankenstein, as the group challenged one another to write horror stories and read them by the fire. We spend time with Mary as she deals with the loss of her first-born child and the fear that her newborn son William might share the same fate.

The summer of 1812 was spent in Dundee, where Mary bonded with a grief-stricken girl of her own age. The two became fast friends, and that friendship eventually blossomed into something far more romantic and intense. We read about this summer in a series of journal entries from the young Mary herself.

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein is a gorgeous piece of gothic historical fiction about a young woman dealing with loss, learning about herself, falling in love, and so much more, all before she ever wrote her masterpiece.

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The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Set in 1913, Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk’s brilliantly feminist tale of historical horror, The Empusium, follows a young Polish man named Wojnicz, who is suffering with tuberculosis and so has arrived at a treatment centre up in the mountains of Germany. During his stay, he talks with the other men, many of whom often enjoy discussing how women are inferior in both body and mind.

But early in the novel, the wife of the centre’s owner is found dead, presumably by suicide. Her death leads to a series of strange events, and compounds the conversations being had by the men there. These men also imbibe a strange concoction that does strange things to their minds. The story becomes more unhinged as the absence of women is felt so strongly. Another work of genius by Tokarczuk.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Written by Australian author Markus Zusak, The Book Thief is his most successful and celebrated novel. If you haven’t read this novel, you might have seen its very good film adaptation, starring the charismatic Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. Narrated by Death itself, The Book Thief follows the life of a young German girl named Liesel.

Similar to Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin, this is a novel about ordinary German civilians looking on helplessly as their country becomes corrupted by the spread of fascism. The novel begins with Liesel losing her brother and being adopted by a kindly couple: Hans and Rosa, before befriending a local boy named Rudy.

The book’s name comes from Liesel’s small act of rebellion as she saves a book from a bonfire as the Nazis engage in their infamous book-burning. This is a dense and engrossing novel full of heart; a strikingly human piece of historical fiction.

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The Corset by Laura Purcell

Laura Purcell is an incredible British author who brings so much life to the genres of gothic, horror, and historical fiction, and The Corset remains her sharpest work. A dual narrative split between a young wannabe scientist from a middle-class family and an incarcerated girl who believes she has magically murdered several people, The Corset is a dizzying and exquisite historical novel.

The narrative of this book shifts back and forth between the interviews and life events of one woman, and the biographical flashbacks of the other, as she explains how she ended up in prison with the label of “murderess”. The question of whether or not anything supernatural at all is going on is such an alluring one. The Corset is a true page-turner and one of the best historical fiction books of today.

Enticing, mysterious, enigmatic, and engrossing, The Corset is a novel that encompasses many different genres, and it does so with flourish and expertise.

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The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

Laura Purcell has been writing excellent gothic, horror, and historical novels for a while, but her fifth foray into the genre — The Whispering Muse — might be her masterpiece. Set in a West End theatre during the 19th century, The Whispering Muse follows a young woman named Jenny who has been hired as the dresser for the theatre’s lead actress.

But Jenny has been hired under the condition that she keep a close eye on Lilith, whom the wife of the theatre’s owner believes cannot be trusted. As she gets closer to both the owner’s wife and the talented actress Lilith, Jenny finds that her loyalties are torn.

Making things more difficult is the rumour that Lilith is in possession of a cursed item, and has made a deal with tragic muse Melpomene in order to secure success as an actress. The Whispering Muse is a daring and dark novel, even amongst other great gothic novels. It plays with the reader and the characters in ways only a gothic novel can.

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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s masterpiece The Underground Railroad won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. This is an amazing piece of American historical fiction that reimagines the titular Underground Railroad as an actual underground network of train lines.

We follow Cora, a slave in the 19th century American South, who escapes her Georgia plantation with the help of fellow slave Caesar. The pair hunt for the Underground Railroad and encounter both friends and enemies along the way. They commit desperate deeds to ensure their survival.

This is an incredible work of American historical fiction that has since cemented Colson Whitehead as one of the great American writers of the 21st century.

Buy a copy of The Underground Railroad here!

Regeneration by Pat Barker

Arguably best known for her feminist retelling of the Trojan War, The Silence of the Girls (below), Pat Barker also penned an illuminating trilogy of books about World War 2: the Regeneration trilogy. Written in the early 1990s, this trilogy of historical novels consists of Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road.

Inspired by the lived experiences of her own grandfather, a World War I soldier, Regeneration explores the effects of war on the minds of those soldiers that live through it. Regeneration also features fictionalised versions of real-life WWI poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Own.

Set in Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, this is an anti-war novel that follows psychiatrist Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, as well as the aforementioned Sassoon and Owen, as soldiers in the hospital are being treated for PTSD (what we once called shell shock). Regeneration and its sequels remain some of the best historical fiction books of all time.

Buy a copy of Regeneration here!

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Pat Barker’s harsh but illuminating feminist historical novel retells the story of Homer’s classic The Iliad from the perspectives of ordinary people, rather than heroes. The Silence of the Girls retells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis — queen turned captive turned prize for Achilles as one of many spoils of the war.

Pat Barker has a knack for taking eras and stories that typically focus on the masculine and the heroic, and putting the focus instead on the tragedy of it all. She did it with Regeneration and World War I (above), and she’s done it again with The Silence of the Girls.

This is one of the most powerful classic retellings you’re ever likely to read; a novel that highlights the darkest, most desperate, most deplorable acts of warfare. A feminist piece of historical fiction of the highest calibre.

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The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

Set in 1643, during the English Civil War, The Leviathan is a creeping, gothic piece of historical fiction that will have you gripping the pages like the wheel of an out-of-control car.

Our narrator protagonist, Thomas Treadwater, is a young man who has returned from the war to his father’s rural farm. His younger sister is rather out of sorts because she believes that their new servant has been seducing and manipulating their ageing father.

On occasion, chapters shift forward to Thomas as an old man, married and comfortable, but haunted by something in his house. Something which he must periodically feed and watch over.

The Leviathan is Laura Purcell meets Stuart Turton with a glorious and delightful campness and atmosphere reminiscent of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. One of the most fun and thrilling historical novels you will ever get your hands on, and one that you’ll definitely tear through at pace.

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

To consider that American author Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing is a debut novel is simply mind-blowing. This is an extraordinary debut work of fiction, the kind you so rarely see. Homegoing is an enormous epic novel which spans continents and decades, generations of lives and the entire history of the United States.

Homegoing begins with two sisters, and the threads which lead on from their lives. These are lives that they had next to no control over, and yet shaped not only what they would become, but what the generations that followed would be. From Ghana to the US, this incredible novel by an extraordinary Black writer is one-of-a-kind, and a real masterpiece of American historical fiction.

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Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

Nell Stevens’ debut novel, Briefly, A Delicious Life, is one of the most sensual, sexy, and satisfying historical novels you’re ever likely to read. Similar to Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (above), this novel places a celebrated male artist at the centre but focuses its attention instead on those sorely overlooked people who surrounded him.

Here, that artist is Chopin, who has contracted consumption and has come to Mallorca for rest and recovery. With him is French author George Sand, with whom Chopin has been having a love affair. Our narrator, however, is the ghost of a young girl who died five hundred years earlier, haunts their new home, and quickly becomes smitten with the beautiful George Sand.

She haunts the Charterhouse and admires Sand from the shadows, digging into her memories and learning more about her — the masculine clothes she wears and the male name she has adopted. Briefly, A Delicious Life is a beautiful historical novel that revels in pleasure: sexual desire, feminine sensuality, delicious food, beautiful scenery.

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The North Water by Ian McGuire

The often overlooked The North Water is a brutal piece of historical fiction; a must-read for fans of Jack London’s novel The Sea Wolf. Set aboard a British whaling vessel called the Volunteer, this is a simple novel about brutality, depravity, and the ways in which the harshness of nature and humanity can be hard to tell apart.

Aboard this ship, disgraced and broke ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner must face the inhuman terror of harpooner Henry Drax, a brute who delights in bloodshed. The North Water isn’t for everyone; echoing the brutal tone and style of Cormac McCarthy, this is a novel of intensity and aggression. A one-of-a-kind historical novel.

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The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown

The Key in the Lock is an exciting and relatively unique piece of historical fiction, in that it is a drama which doubles as a compelling murder mystery story.

The Key in the Lock is a narrative that is split chronologically. We follow both the adult Ivy, who lost her son in the Great War, and the child Ivy of the late Victorian period, emotionally scarred by a dreadful fire. The mystery of the novel surrounds the fire itself, the boy who died in that fire, and the reasons behind it.

As a child, Ivy was the daughter of the village doctor. When the fire broke out, she and her father were called to the big house, and became tangled in the web of lies surrounding the cause of the blaze.

As an adult, Ivy has not only lost her son, but her husband is also incredibly sick, and as we flit back to the past we see how she and her husband’s relationship initially began. The Key in the Lock is a shining example of both historical British fiction and the legacy genre of murder mystery novels.

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Atonement by Ian McEwan

Not only is Atonement the greatest literary achievement of Ian McEwan’s career, it also received a staggering and beautiful film adaptation from director Joe Wright. Wright is known for his adaptations of literary works, which also include Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina, but his talents shone brightest with Atonement.

McEwan’s historical novel moves from pre-war England, into World War II, and ending in 1999. Our narrator-protagonist is Briony, who is writing the novel at age 77. We spend time in her pre-war childhood and learn about her relationships, the lies she tells, and the mistakes she must live with.

We also watch her grow up through World War II, and see how the actions of her childhood continue to reverberate throughout her life, and the lives of those around her. An intimate, sensitive, and provocative novel, Atonement remains one of the very best historical fiction books ever written.

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The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

The Pull of the Stars made a huge splash upon its release, rightly so, and is now unquestionably Emma Donoghue’s most successful novel. The Canada-based Irish author penned a story of love in a time of war and disease. Set in a Dublin hospital during World War I, as the Spanish Flu slowly ravages the British Isles, Julia Power is a nurse who must help young mothers and comfort those stricken by this strange new illness.

Over the course of just three days, Nurse Power meets two women — one on the lam and the other a new volunteer — and their stories tangle together into a kind of melody that sings louder and louder as The Pull of the Stars progresses. A unique book amongst war-based narratives, this is a claustrophobic and intimate tale that ranks highly amongst even the very best historical fiction books.

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Haven by Emma Donoghue

Following the massive success of The Pull of the Stars (above), Donoghue dug even further back in time to the 7th century. Haven is a historical novel that tells the story of the founding of Skellig Michael, an isolated island off the coast of Ireland. Today, Skellig Michael is perhaps best known for its use in The Last Jedi as the place where Luke Skywalker retreated into hiding.

In the 7th century, however — as Donoghue tells it in Haven — the island was discovered by a priest and two monks after the priest experienced a prophetic dream. Haven is the story of that dream and the subsequent journey the three men undertook. A beautiful tale of faith and discovery, Haven is a truly unique novel amongst the best historical fiction books.

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North Woods by Daniel Mason

North Woods is a literary piece of historical fiction that traces the life of the United States via the history of a single home and the many people who occupy it over the course of four centuries.

We begin with a runaway couple of Puritans who make a home for themselves in a New England log cabin. Soon enough, the husband is gone and the wife, now elderly, helps a woman and her child escape capture. Jumping forward several decades, the house becomes the home and livelihood of an English soldier who swaps his rifle for a shovel and grows a successful apple orchard.

After this, we follow his daughters, then the lonely life of a lovelorn painter, and so it goes until we reach the present day. And many of these interconnected stories of lives lived are written in an epistolary style: journals, letters, reports, newspaper clippings, and more. A stunning work of literary historical fiction.

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The Revolt by Clara Dupont-Monod

Translated from the French by Ruth Diver

French historical novel The Revolt retells the story of the 12th century queen of France and England, the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine. This short novel covers the majority of her life, and injects the narrative with themes and an atmosphere reminiscent of Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

But what makes The Revolt so smart in its telling is the novel’s narrative perspective. The Revolt is told to us by Richard Lionheart, son of Eleanor. This tight and pacey medieval epic begins with Richard painting a vivid picture of his mother: her opportunistic mind and her venomous words.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is married to Henry Plantagenet, king of England, and she has just decided to gather three of her sons and start a revolt against her own husband, their father. The Revolt is one of the very best historical novels. It succeeds at everything that makes a novel great.

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo follows the story of Monique Grant, an unknown magazine reporter chosen by reclusive Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo to write her biography.

As Monique delves into Evelyn’s glamorous and scandalous life, she uncovers tales of ambition, friendship, and forbidden love spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s.  As the two women form a connection, it becomes apparent that their lives intersect in tragic and irreversible ways.

This captivating historical novel takes readers on a journey through the glamour and depravity of old Hollywood, exploring the harsh realities of fame and the struggle of confronting the truth, no matter the cost. This is an American historical novel that really took the world by storm upon its release, and for good reason. It remains a captivating tale and a must-read.

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The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Interweaving three narratives, set in three time periods, The Bass Rock is a gothic historical novel about family, duty, mental health, and patriarchal oppression.

Our first thread takes place in the modern day, with Viv — a grieving woman with a lot of trauma and an attachment to alcohol — having been tasked with clearing out her family home in Scotland. The home was once inhabited by her grandmother, Ruth.

In her own narrative — set in the aftermath of World War II — Ruth is married to a widower, is playing stepmother to his two sons, and is also grieving the recent loss of her brother. Our third narrative thread carries the reader back to the 18th century, with a woman named Sarah having been accused of witchcraft by her local village, and running for her life with the help of a vicar and his son.

The unravelling of these threads leads to a haunting, twisted, gothic narrative about oppression, toxic masculinity, vulnerability, and abuse. The Bass Rock is dark, unsettling, and tied together with incredible writing and plotting. An exquisite piece of historical fiction.

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The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

One of those rare novels that blends multiple genres with a seamless kind of grace, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is a dark, horror-tinged work of fantastical historical fiction. The novel is set entirely (or more-or-less entirely) aboard the Trans-Siberian Express at the end of the nineteenth century. But in this alternate history, Siberia is a dangerous and strange land in which monsters dwell and an illness can warp the minds of unsuspecting people.

Our protagonists are a Russian woman with ties to the train company, a young Chinese orphan who knows nothing but the train, and a disgraced English naturalist. As they journey from Beijing to Moscow, the three encounter dangers and mysteries, and we learn more and more about the train itself and the dangers that lay beyond it, out in that so-called “wasteland”.

Claustrophobic and foggy, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is a tantalising work of fantastical, gothic, alternative history. It keeps mystery at its core in order to make itself a real page-turner, but it is also full of heart, as we come to know and attach ourselves to these three likeable protagonists.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Canadian author Margaret Atwood made a name for herself with her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a modern classic that will live on forever. She has also proven herself adept at writing speculative science fiction, as well as historical fiction. Alias Grace, winner of Canada’s Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is a fictionalised account of the real-life murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in 1843.

Through retelling and fictionalising this story, Atwood created the character of Dr. Simon Jordan, who interviews our protagonist, Grace Marks, who has been convicted and imprisoned for the murders. The interview takes us through Grace’s life as Jordan searches for proof that Grace is not a criminal, but rather a hysteric.

While it isn’t her most famous novel, Alias Grace remains a beloved piece of fiction from Atwood and one of the most well-loved and best historical fiction books.

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Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman

Set during the Georgian period of UK history, Pandora is a somewhat fresh take on the genre of British historical novels, merging UK history with Greek mythology.

Our protagonist, the titular Pandora (who goes by Dora), is a young aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her oppressive uncle in an antiques shop once owned by Dora’s parents. Helen and Elijah were accomplished and respected antiquarians, but they died at a dig in Greece when Dora was a child.

Since then, her uncle has reduced the reputation of their shop to tatters by swindling their clientele with cheap tat, much to Dora’s deep disgrace and ire.

Dora’s uncle, however, has recently obtained an important find: a Greek jar (or pithos). Dora is curious about what he is up to, and is also in desperate need of inspiration for her art if she wants to find success as a jewellery designer. These two curiosities lead her to enlist the help of Edward Lawrence, an aspiring antiquarian. Together, they will learn the origins of this jar and what her uncle plans to do with it.

An exciting mystery that blends Greek history, art, and mythology with the Georgian period to wonderful effect. An essential British historical novel.

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The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Written by celebrated Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient is a multi-award-winning novel that also inspired a multi-award-winning film adaptation. Set during the Italian Campaign of World War II, The English Patient remains one of the most influential pieces of wartime historical fiction. The titular English patient is an assumed Englishman burned beyond recognition.

The story of The English Patient moves between our patient’s pre-burn memories and the current events set in an Italian monastery, in which he is being looked after by a Canadian nurse named Hana. Universally celebrated and dearly beloved, The English Patient is essential reading and one of the very best historical fiction books ever written.

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She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

She Who Became The Sun is a genderqueer retelling of the origin story of one of China’s most iconic historical figures: Zhu Yuanzhang, founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and a fantastic piece of Chinese historical fiction.

Set in 14th century China, She Who Became The Sun takes the story of Zhu Yuanzhang — the legendary tale of a peasant-turned-monk-turned-rebel-leader-turned-emperor — and transmutes it into a beautiful fantasy-inspired genderqueer epic.

In its first chapter, She Who Became The Sun shows us a peasant family on the brink of starvation. Though a fortune teller has told the father that his son will find greatness, the father and son are soon killed, and all that’s left is the fateless daughter.

This daughter takes the name Zhu Chongba, the name of her brother, disguises herself as a man, seeks refuge at a monastery, and from there rises up through the ranks of a rebel army as they gain power against the Mongols who currently occupy China. There are few historical novels as epic in scale and scope as this one, and the fact that it is a beautiful genderqueer story makes it all the more exciting and tantalising.

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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters has made a name for herself as an author of queer historical romance novels, mostly set in or near the 19th Century. And the beefy Fingersmith is, by far, her most popular work. Serving as the inspiration for Korean film director Park Chan-wook’s masterpiece The Handmaiden, Fingersmith is a work of absolute beauty. One of the most iconic historical novels in existence.

The titular fingersmith is a London thief named Sue; an orphan and a survivor raised to steal from the rich. When her enigmatic associate, known to everyone as Gentleman, comes to her with a job, she gladly accepts. The job takes Sue to a country estate, wherein she must play the role of maid to a naive young heiress while Gentleman slowly begins to court her for a fortune that he will eventually split with Sue.

Unfortunately, Sue begins to fall in love with the rich heiress, and what follows is an incredible series of impossible-to-predict twists and turns. Fingersmith is one of the most gorgeously-written historical novels ever published. Poetic prose dances on the page. And it is a celebration of raw, queer love, to boot.

Buy a copy of Fingersmith here!

Human Acts by Han Kang

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

Legendary Korean author was celebrated the world over for her daring and subversive novel The Vegetarian, which won the International Booker Prize in 2017. But it’s her experimental and bleak novel Human Acts, set amidst the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, that presents her work at its most brazen and difficult.

The Gwangju Uprising was a moment of intense political change, as the people of South Korea rose up against their government’s military dictatorship. Our protagonist is the dead boy Kang Dong-ho, and this short novel takes us from 1980 to the present day via the people who knew him and the lives they have led.

Feverish and strange, but also raw and heart-wrenching, Human Acts stands alone amongst other best historical fiction books as something truly monumental and rewarding.

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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

George Saunders is celebrated for his craft as a writer of short stories, but his debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, immediately struck a chord with readers and went on to win the Booker Prize. A bizarre and charming piece of historical fiction which I have read multiple times, Lincoln in the Bardo follows the son of Abraham Lincoln, William, as he is caught in a space between life and death.

This space, the titular bardo, is part of buddhist belief, and here is used by Saunders to explore the grief of Lincoln, and as a means of flexing the author’s craft as a storyteller. As we follow young William, we meet other ghosts caught in the bardo whom he befriends, and we also see glimpses of the world of the living, and how Honest Abe is coping with the loss of his son.

This is a beautiful and delightfully unique piece of historical fiction unlike anything else you’ll ever read. Surreal but not off-putting, this is one you’ll never forget.

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Sistersong by Lucy Holland

Upon its release, Sistersong was a very welcome surprise addition to the modern library of historical novels: a medieval novel with sprinklings of magic. Inspired by an English folktale from the era in which it’s set, Sistersong tells the tale of three siblings, all children of King Cador. Britain is divided and the Saxons are at the gate.

What sets Sistersong even further apart as a historical novel is the fact that one of the king’s three children — our three protagonists — is a transgender man. Queer people of all kinds, including my own fellow trans people, have always existed, and that should be proudly celebrated and explored through historical fiction.

Sistersong is a thrilling, political, dynamic tale of family, sisterhood, and war. A real treat amongst the very best historical fiction books.

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Outlawed by Anna North

Outlawed is an outstanding and joyous piece of American historical fiction. Set in the often romanticised and exhaustingly masculine world of the Wild West, Outlawed is a novel that tells the story of an outlaw gang of women, led by a non-binary character known only as The Kid.

Similar to The Adventures of China Iron (above), this is a queer feminist historical novel that celebrates women and non-binary people. This historical novel t emphasises joy and freedom rather than decrying the sexist state of the world.

Outlawed follows the story of Ada, daughter of a midwife who fails to get pregnant herself. Soon, she is ostracised and sent to a convent, from which she escapes, only to fall in with the Hole in the Wall gang. Ada’s story is tragic and uplifting in equal measure, with the gang itself being a true inspiration to readers looking for some fun and adventure in the best historical fiction books.

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Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

It’s challenging to make a novel as fun to read as it is hard-hitting and powerful, but Esi Edugyan has pulled it off with aplomb with her historical novel Washington Black. Washington Black is as much an adventure novel as it is a piece of historical fiction, telling the tale of a young slave boy on a sugar plantation. The titular Washington Black is owned by one brother and freed by the other.

The second brother, an inventor, takes Black as his assistant as he builds a flying machine that will free them from their plantation island. From there, the journey is fraught with perils and Washington Black must face a dangerous world alone, learning and growing along the way.

Washington Black is the perfect example of how to tell a hard-hitting story about slavery from the perspective of a young Black boy, all without sacrificing the thrill of adventure and the fun of the journey. 

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The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal

Elizabeth Macneal has become a modern legend of historical fiction, and that all began with The Doll Factory. Set in 1850s London, this historical novel follows Iris, an aspiring young painter who is asked to model for Louis Frost, on the condition that he also becomes her art tutor. Iris has also, however, become a source of obsession for the collector Silas. And it’s here that the story darkens as his obsession grows.

The Doll Factory was a breakout hit that propelled author and potter Elizabeth Macneal into literary stardom in the world of historical novels, and rightly so.

Buy a copy of The Doll Factory here!

Circus of Wonders by Elizabeth Macneal

Elizabeth Macneal’s second novel, Circus of Wonders, is very appropriately titled. What you see is what you get here.

Beginning in an English seaside village in 1866, Circus of Wonders starts with Nell, a young woman with a body covered in unsightly birthmarks. The locals ostracise her; Nell’s family patronise her. But, one day, the circus comes to town. And with it comes hope. Perhaps. Nell’s father sells her to Jasper Jupiter’s circus, but after a brief period of anger and upset, Nell comes to realise that she is happier here than anywhere else she’s ever been.

Circus of Wonders splits its narrative between Nell, Jasper, and Jasper’s brother Toby. It chronicles the circus’ rise to fame, mostly thanks to the fame that Nell quickly finds. Gorgeously written and full of vibrant, diverse characters, Circus of Wonders is a real highlight of the historical fiction genre.

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Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

Set in a plague-infested Edinburgh of the 1800s, Anatomy asks the question: What if Frankenstein was a love story? That question may be enough to reel in a crowd of readers; it was certainly enough for me, at least.

Our protagonist, Hazel, is the daughter of a wealthy family, and she has aspirations of becoming a physician. Similar to Frankenstein himself, she and her mother known death too well, and Hazel hopes to somehow conquer it. But she lives in a man’s world, and becoming a doctor isn’t easy.

Soon enough, Hazel meets Jack, a resurrection man. He spends his nights digging up bodies to sell to science, and Hazel offers to pay Jack to bring bodies to the makeshift lab she has set up in the basement of her family’s castle. From the novel’s subtitle, we know that Hazel and Jack will eventually fall in love. And there is also a wonderfully gothic, possibly supernatural villain for them to eventually go up against.

Anatomy is a true love letter to gothic fiction, and a wonderfully imaginative piece of historical fiction. Part gothic, part romance, all fun. And its sequel, Immortality, continues Hazel’s story, moving her to London and into the royal court. There, she will meet real historical figures like Lord Byron and uncover a strange society of secret individuals.

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The Foundling by Stacey Halls

Another modern legend of historical fiction, Stacey Halls made an immediate name for herself with her debut historical novel The Familiars. But it’s her second novel, The Foundling, that really cemented her legacy in the world of historical fiction books.

The Foundling begins in 1750s London, with a young girl named Bess giving up her newborn daughter to the infamous Foundling Hospital, promising to return for her when she has the money and the stability.

Several years pass by and, when Bess finally lives up to her promise, she learns that her daughter has already been retrieved from the hospital. What follows is a quiet, subtle tug-o-war between Bess and a rich, reclusive Londoner. Easily Halls’ most accomplished and beautifully-written historical novel, The Foundling is both touching and thrilling in equal measure.

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Mrs. England by Stacey Halls

Quickly following The Foundling is Stacey Halls’ third novel, Mrs England. The titular Mrs England is a rich Yorkshire woman who lives with her husband at a rural estate. Our protagonist, however, is a nurse from Birmingham who has trained and worked in London.

Unable to move abroad for work due to family responsibilities, Nurse May takes up a job caring for the four children of the England family. But Mrs England is an enigmatic source of great suspicion. This is a book that twists and turns as paranoia closes in like a fog. Both a delightfully original piece of historical fiction and a beautiful, dynamic homage to the gothic greats (most notably, Charlotte Bronte).

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The Office of Gardens and Ponds by Dider Decoin

Translated from the French by Euan Cameron

The story goes that it took legendary French author Didier Decoin fourteen years to write and perfect this most wonderful of historical novels.

Set during the Heian Period of 12th Century Japan, at a time when Kyoto – the former capital – was known as Heian Kyo, Miyuki is a fisherman’s wife. Her husband, Katsuro, is twice her age and the greatest carp-catcher in their hometown of Shimae.

After catching a batch of fine koi, Katsuro drowns. Beyond being their town’s fisherman, Katsuro was also given the job of carrying twenty koi to the capital, where they would be used by the emperor as sacred decoration in the Imperial Palace’s ponds.

Now that Katsuro is dead, his grief-stricken widow, Miyuki, must take up the task and make the month-long journey, on foot, to the capital, carrying the finest koi. What begins as a strange and exciting journey across the Japanese landscape soon becomes a fierce novel about the commodification of the poor by the rich.

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Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan

Set in an unspecific medieval time and place, Kirsty Logan’s Now She Is Witch is a revenge tragedy about witchcraft, patriarchy, and religious persecution. Lux is a young woman who has returned home from a sanctuary where she was being punished for some crime or misdemeanour, but she finds her home ruined and her mother killed.

Lux and her mother were cunning women who existed at the edges of society, useful to but not trusted by regular people. Now, those people have accused them of witchcraft and she has nothing left keeping her in what remains of her home.

She soon meets Else, an enigmatic young woman who is on her way to a stronghold in the north; there, she will take revenge on the local lord by killing him. Lux decides to accompany Else, given her lack of anything else to do. This is the story of women, shunned and accused and abused by the patriarchy, taking revenge on the religious and powerful men who oppress, hunt, and kill them.

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Silence by Shusaku Endo

Translated from the Japanese by William Johnston

Shusaku Endo was a Japanese Roman Catholic — a rare thing in Japan — who wrote this beautiful piece of Japanese historical fiction about faith and religious discrimination in Japan. 

Silence was also later adapted to the big screen by the legendary Martin Scorsese. Silence is set during the Shimabara Rebellion of the 17th century. It tells the story of several religious European men in Japan who were all based on real historical figures. Our protagonist is Sebastiao Rodriguez, a Portuguese priest who has come to Japan to help the Christian population who have been forced underground.

It’s a moving tale of Japanese historical fiction that builds in intensity and does a great job of staying dynamic as its writing style shifts from journals to letters to traditional narration. A beautiful piece of Japanese historical fiction that fans of the genre need to read.

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

Adapted into a film of the same name starring Lily James, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a truly charming piece of historical fiction. Written in an epistolary style as a series of letters sent back and forth between characters, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society follows the story of Juliet Ashton.

Ashton is an author who, after the end of World War II, receives a letter from a man named Dawsey Adams, a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which served as a cover for islanders breaking curfew during the German occupation of Guernsey.

One of the most charming pieces of WWII historical fiction, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a very charming and worthwhile read.

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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Translated from the Italian by William Weaver

Umberto Eco was a legend of Italian literature, beloved the world over for his fiction and his nonfiction writing. Eco wrote many incredible works of fiction, history, and political philosophy during his life, and his wisdom continues to live on. The Name of the Rose, originally published in 1980, remains Eco’s most famous work; a novel set in the medieval Italy of 1327.

A wildly clever, almost metafictional piece of historical fiction, The Name of the Rose asks readers to ponder scripture, power, and the power of literature itself. This novel is dense, placing us in a medieval abbey and asking us to familiarise ourselves with the customs and behaviours of that time and place.

On the face of it, this is a medieval mystery novel, a piece of detective fiction, but beneath all of that are intense discussions about theology. Intense but rewarding, The Name of the Rose is a classic of the historical fiction genre.

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My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Historical fiction and horror don’t hold hands as often as you might expect. They’re both surprisingly prudish in that respect. However, American horror author Grady Hendrix got a jump on the ’80s nostalgia trend of recent years, writing a horror novel set in the 1980s that also very much feels as though it was written in 1985.

Here, Hendrix is tackling the trope of high school drama, smartly setting it in a decade when that trope was all the rage in fiction, especially movies.

Our protagonists are two best friends who (as part of a larger group of four girls), met in a clumsy way at age ten and have been mostly inseparable ever since. One night, the four of them decide to try hallucinogenic drugs and one girl, Gretchen, goes missing for the entire night. When Abby finds her best friend, she isn’t behaving right; she’s changed.

Something terrible happened to Gretchen during those few hours, and she is now constantly reliving the horrors of it while also losing control of herself, shifting, becoming unfamiliar, and even manipulating those around her. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a frantic, dynamic, satisfying historical novel that pays homage to its era and escalates to a frightening crescendo. American ’80s nostalgia and horror done right.

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The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey

It’s 1939 and World War II has begun. In a bid to protect the rare and valuable taxidermies of London’s Natural History Museum, 30-year-old protagonist Hetty Cartwright has been tasked with moving the animals to a rural estate where they should be safer. That estate is the titular Lockwood Manor, run by Major Lockwood and his daughter Lucy.

Lucy’s mother and grandmother were lost at once in a tragic accident, and Lucy herself is a fraught and frail thing; her father is boisterous and mean-spirited. This is a novel that crawls along slowly and purposefully, dropping breadcrumbs and feeding the mystery. Ghosts and curses are whispered about; flashbacks to Lucy’s childhood answer some questions while presenting new ones.

Hetty must contend with patriarchy, bureaucracy, and her own unavoidable magnetism towards Lucy as she becomes increasingly confused and made vulnerable by the things that go bump in the night.

Buy a copy of The Animals at Lockwood Manor here!

Cunning Women by Elizabeth Lee

Set at a period of British history when William Shakespeare was alive, King James had written a book on black magic and witchcraft, and superstition controlled the fears and actions of men, Cunning Women is a feminist tale as well as a story of forbidden love.

One of the most exciting historical fiction books of recent years, Cunning Women is set in a small village with an even smaller, broken hamlet at its edge. This dead hamlet is home to a family of cunning women who use their knowledge of herbs and the land to aid and cure the very people who fear and hate them.

The eldest daughter of this family meets and begins to fall in love with a boy from the richest family in the village. Meanwhile, her brother causes trouble and stirs up the ire of the local folk. Love, lust, hate, rage, and fear all slowly collapse into one another in this fantastic piece of British historical fiction.

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The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Set in 1885 Paris, The Mad Women’s Ball is one of the most hyped French novels of recent years, translated expertly by the legendary Frank Wynne.

This is a short piece of feminist historical fiction inspired by the treatment of women by the European patriarchy for the past several centuries. Our first protagonist is a nurse named Geneviève who works at the Salpêtrière asylum in Paris. Geneviève is a devout believer in the science practised by Dr Charcot, who runs the asylum and is progressing psychology and psychotherapy with the hopes of healing the troubled minds of the women who enter his asylum.

Our second protagonist is Eugénie, the young daughter of a bourgeois and conservative Parisian man. Eugénie is a bold, brash feminist who has no interest in marriage and traditional gender roles. She wants to live her own life by her own rules. Her father does not like this; nor does he like the fact that she can see and hear ghosts.

Eugénie is taken to the Salpêtrière asylum by her father and brother after she convinces her grandmother that she can see the ghost of her grandfather. She proves it, too, but her father cares not whether it is true or false. Either way, she belongs in an asylum.

The Mad Women’s Ball traces only a few weeks of the lives of Geneviève and Eugénie, leading up to the titular Mad Women’s Ball, in which the patients of the Salpêtrière asylum will dance and perform for the delight of Paris’ foul gentry.

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Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver

In the world of historical novels, one can never have too many books set in lonely old houses, filled with echoes, shadows, and unhappy women. Wakenhyrst is another such gothic book, set in the marshy Fenlands of Suffolk. Wakenhyrst is an Edwardian gothic historical novel. It begins with its protagonist, Maud, as an old isolated woman.

Newspaper clippings report on the strange goings-on at the house when she was a girl, and this leads us back into her childhood and the strange occurrences she experienced. This historical novel is gothic in the extreme: Maud is raised motherless by an oppressive father; her father finds a painted medieval devil in the local graveyard; whispers abound concerning the house and the family.

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The Lost Ones by Anita Frank

As is clear from the works of Laura Purcell (above), many of the best historical novels are gothic, horror, or supernatural in their setting. This is further proven by the success of Anita Frank’s The Lost Ones. Set after the events of World War I, The Lost Ones follows the story of Stella, an ex-nurse who lost her lover to the war. Now, she is living with her sister Madeleine on Madeleine’s impressive but daunting country estate.

Madeleine, however, is being haunted by the sounds of a child, and Stella begins to hear them, too. The mystery of who the child is (or was), and what they want, propels the mystery of this historical fiction gem forward at an incredible pace.

The Lost Ones is a historical novel of big themes; it tackles war, loss, trauma, responsibility, deception, and a lot more. It’s also a loudly feminist text, and all the stronger for it.

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The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall is a love-letter to Victorian literature; specifically the great gothic novels of that time period. This is a book of atmosphere, of place and space, of secrets, of paranoia and suspicion and memories. Our protagonist, Margaret Lennox, is not yet thirty but has already and recently been widowed. Now, she is returning to her previous work as a governess.

Her new place of work is the secluded Hartwood Hall, and her employer a paranoid and secretive woman named Mrs Eversham. As Margaret teaches and bonds with Mrs Eversham’s son, Louis, she becomes intrigued by her employer’s strange behaviour and the secrets of this lonely house; the reasons why locals don’t talk about it or ever see Mrs Eversham.

Margaret also develops an interest in the gardener, Paul, a village man who has a lot of love for the house and for Louis. And the more she becomes tied up in this world, the more secrets appear, and the more Margaret becomes wrapped up in them. Secrets abound in Hartwood Hall, a fantastic piece of historical fiction.

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The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

A delightful piece of commercial WWII historical fiction, The Book of Lost Names is one of the best historical fiction books for readers looking for something light and easy but with real emotional weight. The Book of Lost Names follows Eva, a Jewish Parisian and daughter of two Polish immigrants. As the Nazis tear through Paris, Eva’s father is abducted but she and her mother escape to a small town in the shadow of the Alps.

The titular book of lost names is one that Eva creates as she forges the papers of French Jews for them to be ferried to safety across the border and into Switzerland. This is a historical novel about love and family, about safety and vulnerability, about the long-reaching effects of war and fascism.

Buy a copy of The Book of Lost Names here!