991. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Genre: Tragic romance
Rating: 5. Top 10 contender
Read before: New read
Written: 1800s
Edition: Penguin Classics 2005

Overview:
Ethan Frome starts with the arrival of the narrator, whose name we never learn, who introduces us to the crippled Ethan Frome. The narrator is intrigued by Frome, but it’s not until Frome is hired by the narrator and he meets the people inside Frome’s home that his questions (and ours) are answered.

First chapter:
The questions that occurred to me as I was reading Chapter 1 are:
• What was the smash-up that led to Ethan’s physical state? (p2)
• Why won’t people talk about what happened? (p5)
• What more is there that contributes to Ethan’s "… look that more than poverty and ill health must contribute"? (p5)
• Who is the woman whose voice is heard "... droning querulously"? (p12)

Thoughts:
I loved this book and I think it’ll rank in the top ten of the books I read for 2011. There is so much in this book. It cuts through the idea that our possibilities are endless. Ultimately this isn't the truth: our opportunities and choices are limited to the landscape we inhabit, to the forces at work in our life and our own limitations. And Ethan Frome displays this so effectively through the three main characters: Ethan Frome, his wife Zenobia (Zeena) and his wife's cousin Mattie Silver.

The story isn't complicated or long. It’s only approximately 100 pages and a quick read that unfolds simply and gently. But don’t be misled by its simplicity. I thought I understood exactly where I was but it wasn't until I finished the story that I understood what a multi-layered story it was:
• the political and social landscape of the characters;
• Wharton's use of symbolism to add pathos and understanding;
• the emotions of the players: guilt, anger, fear, passion, jealousy and joy.

Layer 1: Social and political landscape
There’s so much about the landscape of the time but it’s more about creating the backdrop than actually exploring the landscape.

Of great important to the story is the impact of improved farming techniques and increased yields, and not because Frome’s life is better because of them but because he doesn’t have the money to invest in the improvements. Instead, he’s caught in a downward spiral of worsening poverty in a town many have left. The name of the town Sparkfield says it all.

Of great resonance to me is the back story of women’s opportunities during that time. Respectable women had few opportunities and these applied in Ethan Frome. Marriage was the ultimate career but there was no guarantee of success or happiness. And there was little else available that paid well or offer status: some had skill in nursing others but there was little paid work or status in nursing the sick, unwanted poor female relations could work for family for board and little more (which happened to Mattie), or they could take paid labour in a shop. Mattie worked in a shop before she arrived with the Frome’s so the thought of returning must have filled Mattie with horror.

Layer 2: Symbolism
There was also a lot of symbolism in the novel, including using symbolic names: I love the idea of Ethan's name means "strong, long lived" while Zenobia's name is rooted from Zeus, the Greek God-almighty, all willing, yet merciless. Mattie's name means "gift from God". It took me a while but was Mattie Zeena's gift to Ethan which she mercilessly withdrew?

My favourite symbolism is the references to red, and it’s easy and obvious to link red to harlotry (eg Hester in The Scarlett Woman by Nathaniel Hawthorne). But red is so much more: the red could be Mattie’s obvious energy and enthusiasm, and equally likely it could describe the colour and movement Mattie brings to Ethan’s life as he watches Mattie dance in her "... cherry-coloured scarf". (p15) Red's not only linked specifically to Mattie but is used in other ways: to describe Mattie and Ethan watching “… the cold red on sunset behind winter hills ...”. (p17) Is the cold red perhaps a reference to an untapped passion?

The cat, which appears at crucial times clearly symbolises Zeena, and in turn Ethan and Mattie’s awareness of her. The cat insinuates itself several times during Zeena's absence, with it critically breaking Zeena’s beloved pickle dish. Further symbolism can be extracted from the broken pickle dish as a metaphor for the final straw for Ethan and Zeena's marriage, with Ethan not having time to mend the dish before Zeena returns.

Layer 3: The character's
This is my favourite part of the story; how the guilt, anger, passion, jealousy and joy of the characters act and interact together to channel the story to its conclusion. One thing I should mention is that Wharton cleverly gives the reader access to Ethan’s thoughts as the story unfolds. But accepting Ethan's views of people and events is dangerous; Frome has his own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to overlay these on to how he sees events or you run the risk of accepting everything Frome relates as the “truth”.

Ethan Frome
Who is Ethan Frome? An honest man, a conventional man, a man of pride and prudence. It's also important to remember he's a man who admired "recklessness and gaiety in others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse". It seems clear from this why he married Zeena because she represented relief from being alone after Frome’s mother died, and why Mattie represented such a lifeline to him when Zeena clearly never met his needs.

Frome’s life was an emotional roller coaster: with love, passion and joy with Mattie and dread and fear from Zeena at the other. Frome’s love for Mattie is clear as his joy at being with her. She was the highlight of his day: he clearly liked her from the minute she arrived, she added human warmth to his day and fulfilled his need to explore the ideas he had and his enjoyment of the natural world. He even went so far to shave each day for her and do the housework Mattie didn’t do (but I’m not sure if Mattie didn’t do the work deliberately or because she wasn’t physically up to it?)

Frome’s love for Mattie was definitely overshadowed by his fear and dread of Zeena: fear that Zeena knew about his feelings for Mattie, fear of what she might say to him and fear Zeena would spend money he didn't have. Over and over again Ethan retreats into the happiness he derives from his dream life with Mattie and doesn’t stand up for himself: Zeena wants to see the new doctor and nothing is said, Zeena tells him Mattie must go the next day and no argument ensures, Zeena claims the new doctor says she must have paid help around the house and a paid servant is hired. The story is littered with these examples.

What’s interesting is that despite these Frome was a sympathetic character I liked. The worst he ever did was contemplate an adulterous affair and consider leaving Zeena for Mattie. His adulterous affair never went beyond a few embraces and kisses, and these only happened at the point Mattie looked likely to leave Frome’s life forever. Likewise, his thoughts of leaving Zeena came to nothing because he couldn’t bring himself to abandon her to her own fate while he went on to live happily ever after. And when you contrast what he intended to do with what Zeena actually did …

But this lack of action is my frustration with Frome. He might have been trapped in a conflict between passion and social convention but he was also basically passive. He desperately wanted to break free of Zeena and be with Mattie but what did he actually do to make this happen, whether by standing up to Zeena and insisting she stay or by leaving with Mattie?

It seems hardly surprising then that the passive, dreamer's only bold act is to attempt suicide—urged on him by Mattie and ultimately an act that contained little courage. Instead that mad sled ride to disaster is the ultimate expression of passivity. Unable to face the consequences of any decision, Mattie decides his fate.

Is the moral of this story that we are all responsible for our own happiness?

Zenobia (Zeena) Pierce Frome:
While the novel doesn’t have a “villain”, Zeena’s personality emerges so clearly that she feels like the villain. And it's not just Frome’s fear of her that leads us to dislike her: the physical descriptions of her, especially the comparisons with Mattie, make Zeena seem old and unfeminine. But this isn't entirely fair when Zeena's the victim of Ethan’s plans to commit adultery and to leave with Mattie. And, as I mentioned earlier, it was hard to see Zeena as the victim when I sympathised with Frome wanting to leave such an unhappy marriage.

But it’s not really fair to accept Frome's one dimensional vision of a manipulative and hypochondriac wife because Frome’s view of Zeena includes his prejudices and frustrations. Zeena must have her own reasons for why she did things, and these must surely include her early interest in moving to a bigger town (but not so large that she becomes insignificant), which clearly never eventuates. It also seems likely that she doesn’t retreat into ill health and her sly, manipulative way with Ethan because he ignores her until about a year after they’re marriage when it’s clear they’ll be on the farm forever. Dealing with a silent, passive husband can’t have been easy when both parties had made plans for a different life. But there was no separation and divorce for a mismatched 19th century couple, and it must have been difficult to be trapped as Zeena was.

None of this excuses Zeena’s reaction to Ethan's obvious love for Mattie, when it was her ill health that inadvertently created the circumstances that led to Mattie's arrival. Her sly, manipulative method of dealing with the situation by preying on both Ethan and Mattie’s fear of her can never show her in a good light. It's also hard to understand and condone her dismissal of Mattie to heaven only knows what fate.

Mattie Silver
We see Mattie, as we glimpse Zeena, mostly through Ethan’s eyes, and his perception of her is skewed by his passion. With her grace, beauty, and vitality, she obviously embodies everything that he feels Zeena has denied him, and she becomes the focus of his aborted rebellion against his unhappy life.

I think there are two events in the novel about Mattie that stand out: the first is her vivacity at the beginning of the story when Frome walks into town to pick her up. She’s joyful, she embraces life but she's impulsive (letting Dennis Eady think she'll ride with him and then telling him she won't (p22)) and boastful in her claims she's not afraid. However, it’s not until the end of the story that the seeds of her impulsiveness show her to be reckless as well through her convincing Frome that the way to be together is to suicide by sledding into a tree.

Even at the end of the novel I couldn't be sure whether the suicide Mattie's ways of being Frome or because she felt she had nowhere else to go. There were plenty of examples of her dread of Zeena and her fear of being turned away ... I'd like to think she loved Frome and her sobbing "I can't go ..." (p90) was a heartfelt plea at leaving Frome, and not despair at where her life was heading. But I guess I'll never really know.

981. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Genre: Espionage, Thriller
Rating: 2. Not much good
Read before: New read
Written: 1900s
Edition: Penguin 1991

Thoughts
I was all prepared to like The Thirty-Nine Steps; after all it’s formed the basis of several movie versions amongst them an Alfred Hitchcock.

If you’ve noticed my hesitation and think a ‘but’ is coming … you’re right. Where do you go in a novel when in the first chapter you get references to:
• Jews like “… ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake”. (p17)
• “… the most finished piece of blackguardism.” (p19)
• “I haven’t the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man.” (p21)

But given it’s the same character who says each of this things, I might be able to imagine there’s some justice in the world because he was killed at the end of the first chapter.

I’ve heard and read about judging language, acts and ideas out of context by applying a filter of today’s expectations to them. But my position is that I won’t accept that people accept as right saying or thinking something about others they wouldn’t like said about themselves … and the Jewish comment falls firmly into that camp. This statement conjures up the traditional Fagin-like Jewish character which is totally out of order.

What each of these comments shows is the importance of language. Language helps to shape people’s attitudes on a conscious and subconscious level; just think of the negative connotations of the colour black with references like ‘black cloud’ and ‘black mood’ and contrast these with the positive nature of white eg the purity of a bride. Now none of us are simple enough to believe that the entire white male population is homogenous enough to be considered decent but the mere fact we collectively understand the intent of this statement proves the hijacking has occurred.

These references pushed me to look a little further into John Buchan’s background, and he had an interesting life: a career in literature and government including private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in southern Africa and Governor General of Canada. Not much of a clue into his privately held beliefs although time spent in southern Africa at the turn of the century would have placed him at the heart of British imperial and colonial thought.

Apart from this the book was a light easy read, and I don’t think it’s criticism to say it was an obvious book. It’s too bad, really, because I was inclined to like a man so raring for action (and I’m thinking James Bond here).

666. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Genre: Psychological thriller
Rating: 3
Read before: New read
Written: 1900s
Edition: First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard 1992

Overview:
Tom Ripley is financed by Herbert Greenleaf to encourage his absent son (Dickie) to return home because his mother is ill. Tom willingly accepts and finds himself living a life he loves. But it can't last and Tom becomes desperate when:
• he steps over Dickie's line and is asked to move on; and
• simultaneously loses the financing provided by Dickie's father.

How far will Tom go to continue living a life he enjoys? And will he get away with it?

The first chapter:
My questions for The Talented Mr Ripley my questions are:
• Why was Tom so worried about being arrested? (p3) And what's he involved in that leads him to talk about "... grand larceny or tampering with the mail ..."? (p4)
• Where was the slight error in "Charley could have told Mr Greenleaf that he [Tom] was intelligent, level-headed, scrupulously honest, and very willing to do a favour"? (p6)
• If Tom has a talent for mathematics, why isn't he doing something with it? (p8)
• How desperate is Mr Greenleaf that he'll offer a stranger an all expenses paid trip to Italy to bring his son home? (p9)

Thoughts:
These questions give us an insight into Tom, the deeply flawed anti-hero. The first chapter presents him as nervous and seeing people following him because of some illegal activity he’s engaged in. But he's also cool, calculating and manipulative, and quick to see the chance for a new life in Italy presented by Mr Greenleaf: "Tom's heart took a sudden leap. He put on an expression of reflection. It was a possibility. Something in him had smelt it out and leapt at it even before his brain." (p9) Later, despite terrible deeds and a deeper insight into Tom, it's still possible to feel pity for a man who doesn’t like himself: "He hated becoming Thomas Ripley again, hated being nobody, hated putting on his old set of habits again, and feeling that people looked down on him and were bored with him ... He hated going back to himself as he would have hated putting on a shabby suit of clothes, a grease-spotted, unpressed suit of clothes that had not been very good even with it was new." (p192)

Despite learning the depths to which Ripley can sink, it wasn't enough to overcome the flaws in the other characters to the extent that I could like them or feel sorry for them. Dickie Greenleaf was the worst; what good can be said about a selfish 25 year old with no interest in returning home despite knowing his mother has leukaemia. Dickie’s father Herbert I have some sympathy for: his gullibility and trust come from desperation to bring his son home and it doesn’t feel unexpected when he accepts his son’s not coming home. I also found Marge annoying. I don't know if it's because I’m a woman but her animosity against Dickie becomes a sort of pathetic gratitude and finally acceptance. To be honest, all I wanted to do with Marge is to give her a good shake!

I have to admit to reading a little more about the novel before I wrote this review, and learnt about two things I had no idea about as I read the book. One was modelling The Talented Mr Ripley on the Henry James novel “The Ambassadors”. Apparently, Highsmith doesn’t just "steal" the outline of James’s plot, she adds twists and turns that suggest I need to read The Ambassadors soon. Reading this I now understand why the two references to The Ambassadors are in the book: Mr. Greenleaf recommending that Tom read James’s book ("... but Mr Greenleaf was chuckling again, asking him if he had read a certain book by Henry James." (p24)), a copy of which Tom later contemplates stealing ("He put the book back docilely, though it would have been easy, so easy, to make a pass at the shelf and slip the book under his jacket." (p35)). At the time, I thought the references to The Ambassadors were odd but now I see how important they are.

The link to The Ambassadors is furthered by Highsmith’s symbolic use of the colour green, which she refers to from the first page. The references are obvious: the “greenback” (the dollar) and the "Green Cage"—the name of Tom’s barroom hangout (maybe a metaphor for wealth as a kind of entrapment?). This seems apt given it’s the scene for Tom’s acceptance of Herbert Greenleaf’s trip to Italy, and the real beginning of the story.

It also sets up Tom’s eventual imprisonment in another’s man identity. He will eventually assume the name and money of Dickie Greenleaf, whose name suggests a garden of cash. The most violent of the green metaphors (which I missed) is the likening of Dickie’s murder with the cutting down of a tree: ." ”Tom swung a left-handed blow with the oar against the side of Dickie’s head. The edge of the oar cut a dull gash that filled with a line of blood as Tom watched. Dickie was on the bottom of the boat, twisted, twisting. Dickie gave a groaning roar of protest that frightened Tom with its loudness and its strength. Tom hit him in the side of the neck, three times, chopping strokes with the edge of the oar, as if the oar were an axe and Dickie’s neck a tree.” The metaphor also suggests the gloriously demented image of Ripley as a lethal frontiersman chopping down the money tree and carving out his destiny.

I also read that Highsmith has been criticized for portraying the Tom Ripley as a repressed homosexual, and it’s been suggested it’s valid to surmise that Highsmith is spoofing the homosexual overtones that play throughout “The Ambassadors”. This angle also never occurred to me, but a re-reading of the book leads me to believe that, while Highsmith leaves various homosexual related ‘clues’ she’s uncommitted either way, and that the relationship about Dickie is more about obsession than anything else.

If you accept there is no sexual undertone to the relationship, then it’s Tom's obsession with Dickie that leads him to marginalise Marge in order to have Dickie to himself. Tom's hatred towards Marge is palpable, especially in that fateful scene which leads to the breakdown between Dickie and Tom; it's not only Tom wearing Dickie's clothes and mimicking Dickie mannerisms, but Dickie must have noticed that the scene is walked in on was of Tom assaulting Marge (pp78-79). The idea Tom's obsessed with Dickie, given Tom's animosity towards Marge but it only tells part of story because Tom's animosity extends to Marge's sexuality: "What disgusted him was the big bulge of her behind in the peasant skirt below Dickie's arm that circled her waist. And Dickie--! Tom really wouldn't have believed it possible of Dickie!" (p77) And it’s this obsession, in part, that allows Tom to blame Dickie for what went wrong: He hated Dickie, because, however he looked at what had happened, his failing had not been his own fault, not due to anything he had done, but due to Dickie’s inhuman stubbornness. And his blatant rudeness! He had offered Dickie friendship, companionship, and respect, everything he had to offer, and Dickie had replied with ingratitude and now hostility. Dickie was just shoving him out in the cold.” (p100)

But this quote might just as easily be a ‘homosexual’ clue, including earlier discussions related to sexuality, over pp80-81, that suggests that either (or both) Dickie and Tom are homosexual: for example, such as when Dickie's tone reminded Tom of Dickie's evasiveness when Tom "...had asked Dickie about [whether Dickie knew certain people Tom knew to be 'queer'] and he [Tom] had often suspected Dickie of deliberately denying knowing them when he did know them." So was Dickie homosexual and did he deny knowledge of other homosexuals through embarassment or fear of being found out? And is what Tom wouldn't have believed possible of Dickie the idea that Dickie was sexually attracted to a woman?

Most of the reviews I've read suggest it was Tom who was the repressed homosexual but I'm less comfortable with this idea. Tom always seems more interested in pathetically clinging to people or gaining advantage over them, that he's strangely asexual. If Dickie is homosexual (or even bisexual) and hiding it, this seems to present no problems to Tom other than to surprise him. There are also other references to Tom interacting with homosexuals, and again Tom seems to present a pathetic clinging figure: "When a couple of them [homosexuals] had made a pass at him, he had rejected them - thought he remembered how he had tried to make it up to them later by getting ice for their drinks, dropping them off in taxis ..."? (p81)

During the last few chapters I wondered how the story would turn out because I knew this was no moral tale where the anti-hero would be punished for daring to presume. But there were so many times when I felt he would: Highsmith played with us so skilfully when Tom met the police as Dickie and Iwondered whether the police would twig they were one and the same (p202), and I kept waiting for the police to turn up and take Tom’s fingerprints and the whole game would be up (p287). And this is where Highsmith’s style is so complex … all of this was heightened by the third person narrative who drew us into Ripley's tension: "The police might be looking for him in Rome. The police would certainly look for Tom Ripley around Dickie Greenleaf. It was an added danger - if they were, for instance, to think that he was Tom Ripley now, just from Marge's description of him, and strip him and search him and find both his and Dickie's passports." (p179) Looking back this constant teasing was an effective technique to increase the tension.

Perhaps because of this and/or because the people Tom dealt with were outwitted so skilfully by him eg why did Marge not like Tom when he was trying to come between her ("Tom knew what Marge would say: 'Why don't you get rid of him, Dickie?" (p92)), but she seemed to have no doubts about him once Dickie disappeared despite Tom stumbling twice (eg getting him and Dickie's names mixed up and Marge finding Tom's rings?). And how dumb was one of the police who saw Tom as both Tom and Dickie and didn’t twig (although seeing him in different cities might have something to do with it). But the police also didn't seem to pursue leads such as who was the person being helped out of “Dickie’s” apartment which coincided nicely with Freddie's death. But I guess much the reader knows so much more of the story because we see it through Tom's eyes, and another characters aren't privy to the same information.

And the last thing I have to mention is how neatly the story is sandwiched between Tom's believing he's being followed (paranoia or conscience?) and how his reaction changes over time. On the first page (p1) he's looking over shoulder worried about being caught and trying to work out how to get away. But he's more self assured, more poised by the last page despite a continuing belief in people following him: "He saw four motionless figures standing on the imaginary pier, the figures of Cretan policemen wating for him ... He grew suddenly tense, and his vision vanished. Was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he approached? ... Even if there were policement on the pier, it woulnd't necessarily mean--." (p290) What does this say about Tom's future?

The African Queen by C. S. Forester

Genre: War, Romance, Adventure
Rating: 3
Read before: New read
Written: 1900s
Edition:

Overview:
The year is 1914, it's Central Africa and the First World War has begun. Rose's (our heroine) missionary brother dies as a result of the Germans, and Rose and the cowardly captain of the African Queen (otherwise known as Allnut the hero) set out to strike a blow against the Germans. A growing awareness of each other and numerous obstacles build tension but will they achieve their objective?

Thoughts:
Views about the African Queen seem to fall into two camps: people who love it and people who hate. Given my recommendation, I obviously fall into the former.

My enjoyment started with the uniqueness of the heroes. They're not young or beautiful; they're more anti-heroes than heroes. Rose, in particular, isn't a glamorous heroine with her "... approaching middle age ... " (p4), her "... slow[ness] of speech and of decision" (p18), and "... her big chin ... [and] ... thick eyebrows". (p22) And Allnut is similarly unprepossessing.

I also enjoyed the two characters of Rose and the tension between them. Allnut had spent most of his life avoiding trouble, and is a coward to boot who "... might be ready to admit to himself that he was a coward ... but he was not ready to tell the world so". (p33) Rose, unlike Allnut, however, has an upright, noble soul with a single-minded dedication, much in the mould of her brother and father.

Rose's transformation over the course of the novel is what seems least believable for most people, but I think her transformation is more than possible and hinges on the sudden dissolution of the narrow world she'd inhabited since birth:"Rose had been accustomed all her life to follow the guidance of another ...", and "Rose had always been content to follow his [her brother's] advice and abide by his judgement" (p25). Removed from her brother's dominance, on the day her brother dies Rose realises "... with a shock that she had left behind the mission station where she had laboured for ten years, her brother's grave, her home, everything there was in her world, in fact, and all without a thought". (p37). What must it be like to lose everything you've ever known, including your moral compass, and be alone with a man doing things you never imagined in pursuit of a goal you devised and you're pursuing?

That it must be a shock is an understatement, and without the immediate insertion of her goal Rose might well have returned to a world she knew and continued living her narrow life. But this wasn't to be Rose's destiny. Rather, "... now that she was alone the reaction was violent. She was carrying out a plan of her own devising, and she would allow nothing to stop her, nothing to delay her. She was consumed by a fever for action." (p53), and she wasn't prepared to allow Allnut's cowardice or prevarication to get in her way. I think it's entirely plausible when Forester suggests that "Perhaps Rose had all her life been a woman of action and decision ..." (p51), and never known. You go girl!


The progression from strangers to physically intimacy is important in the context of the story and one of the nicest parts of the books (in a non-voyeuristic sort of way, of course). And not surprising; two people with a common goal, Allnut's belief in Rose and the impact on Rose of "Freedom and responsibility and an open-air life and a foretaste of success ... working wonders on her." (p99) . I don't think it's surprising that "For once in her joyless life she could feel pleased with herself ..." (p107). It's also interesting the need Rose fulfils in Allnut and his happiness in the new relationship "Whatever he might do in the heat of passion, his need was just as much for a mother as for a mistress. To him there was a comfort in Rose's arms he had never known before" and All the misery and tension of his life dropped away from him ..." (p113)

And the final few things about the novel are harder to refute:

1. how Forester is as subtle as a sledgehammer: he spells absolutely everything out and leaves nothing to the imagination (see all the quotes above). It's one way to tell a story and in Forester's hands it's not as bad as it might be in others. I enjoyed understanding how they felt and I didn't think it detracted from the story. It takes all kinds.

2. that there's no way Rose could have learnt to read the river so quickly. But why not ... it seems Rose has a natural affinity for the water when on the first day "... she filled with pride at the thought that she had understood them [the boat and its manoeuvres]. And in the same paragraph "Rose could not imagine what that fast current would to to a boat if it caught it while jammed broadside on across a narrow aterway, but she could hazard a guess that it would be a damaging business". (p41) Obvious, but nowhere near as bad as Thomas Hardy could be in my book.

3. there are so many obstacles to overcome ... about half a book's worth if I was being sarcastic. Enough said by me; I can't argue against it.


We leave the end of the story with Rose as the force in the relationship, and Allnut happy for the two of them to forge a life together as "... they left the lakes and began the long journey to Matadi and marriage. Whether or not they lived happily ever after is not easily decided." (p246) Rose and Allnut achieved happiness during their odyssey: they grow, overcome great odds to achieve it and are better people as a result. Building a life together without the odyssey is likely to be as difficult, if not more, for Rose and Allnut as it would be for anybody else ... but I like to think that Rose's growth and Allnut's faith in her will help them achieve happiness.

1001 books I must read before I die

I'm a late comer to most things (with the exception of naked broadband, but that's a whole other story) and the list of 1001 brooks to read before you die is a perfect example of that.

For the 37 people left in the world who haven't heard of the concept, the list was compiled by over 100 literary critics worldwide and edited by Peter Boxall, an instructor of English at Sussex University. Each title in the book is accompanied by a brief synopsis and critique explaining why the book was chosen. Since the list has been edited a few times since it commenced, there are a few more titles than 1001 now ... 1294 to be exact.

I first heard about the list late last year. A couple of workmates have various editions of the book and were going through them trying to work out how many they'd read and I was pleasantly surprised when I did the same: around 100. It was a short time only to think about adding the list to my list of things to do for 2011 ... and a short time after starting this blog to add my reviews.

Unlike my other blogs, I don't mind if no-one visits, no-one reads my reviews and I don't get a single follower. What I want to do is chronicle my thoughts about each story, and use those thoughts to remember each story. And to keep track of how many I've read, of course!

Enjoy, and if you have an opinion on the list, where you're up to or on a review ... drop me a line. I'd love to hear.

2000s
1. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
2. The Children’s Book - A.S. Byatt
3. Invisible - Paul Auster
4. American Rust - Philipp Meyer
5. Cost - Roxana Robinson
6. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
7. Home - Marilynne Robinson
8. Kieron Smith, boy - James Kelman
9. The Gathering - Anne Enright
10. The Blind Side of the Heart - Julia Franck
11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
12. Animal’s People - Indra Sinha
13. Falling Man - Don DeLillo
14. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
15. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
16. The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell
17. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
18. Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon
19. Carry Me Down - M.J. Hyland
20. Mother’s Milk - Edward St. Aubyn
21. Measuring the World - Daniel Kehlmann
22. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
23. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
24. Saturday – Ian McEwan
25. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
26. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
27. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
28. The Accidental - Ali Smith
29. The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
30. 2666 - Roberto Bolano
31. Small Island - Andrea Levy
32. The Sea – John Banville
33. The Book about Blanche and Marie - Per Olov Enquist
34. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
35. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
36. The Master – Colm Tóibín
37. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
38. The Swarm - Frank Schatzing
39. Vanishing Point – David Markson
40. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
41. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
42. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
43. Your Face Tomorrow - Javier Marias
44. A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
47. The Colour – Rose Tremain
48. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
49. The Light of Day – Graham Swift)
50. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
51. Lady Number Thirteen - Jose Carlos Somoza
52. The Successor - Ismail Kadare
53. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
54. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
55. Islands – Dan Sleigh
56. Unless – Carol Shields
57. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
58. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
59. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
60. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
61. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
62. The Double – José Saramago
63. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
64. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
65. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
66. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
67. Shroud – John Banville
68. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
69. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
70. Dead Air – Iain Banks
71. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
72. Snow - Orhan Pamuk
73. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
74. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
75. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
76. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
77. Fury – Salman Rushdie
78. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
79. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
80. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
81. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
82. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
83. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
84. Schooling – Heather McGowan
85. Atonement – Ian McEwan
86. Soldiers of Salamis - Javer Cercas
87. I’m Not Scared - Niccolo Ammaniti
88. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
89. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
90. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
91. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
92. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
93. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
94. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
95. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
96. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
97. How the Dead Live – Will Self
98. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
99. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
100. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
101. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
102. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
103. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
104. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
105. Bartleby and Co. - Enrique Vila-Matas
106. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
107. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
108. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
109. Pastoralia – George Saunder
110. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
111. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
112. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender - Dubravka Urgresic
113. In Search of Klingsor - Jorge Volpi
114. Pavel’s Letters - Monika Maron

1900s
115. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
116. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
117. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
118. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakulic
119. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
120. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
121. Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
122. Dirty Havana Trilogy - Pedro Juan Guitierrez
123. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
124. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
125. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
126. The Heretic - Miguel Deliber
127. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
128. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
129. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
130. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
131. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
132. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
133. Another World – Pat Barker
134. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
135. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
136. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
137. Crossfire - Miyabe Miyuki
138. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
139. Great Apes – Will Self
140. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
141. Underworld – Don DeLillo
142. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
143. Money to Burn - Ricardo Piglia
144. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
145. Margot and the Angels - Kristien Hemmerechts
146. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
147. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
148. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
149. The Untouchable – John Banville
150. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
151. Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald
152. A Light Comedy - Eduardo Mendoza
153. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
154. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
155. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
156. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
157. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
158. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
159. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
160. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
161. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
162. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
163. Santa Evita - Tomas Eloy Martinez
164. The Information – Martin Amis
165. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
166. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
167. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
168. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
169. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
170. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
171. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
172. The Late-Night News - Petros Markaris
173. Troubling Love - Elena Ferrante
174. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
175. The Folding Star – Alan HollinghursTt
176. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
177. Land – Park Kyong-ni
178. Our Lady of Assassins - Fernando Vallejo
179. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
180. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
181. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
182. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
183. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
184. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
185. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
186. Deep River - Shusaku Endo
187. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
188. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
189. Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light - Ivan Klima
190. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
191. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
192. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
193. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
194. The Twins - Tessa de Loo
195. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
196. Complicity – Iain Banks
197. On Love – Alain de Botton
198. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
199. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
200. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
201. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
202. The Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee
203. Remembering Babylon - David Malouf
204. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Alvaro Mutis
205. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
206. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
207. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
208. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
209. Before Night Falls - Reinaldo Arenas
210. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
211. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
212. Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture - Apostolos Doxiadis
213. The Triple Mirror of the Self - Zulfikar Ghose
214. All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
215. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
216. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
217. Jazz – Toni Morrison
218. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
219. Indigo – Marina Warner
220. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
221. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
222. The Dumas Club - Arturo Perez-Reverte
223. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
224. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
225. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
226. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
227. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
228. Memoirs of Rain - Sunetra Gupta
229. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
230. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
231. Arcadia – Jim Crace
232. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
233. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
234. Mao II – Don DeLillo
235. Typical – Padgett Powell
236. Regeneration – Pat Barker
237. Astradeni - Eugenia Fakinou
238. Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
239. The Laws - Connie Palmen
240. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
241. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
242. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
243. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
244. The Daughter - Pavlos Matesis
245. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
246. Wise Children – Angela Carter
247. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
248. Amongst Women – John McGahern
249. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
250. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
251. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
252. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
253. The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh
254. Possession – A.S. Byatt
255. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
256. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
257. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
258. A Disaffection – James Kelman
259. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
260. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
261. London Fields – Martin Amis
262. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
263. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
264. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
265. The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
266. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
267. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
268. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
269. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
270. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
271. Inland - Gerald Murnane
272. Obabakoak - Bernando Atxaga
273. Gimmick! - Joost Zwagerman
274. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
275. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
276. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
277. Paradise of the Blind - Duong Thu Huong
278. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
279. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
280. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
281. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
282. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
283. The Last World - Christopher Ransmayr
284. The First Garden - Anne Herbert
285. Libra – Don DeLillo The First Garden - Anne Herbert
286. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
287. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
288. The Child in Time - Ian McEwan
289. Cigarettes - Harry Mathews
290. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
291. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
292. Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto
293. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
294. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
295. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
296. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
297. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
298. Black Box - Amos Oz All Souls - Javier Marias
299. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
300. All Souls - Javier Marias
301. Beloved – Toni Morrison
302. Of Love and Shadows - Isabel Allende
303. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
304. World’s End - T.C. Boyle
305. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
306. The Ballad for Georg Henig - Viktor Paskov
307. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
308. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
309. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
310. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
311. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
312. Memory of Fire - Eduardo Galeano
313. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
314. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
315. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
316. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
317. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
318. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
319. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman - Szczypiorski
320. Ancestral Voices - Etienne van Heerden 0 Y Y
321. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
322. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
323. Annie John - Jamaica Kincaid
324. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
325. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
326. Simon and the Oaks - Marianne Fredriksson
327. A Maggot – John Fowles
328. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
329. Contact – Carl Sagan
330. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
331. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
332. Queer – William Burroughs
333. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
334. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
335. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
336. Half of Man is Woman - Zhang Xianliang
337. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
338. White Noise – Don DeLillo
339. Love Medicine - Louise Erdich
340. The Young Man - Botho Strauss
341. Legend – David Gemmell
342. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
343. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavic
344. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
345. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
346. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
347. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
348. Democracy - Joan Didion
349. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
350. Neuromancer – William Gibson
351. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
352. Larva: Midsummer Night’s Babel - Julian Rios
353. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
354. Professor Martens’ Departure - Jaan Kross
355. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
356. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
357. Shame – Salman Rushdie
358. The Witness - Juan Jose Saer
359. Fado Alexandrino - Antonio Lobo Antunes
360. The Christmas Oratorio - Goran Tunstrom
361. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
362. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
363. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
364. Waterland – Graham Swift
365. The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
366. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
367. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
368. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
369. Baltasar and Blimunda - Jose Saramago
370. The Book of Diquiet - Fernando Pessoa
371. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
372. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
373. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
374. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
375. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
376. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
377. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
378. The Newton Letter – John Banville
379. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
380. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
381. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
382. Couples, Passerby - Botho Strauss
383. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
384. The Names – Don DeLillo
385. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
386. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
387. The War of the End of the World - Llosa
388. Leaden Wings - Zhang Jie
389. The House with the Blind Glass Windows - Wassmo
390. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
391. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
392. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
393. Rites of Passage – William Golding
394. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
395. Smell of Sadness - Kossman
396. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
397. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
398. Clear Light of Day - Anita Desai
399. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
400. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
401. Southern Seas - Montalban
402. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
403. Fool’s Gold - Douka
404. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
405. A Dry White Season - Andre Brink
406. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
407. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
408. Burger’s Daughter – Nadine Gordimer
409. So Long a Letter - Mariama Ba
410. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
411. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
412. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
413. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
414. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
415. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
416. The Back Room - Gaite 0 Y Y
417. The World According to Garp – John Irving
418. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
419. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
420. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
421. Requiem for a Dream - Selby
422. The Beggar Maid - Alice Munro
423. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
424. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
425. The Shining – Stephen King
426. Dispatches – Michael Herr
427. The Wars - Findley
428. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’
429. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
430. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
431. Quartet in Autumn - Barbara Pym
432. The Engineer of Human Souls - Skvorecky
433. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
434. Almost Transparent Blue - Rhu Murakami
435. Kiss of the Spiderwoman - Manuel Puig
436. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
437. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
438. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
439. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
440. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
441. Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor
442. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
443. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
444. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
445. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
446. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
447. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
448. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
449. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
450. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
451. Fateless – Imre Kertész
452. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
453. Woman at Point Zero - El Saadawi
454. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
455. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
456. The Year of the Hare - Paasilinna
457. The Commandant - Jessica Anderson
458. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
459. The Port - Soljan
460. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
461. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
462. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
463. The Diviners - Margaret Laurence
464. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
465. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
466. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
467. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong 0 Y Y Y
468. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
469. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
470. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
471. Crash – J.G. Ballard
472. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
473. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
474. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
475. Sula – Toni Morrison
476. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
477. The Optimist’s Daughter - Eudora Welty
478. The Twilight Years - Ariyoshi
479. The Breast – Philip Roth
480. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
481. G – John Berger
482. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
483. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
484. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
485. Lives of Girls and Women - Alice Munro
486. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
487. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
488. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
489. Cataract - Osadchyi
490. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
491. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
492. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
493. The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
494. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
495. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
496. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
497. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
498. A World for Julius - Echenique
499. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
500. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
501. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
502. Play It As it Lays - Joan Didion
503. Fifth Business - Robertson Davies
504. Here’s to You, Jesusa - Poniatowska
505. Season of Migration to the North - Salih
506. Heartbreak Tango - Manuel Puig
507. Moscow Stations - Erofeyev
508. The Case Worker - Konrad
509. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
510. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
511. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
512. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
513. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
514. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
515. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
516. Jacob the Liar - Becker
517. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
518. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
519. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
520. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
521. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
522. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
523. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
524. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
525. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
526. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
527. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
528. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
529. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
530. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
531. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
532. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
533. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
534. The Cathedral - Honchar
535. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
536. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
537. Day of the Dolphin - Robert Merle
538. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
539. Chocky – John Wyndham
540. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
541. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
542. The Manor - Isaac Bashevis Singer
543. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
544. The Joke – Milan Kundera
545. Z - Vassilikos
546. Miramar - Mahfouz
547. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
548. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
549. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
550. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
551. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
552. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
553. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
554. The Magus – John Fowles
555. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
556. Marks of Identity - Juan Goytisolo
557. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
558. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
559. To Each His Own - Sciascia
560. Silence - Shusaku Endo
561. Death and the Dervish - Selimovic
562. Things – Georges Perec
563. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
564. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
565. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
566. Garden, Ashes - Kis
567. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’
568. Closely Watched Trains - Hrabal
569. Back to Oegstgeest - Wolkers
570. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
571. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
572. Three Trapped Tigers - Infante
573. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
574. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
575. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
576. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
577. Herzog – Saul Bellow
578. V. – Thomas Pynchon
579. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
580. The Graduate – Charles Webb
581. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
582. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
583. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
584. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
585. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
586. Dog Years - Gunter Grass
587. The Third Wedding - Taktsis
588. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
589. The Time of the Hero - Llosa
590. The Death of Artemio Cruz b-y Fuentes
591. The Collector – John Fowles
592. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
593. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
594. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
595. Time of Silence - Luis Martin Santos
596. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
597. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
598. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
599. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
600. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
601. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
602. Memoirs of a Peasant Boy - Vilos
603. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
604. No One Writes to the Colonel - Marquez
605. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
606. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
607. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
608. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
609. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
610. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
611. The Shipyard - Onetti
612. God’s Bits of Wood - Sembene
613. Bebo’s Girl - Cassola
614. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
615. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
616. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
617. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
618. Halftime - Martin Walser
619. The Magician of Lublin - Isaac Bashevis Singer
620. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
621. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
622. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
623. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
624. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
625. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
626. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
627. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
628. Down Second Avenue - Mphahlele
629. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
630. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
631. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
632. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
633. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
634. Deep Rivers - Arguedas
635. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
636. The Guide - Narayan
637. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
638. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
639. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
640. Gabriela, Clove, and Cinnamon - Jorge Amada
641. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
642. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
643. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
644. The End of the Road – John Barth
645. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
646. The Birds - Vesaas
647. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
648. Voss – Patrick White
649. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
650. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
651. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
652. The Deadbeats - Ruyslinck
653. The Manila Rope - Meri
654. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
655. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
656. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
657. The Glass Bees - Junger
658. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
659. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
660. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
661. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
662. The Floating Opera – John Barth
663. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
664. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
665. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
666. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
667. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
668. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - Rosa
669. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
670. The Tree of Man - Patrick White
671. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
672. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
673. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
674. The Burning Plain - Rulfo
675. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
676. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
677. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
678. The Unknown Soldier - Linna
679. The Sound of Waves - Mishima
680. Death in Rome - Koeppen
681. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
682. The Mandarins - de Beauvoir
683. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
684. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
685. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
686. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
687. A Day in Spring - Kosmac
688. The Dark Child - Laye
689. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
690. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
691. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
692. Watt – Samuel Beckett
693. The Hothouse - Koeppen
694. The Lost Steps - Carpentier
695. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
696. Junkie – William Burroughs
697. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
698. *The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
699. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
700. A Thousand Cranes - Kawabata
701. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
702. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
703. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
704. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
705. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
706. The Hive - Cela
707. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
708. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
709. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
710. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
711. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
712. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
713. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
714. The Rebel – Albert Camus
715. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
716. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
717. Barabbas - Lagerkvist
718. The Guiltless - Broch
719. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
720. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
721. The Third Man – Graham Greene
722. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
723. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
724. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
725. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
726. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
727. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
728. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
729. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
730. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
731. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
732. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
733. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
734. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
735. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
736. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Borowski
737. In the Heart of the Seas - Agnon
738. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
739. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
740. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
741. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
742. Ashes and Diamonds - Andrzejewski
743. Journey to the Alcarria - Cela
744. Froth on the Daydream - Vian
745. Midaq Alley - Mahfouz
746. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
747. The Plague – Albert Camus
748. The Victim – Saul Bellow
749. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
750. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
751. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
752. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
753. House in the Uplands - Caldwell
754. Back – Henry Green
755. Zorba the Greek - Kazantzakis
756. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
757. The Death of Virgil - Broch
758. Andrea - Laforet
759. The Tin Flute - Gabrielle Roy
760. Bosnian Chronicle - Andric
761. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
762. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
763. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
764. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
765. Animal Farm – George Orwell
766. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
767. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
768. Loving – Henry Green
769. Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren
770. Transit – Anna Seghers
771. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
772. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
773. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
774. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
775. Joseph and His Brothers - Thomas Mann
776. Caught – Henry Green
777. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
778. Chess Story - Zweig
779. Embers – Sandor Marai
780. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
781. The Outsider – Albert Camus
782. Conversations in Sicily – Elio Vittorini
783. The Harvesters - Parvese
784. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
785. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
786. Broad and Alien Is the World - Alegria
787. The Man Who Loved Children - Stead
788. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
789. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
790. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
791. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
792. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
793. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
794. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
795. Native Son – Richard Wright
796. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
797. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
798. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
799. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
800. Party Going – Henry Green
801. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
802. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
803. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
804. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
805. One the Edge of Reason - Krleza
806. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
807. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
808. Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
809. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
810. Alamut - Bartol
811. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
812. Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
813. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
814. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
815. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
816. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
817. The Years – Virginia Woolf
818. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
819. The Blind Owl - Hedayat
820. Ferdydurke - Grombowicz
821. In Parenthesis – David Jones
822. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
823. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
824. Rickshaw Boy - Lao She
825. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
826. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
827. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
828. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
829. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
830. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
831. War with the Newts - Capek
832. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
833. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
834. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
835. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
836. Independent People – Halldór Laxness
837. Untouchable - Anand
838. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
839. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
840. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
841. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
842. England Made Me – Graham Greene
843. Burmese Days – George Orwell
844. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
845. The Bells of Basel - Aragon
846. On the Heights of Despair - Cioran
847. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
848. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
849. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
850. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
851. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
852. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
853. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
854. The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
855. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
856. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
857. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
858. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
859. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
860. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
861. Man’s Fate - Malraux
862. Cheese - Elsschot
863. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
864. Vipers’ Tangle - Mauriac
865. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
866. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
867. The Forbidden Realm - Slauerhoff
868. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
869. The Return of Philip Latinowicz - Krleza
870. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
871. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
872. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
873. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
874. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
875. Insatiability - Witkiwicz
876. Monica - Saunders Lewis
877. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
878. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
879. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
880. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
881. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
882. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
883. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
884. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
885. Passing – Nella Larsen
886. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
887. I Thought of Daisy - Edmund Wilson
888. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
889. Living – Henry Green
890. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
891. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
892. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
893. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
894. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
895. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
896. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
897. Retreat without Song - Shahnour
898. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
899. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
900. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
901. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
902. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
903. Some Prefer Nettles - Tanizaki
904. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
905. Quartet – Jean Rhys
906. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
907. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
908. Nadja – André Breton
909. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
910. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
911. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
912. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
913. The Case of Sergeant Grischa - Arnold Zweig
914. Amerika – Franz Kafka
915. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
916. Blindness – Henry Green
917. The Castle – Franz Kafka
918. Alberta and Jacob - Sandel
919. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
920. Under Satan’s Sun - Bernanos
921. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
922. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
923. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
924. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
925. Chaka the Zulu - Mofolo
926. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
927. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
928. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
929. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
930. The Trial – Franz Kafka
931. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
932. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
933. The New World - Welde Selasse
934. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
935. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
936. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
937. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
938. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
939. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
940. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
941. Cane – Jean Toomer
942. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
943. Amok – Stefan Zweig
944. Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrid Undset
945. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
946. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
947. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
948. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
949. The Forest of the Hanged - Rebreanu
950. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
951. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
952. Claudine’s House - Colette
953. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
954. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
955. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
956. Ulysses – James Joyce
957. Life of Christ - Papini
958. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
959. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
960. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
961. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
962. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
963. The Storm of Steel - Junger
964. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
965. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
966. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
967. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
968. Summer – Edith Wharton
969. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
970. The Home and the World - Tagore
971. Pallieter - Timmermans
972. The Underdogs - Azuela
973. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
974. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
975. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
976. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
977. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
978. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
979. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
980. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
981. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
982. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
983. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
984. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
985. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
986. Platero and I - Jimenez
987. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
988. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
989. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
990. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
991. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
993. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
994. Howards End – E.M. Forster
995. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rilke
996. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
997. Martin Eden – Jack London
998. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
999. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
1000. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
1001. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
1002. The Iron Heel – Jack London
1003. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
1004. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
1005. Mother – Maxim Gorky
1006. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
1007. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
1008. The Forsyte Saga – John Galsworthy
1009. Young Törless – Robert Musil
1010. Solitude - Catala
1011. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
1012. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
1013. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
1014. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
1015. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
1016. The Way of All Flesh - Butler
1017. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness - Schreber
1018. The Call of the Wild - Jack London
1019. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
1020. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
1021. The Ambassadors – Henry James
1022. The Immoralist – André Gide
1023. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
1024. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
1025. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1026. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
1027. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
1028. None but the Brave - Schnitzler
1029. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
1030. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
1031. Sandokan: The Tigers of Mompracem - Salgari

1800s
1032. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
1033. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon - Gardonyi
1034. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
1035. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
1036. Dom Casmurro - de Assis
1037. As a Man Grows Older - Svevo
1038. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
1039. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
1040. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
1041. Pharoah - Prus
1042. Compassion - Perez Galdos
1043. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
1044. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
1045. Dracula – Bram Stoker
1046. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
1047. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
1048. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
1049. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
1050. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
1051. The Viceroys - De Roberto
1052. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
1053. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1054. Born in Exile – George Gissing
1055. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
1056. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1057. News from Nowhere – William Morris
1058. New Grub Street – George Gissing
1059. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
1060. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
1061. Down There - Huysmans
1062. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
1063. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
1064. Thais - Anatole France
1065. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
1066. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
1067. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
1068. Eline Vere - Couperus
1069. The Child of Pleasure - D’Annunzio
1070. Under the Yoke - Vazov
1071. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
1072. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
1073. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
1074. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
1075. The Manors of Ulloa - Bazan
1076. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
1077. She – H. Rider Haggard
1078. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
1079. The Quest - van Eeden
1080. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
1081. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
1082. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
1083. Germinal – Émile Zola
1084. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
1085. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
1086. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
1087. The Regent’s Wife - Alas
1088. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
1089. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
1090. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant 0
1091. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
1092. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
1093. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas - de Assis
1094. The House - the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
1095. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
1096. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
1097. Nana – Émile Zola
1098. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
1099. The Red Room – August Strindberg
1100. Martin Fierro - Hernandez
1101. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
1102. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
1103. Drunkard – Émile Zola
1104. The Crime of Father Amaro - de Queiros
1105. Pepita Jimenez - Valera
1106. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
1107. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
1108. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
1109. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
1110. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
1111. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov 0
1112. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
1113. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
1114. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
1115. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
1116. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
1117. Middlemarch – George Eliot
1118. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
1119. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
1120. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
1121. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
1122. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
1123. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
1124. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
1125. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
1126. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
1127. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
1128. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
1129. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
1130. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
1131. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
1132. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
1133. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
1134. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
1135. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
1136. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
1137. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
1138. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
1139. Silas Marner – George Eliot
1140. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
1141. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
1142. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
1143. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
1144. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
1145. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
1146. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
1147. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
1148. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
1149. Adam Bede – George Eliot
1150. Indian Summer - Stifter
1151. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
1152. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
1153. Green Henry - Keller
1154. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
1155. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
1156. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
1157. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
1158. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
1159. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
1160. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
1161. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
1162. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
1163. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
1164. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
1165. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
1166. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
1167. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
1168. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
1169. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
1170. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
1171. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
1172. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
1173. The Devil’s Fool - George Sand
1174. Facundo - Sarmiento
1175. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
1176. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
1177. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
1178. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
1179. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
1180. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
1181. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
1182. Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
1183. A Hero for our Times - Lermontov
1184. Camera Obscura - Hildebrand
1185. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
1186. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
1187. The Lion of Flanders - Hendrik Conscience
1188. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
1189. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
1190. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
1191. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
1192. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
1193. Eugene Onegin - Pushkin
1194. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
1195. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
1196. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
1197. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
1198. The Life of a Good-for-Nothing - von Eichendorff
1199. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
1200. The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr - Hoffman
1201. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
1202. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
1203. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
1204. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
1205. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1206. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
1207. Persuasion – Jane Austen
1208. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
1209. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
1210. Emma – Jane Austen
1211. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
1212. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
1213. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
1214. Michael Kohlhaas - von Kleist
1215. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
1216. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1217. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
1218. Henry of Ofterdingen - Novalis
1219. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s
1220. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
1221. The Nun – Denis Diderot
1222. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
1223. Camilla – Fanny Burney
1224. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
1225. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1226. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
1227. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
1228. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
1229. A Dream of Red Mansions - Xueqin
1230. Justine – Marquis de Sade
1231. Vathek – William Beckford
1232. Anton Reiser - Moritz
1233. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
1234. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
1235. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1236. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1237. Evelina – Fanny Burney
1238. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1239. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
1240. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
1241. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
1242. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
1243. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
1244. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
1245. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1246. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1247. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
1248. Candide – Voltaire
1249. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
1250. Amelia – Henry Fielding
1251. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
1252. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
1253. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
1254. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
1255. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
1256. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
1257. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
1258. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
1259. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
1260. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
1261. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
1262. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
1263. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
1264. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
1265. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
1266. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

Pre-1700s
1267. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
1268. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan 0
1269. The Adventurous Simplicissimus - von Grimmelshausen
1270. The Conquest of New Spain - Diaz del Castillo
1271. The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1272. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
1273. Thomas of Reading - Deloney
1274. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
1275. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyl
1276. Monkey: Journey to the West - Wu Cheng’en
1277. The Lusiad - Vaz de Camoes
1278. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
1279. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
1280. Amadis of Gaul - de Montalvo
1281. La Celestina - de Rojas
1282. Tirant lo Blanc - Martorell
1283. The Water Margin - Nai’an
1284. Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Guanzhong
1285. The Tale of Gengi
1286. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
1287. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
1288. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
1289. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
1290. Metamorphoses – Ovid
1291. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus
1292. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
1293. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra