Best Classic Literature Books

An unnamed Black man's journey from the South through Harlem, joining and leaving organisations that all fail to see him as an individual — a meditation on identity, race, and visibility in America.

The final weeks of the Trojan War, focusing on Achilles's wrath, his withdrawal from battle, the death of Patroclus, and his return to fight — and to mourn — with devastating consequence.

Dostoevsky's psychological masterpiece follows Raskolnikov, a student who murders a pawnbroker to test his theory that exceptional men are above conventional morality — and the psychological disintegration that follows.

The story of Emma Woodhouse — handsome, clever, and rich — whose well-intentioned meddling in the romantic lives of others leads to one comic disaster after another.

Charlie Gordon, a man with intellectual disabilities, undergoes experimental brain surgery that dramatically increases his intelligence — and must grapple with the emotional and social consequences.

American volunteer Robert Jordan fights with Spanish guerrillas during the Civil War, assigned to blow a bridge — and falls in love with Maria in the three days before the mission.

The first book in Asimov's groundbreaking Foundation series, in which mathematician Hari Seldon predicts the fall of a galactic empire and sets in motion a thousand-year plan to preserve civilisation.

Emma Bovary, a romantic idealist trapped in a provincial marriage, pursues passion and luxury through two affairs — until her delusions destroy her.

The Ramsay family's two visits to their summer house in the Hebrides, separated by ten years and the First World War — and Lily Briscoe's attempt to paint what cannot be painted.

Le Guin's first Earthsea novel follows Ged, a boy of extraordinary power who attends a school for wizards on the island of Roke and, in his pride, releases a shadow upon the world that only he can face.

Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece about a former slave haunted by the ghost of her murdered daughter — and the legacy of slavery on the body, memory, and soul.

In the World State of 632 AF (After Ford), human beings are hatched in hatcheries, conditioned from birth for their social function, and kept content by the pleasure drug Soma. There is no disease, no war, no poverty — and no freedom, no art, no genuine love. Bernard Marx begins to question whether happiness without meaning is worth having.

Joseph Heller's darkly comic masterpiece follows bombardier Yossarian through the absurdist bureaucracy of World War II, inventing the most important logical paradox of modern language.

The adventures of the deluded knight Alonso Quijano — who believes himself to be the knight-errant Don Quixote — and his earthy squire Sancho Panza across the plains of La Mancha.

Isaac Asimov's linked short story collection introducing the Three Laws of Robotics and exploring their logical implications in a series of increasingly complex scenarios.

Humbert Humbert's confession of his obsession with and abuse of twelve-year-old Dolores Haze — told in prose of devastating beauty by a narrator who is both brilliant and monstrous.

A single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, preparing a party in postwar London — intercut with the experiences of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran she will never meet.

Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize-winning novella about an aging Cuban fisherman's epic struggle with a great marlin in the waters of the Gulf Stream.

Josef K. is arrested one morning without explanation, prosecuted by an opaque authority for an unnamed crime, and gradually consumed by a legal process he can never understand.

The obsessive voyage of Captain Ahab, whose all-consuming quest to destroy the white whale that maimed him drives his crew toward catastrophe.

Le Guin's landmark science fiction novel about an envoy from a galactic federation who visits a planet whose inhabitants are ambisexual — neither male nor female — and the profound implications for society and consciousness.

The decline of the Compson family of Jefferson, Mississippi, told four times from four radically different perspectives — including the interior monologue of a 33-year-old man with the mind of a child.

Marlow travels up the Congo River in search of the mysterious ivory trader Kurtz — and discovers the horror at the heart of European imperialism.

William Gibson's groundbreaking cyberpunk novel coined the term 'cyberspace' and defined the aesthetic and concerns of an entire science fiction movement.