1

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

A nasty, brutish and short revelation of the devastating effects Belgian colonisation had on the Congolese, the Belgians, the narrator - and even the author. The mystery, quest for, and discovery of Kurtz are superbly done.

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2

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Exuberant and enraging, this exposition of control masquerading as medical science in the Big Nurse's psychiatric ward is movingly narrated by the novel's other hero, Chief Broom. And Randle P McMurphy is one of literature's great protagonists.

 

3

Middlemarch - George Eliot

'Towering' is the word critics use for this one, and I'm happy with it. It's a towering work of socio-historical tragi-comic romantic fiction, and it should captivate you completely. Characters' fates collide unexpectedly against a backdrop of unsettling change in 1830s rural England. Sounds boring? It isn't.

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4

The Illiad - Homer

What to say about the father of all stories? Gods, royalty, heroism, betrayal, love, lust and lots and lots of fighting. It's the narrative poem from which everything in Western literature descends, and it's really good.

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5

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The Great American Novel? Possibly. It's simultaneously a celebration and an accusation; the stoical Joads are forced to pursue that chimerical Dream which ends in California. And the final scene is mind-blowing.

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6

Life of Pi - Yann Martel 

A tiger called Richard Parker is a decent start. But this nail-biting and unusual tale of open-boat survival becomes something much, much bigger by the end. Piscine Patel is a protagonist with greater depths than his name suggests.

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7

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Another contender for the Great American Novel, this. Its genius lies in its narrator, who is so beguiled and baffled by the eponymous Jay Gatsby, he cannot see anything clearly. Nasty rich America meets grimy poor America with fatal consequences.

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8

The Leopard - Giuseppe Lampedusa

The Great Italian Novel? Could be. An aristocratic Sicilian family navigates its way through the complexities of a country on the brink of irreversible change. It's principal theme - mortality - is handled with rare skill. And it's very funny.

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9

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

One hundred years after Conrad's effort comes another brilliant novel in which westerners pit themselves against the Congo. A metaphorical, allegorical, multi-narrator family saga that reaches into the darkness. Again.

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10

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 

An eloquent but chronically unreliable narrator tells us what happens when the Christian right takes over. The dystopian setting is blighted by depressingly familiar features of modern society, seen through the eyes of one who is terrified and always at their mercy.