Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Clarissa
9. Emma Jane Austen
Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma
never fails to fascinate and annoy.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Emma
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10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Frankenstein
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville
'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Moby-Dick
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad
Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics.
• Chinua Achebe and Caryl Phillips discuss the case against Conrad
45. Ulysses James Joyce
Also pursued by the British police, this is a novel more discussed than read.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Ulysses
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English
novelists.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Mrs Dalloway
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh
The supreme Fleet Street novel.
• Ann Pasternak Slater on the journalistic experiences that shaped Waugh's
novel
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Scoop
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert's obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and
narrative.
• From the archives: Lolita and its critics
• David Lodge on Nabokov's sexual style
• Baddies in Books: Humbert Humbert
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
'He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was
sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he
didn't want to he was sane and had to.'
• Stephen Bates on surprises in Heller's Letters
• Chris Cox reads Catch-22 fifty years after its publication
75. Herzog Saul Bellow
Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.
• Alex Clark reviews Bellow's short stories
• John Crace 'digests' Herzog
• James Wood on Saul Bellow
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray
Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic.
• Janice Galloway rereads Lanark
• William Boyd on Lanark at 25
• John Mullan considers Lanark's cover for the Guardian Book Club
• An interview with the 'Clydeside Michaelangelo'
90. Money Martin Amis
The novel that bags Amis's place on any list.
Buy Money at the Guardian Bookshop
97. Atonement Ian McEwan
Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerising
narrative conviction.
• Read the first chapter online
• John Mullan writes on the weather in Atonement for the Guardian Book
Club
• John Sutherland's interview with the author can be found here
• Geoff Dyer is won over by Atonement, while Nick Lezard is less sure
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald
Posthumously published volume in a sequence of dream-like fictions spun
from memory, photographs and the German past.
• Read the 2001 review of Austerlitz here
• The Last Word: Maya Jaggi interviews Sebald
• Robert McCrum on Sebald's legacy