List :: 100 Novels Everyone Should Read by Telegraph

  • Underworld

    #51

    Underworld

    by Don DeLillo

    (5 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 150

    132 points

    "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza."

  • The Catcher in the Rye

    #52

    The Catcher in the Rye

    by J. D. Salinger

    (44 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 7

    735 points

    "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they...

  • The Handmaid’s Tale

    #53

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    by Margaret Atwood

    (14 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 50

    316 points

    "We slept in what had once been the gymnasium."

  • Lolita

    #54

    Lolita

    by Vladimir Nabokov

    (35 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 5

    856 points

    "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth."

  • Austerlitz

    #55

    Austerlitz

    by W.G. Sebald

    (3 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 201

    97 points

    "In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just..."

  • The Tin Drum

    #56

    The Tin Drum

    by Günter Grass

    (4 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 93

    201 points

    "Granted: I'm an inmate of a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of his sight; for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see..."

  • The Glass Bead Game

    #57

    The Glass Bead Game

    by Hermann Hesse

    (3 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 213

    94 points

    "It is our intention to preserve in these pages what scant biographical material we have been able to collect concerning Joseph Knecht, or Ludi Magister Josephus III, as he is called in the Archives..."

  • The Savage Detectives

    #58

    The Savage Detectives

    by Roberto Bolaño

    (3 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 429

    43 points

    "I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists."

  • London Fields

    #59

    London Fields

    by Martin Amis

    (1 Review)

    Overall Rank: 430

    42 points

    "This is a true story but I can't believe it's really happening."

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude

    #60

    One Hundred Years of Solitude

    by Gabriel García Márquez

    (24 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 12

    667 points

    "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de..."