I read a Janie once every 3-4 years. She's the greatest of our 19th century novelists.

Brave and beautifully written treatment of Germany's recent past and its effects on the present by the world's greatest living novelist.

Outstanding poetic short novel by a writer better known for his children's stories. One of the best British books of the last 1/2 a century

70's Argentina. One prisoner confronts the reality of dictatorship, another, a child molester, hides from it in the stories of old films which he beautifully evokes in conversations with his cellmate.

Relentless, staccato forced march through the violence and intrigues of the 1984 miners' strike.

Rightly acclaimed masterpiece of and by the Sicilian aristocracy which took over 25 years to write.

Golding had a lapidary genius: brilliant, hard and cold. This is one of his finest-wrought gems.

Well-written German is a beautiful language which always loses slightly in translation. Read this in the original if you can, otherwise get the English version as a good second-best.

García Márquez had a wonderful gift for observing the foibles of human behaviour which is dazzlingly visible in this tale of small-town scandal.

The grandaddy of the English crime story and a 19th century classic. Sufficiently well-written to keep you intrigued long after you've guessed who the culprit is.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and much more terrifying. The mind-boggling scale of its transformation and the unimaginable tally of deaths, fascinate and horrify simultaneously.

Zadie Smith's kaleidoscope of modern London updates the English 19th century novel to the modern age. It almost works, not quite completely, but enough to merit a strong vote of confidence.