 | Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Celine's classic, teeming with riotous and beautiful prose, wonderfully translated by Manheim
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 | The Brothers Karamazov by F.M. Dostoevsky
Buy new: £6.46 / Used from: £4.14 If I had this book on a desert island I probably wouldn't want rescuing. Excellent translation too.
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 | The Big Sleep: An Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction) by Raymond Chandler
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £1.28 Unrivalled for entertainment value as well as his often imitated but never bettered prose. Sharp, funny and addictive.
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 | Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £2.95 A work of devastation to be classed alongside Celine, Dostoevsky and Fante for its depiction of the agonies of pride.
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 | Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Henry Miller
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.53 Whirling, chaotic prose. The kind of stuff that tugs you along by the collar until you give in and enjoy the free ride.
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 | An American Dream (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Norman Mailer
Buy new: £4.91 / Used from: £1.83 The one that gave me the Mailer bug. At times caustic, at others ethereal, but always inspiring.
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 | Ask the Dust by John Fante
Buy new: £4.48 / Used from: £1.73 by JOHN FANTE!!! Devastatingly clear prose following the damningly complex workings of human nature.
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 | Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski
Buy used from: £2.99 Call him a one-trick pony if you like, but what a pony and what a trick!
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 | The Master and Margarita (Vintage Classics) by Mikhail Bulgakov
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £3.24 Magical on so many levels it hurts.
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 | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Penguin Modern Classics) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Buy new: £5.19 / Used from: £0.01 Possibly better than Dostoevsky's House of the Dead. In my opinion that's all the recommendation you need.
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 | Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £2.12 Brilliant, one of the true classics of the late 20th Century. Peerless prose, genuine wit and damning social commentary.
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 | A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin Modern Classics) by John Kennedy Toole
Buy new: £5.92 / Used from: £2.86 One of the funniest books ever, with one of the saddest stories behind it.
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 | Humboldt's Gift (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Saul Bellow
Buy used from: £1.51 Of all the Bellow books I've read, this is the most entertaining. By turns hilarious, melancholic and informative, Bellow's genius is displayed on every single page.
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 | Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £3.91 It left me exhausted and in total awe. Don't miss the comic genius amongst all of the PoMo debris.
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 | Slaughterhouse 5, or The Children's Crusade - A Duty-dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £1.54 Sublime tragicomedy. Louis-Ferdinand Celine meets the Marx Bros.
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 | Dispatches (Picador) by Michael Herr
Buy new: £4.85 / Used from: £0.01 |
 | Savage Detectives, the by Roberto Bolano
Buy used from: £4.87 |
 | Collected Stories (Vintage Classics) by John Cheever
Buy new: £8.98 / Used from: £6.52 |
 | The Book of Daniel (Penguin Classics) by E. L. Doctorow
Buy new: £6.02 / Used from: £3.25 |
 | The Man without Qualities by Robert Musil
Buy new: £9.67 / Used from: £5.33 |
 | Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jorge Borges
Buy new: £6.47 / Used from: £4.12 |
 | Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (International Writers) by Patrick Suskind
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £0.01 |
 | 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman
Buy new: £6.45 / Used from: £4.26 |
Listmania!
