 | Delhi by Khushwant Singh
Buy new: £11.25 / Used from: £1.27 No-one I know has read this (who is not Indian) - craps on Rushdie by one of India's great contemporary writers and national icon
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 | Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Popular Classics) by Jonathan Swift
Buy new: £2.16 / Used from: £0.01 This would be number 1, except they are all number 10 and i want someone to read Delhi, please
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 | Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights by Richard F. Burton
Buy new: £14.99 / Used from: £10.50 Good book but can't think of a position for this so I dedicate it to all the books I have loved but can't remember now
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 | Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Penguin Classics) by Thomas De Quincey
Buy new: £5.47 / Used from: £2.58 Not for the drugs but for the book...
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 | Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics) by Leo Tolstoy
Buy new: £5.36 / Used from: £4.24 Everyone destroys the thing they love...
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 | The Plague (Essential Penguin) by Albert Camus
Buy new: £8.09 / Used from: £0.01 When existential ennui and rage are ended we have to live somehow...
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 | If This Is a Man / The Truce by Primo Levi
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £3.28 Not a novel but has to be on my list - check out The Periodic Table (short stories) as well if you are not afraid of gentle science and need a softer intro
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 | Wide Sargasso Sea (Essential Penguin) by Jean Rhys
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £1.70 Forgotten after four books way ahead of their time her comeback was with this take on Jane Eyre - also great short story writer
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| Collected Stories (Modern Classics) by Isaac Babel
Buy used from: £0.01 Short stories from a lost writer - Red Cavalry is unique
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 | Mansfield Park (Penguin Popular Classics) by Jane Austen
Buy new: £2.22 / Used from: £0.01 Chick-fic 19thC style - but on the way invents English novel writing style (non-picaresque) and post-modern twist just for a laugh
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| Golden Fruits (Calderbooks) by Nathalie Sarraute
Short, pithy, funny and shows there is nothing about the literary/publishing/media scene that has ever been new (post-Caxton)
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 | L' Ecume DES Jours by Boris Vian
Buy used from: £2.64 There is an English translation from the 60s in Penguin - magical realism before it existed and nothing like anything else (L'arrache coeur is better but not in Amazon)
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 | Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jorge Borges
Buy new: £6.47 / Used from: £4.19 Short stories that get (and stay) in your head - why say it in 200 pages if you can do it in 20
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 | Cathedral (Panther) by Raymond Carver
Buy used from: £2.50 You only need this for A Small Good Thing" but the rest are good as well
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 | Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Buy used from: £0.01 A laugh and a half - what the Victorians prevented - also a good 60s film
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 | Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
Buy new: £5.83 / Used from: £3.15 Vastly underrated writer - 1982 Janine is 10 x better than GB brat pack - this is Gray just taking a gentle stroll - and still being the best contemporary writer in these isles
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 | One Hundred Years of Solitude (Essential Penguin) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy used from: £0.01 All of life is here - or how your family Larkin you up
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 | Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Penguin Popular Classics) by Thomas Hardy
Buy new: £2.16 / Used from: £0.01 Dirty rotten men - Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure are probably better but this is essential Hardy
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 | Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Buy new: £6.26 / Used from: £0.87 Before she thought difficulty was a the mark of a "great" author
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 | The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) by Laurence Sterne
Buy new: £6.26 / Used from: £2.22 A funny post-modern classic from the 18th C
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 | The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.01 Always worth reading Roth but this is the closest I have read to his potential
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 | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Flamingo modern classics) by Hunter S. Thompson
Buy used from: £0.82 Why oh why do people even read On the Road when there is this?
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 | The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Buy used from: £0.01 How did he know?
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 | The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Buy used from: £0.01 Dickens for contemporary America - all his 60s journalistic stuff should be read as well
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 | Metamorphoses (Oxford World's Classics) by Ovid
Buy used from: £1.27 The original stories, convoluted plot but you can't beat a bit of sex and death
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Listmania!
