Takes the cliched story about a stranger entering a strict society and turns it on its head Same terroritory as Kafka or Calvino, arguably, but less diagramatic. Superb.

Dostoyevsky at his best: comic, bleak, insightful. Captures perfectly and satirises the insanity of idealogues and terrorists of every hue. Warning: No sympathetic characters. Not even one.

Unfairly maligned as a tough read, some of the social satire in the later chapters is a bit clumsy, but no other author has ever described art, memory, and obsession quite so vividly.

There are about 4-5 of his books that could have made this list. Great chronicler of modern America. More of a humanist and intellectual than Updike, but less of a story teller.

Less wilfully accomplished and literary than The Great Gatsby, this is probably one of the saddest, most insightful novels ever written about mental illness.

It might seem perverse to pick this in front of Ulysses or FW, but this is Joyce at his best and perceptive, full of life, love and grit.

Masively underrated, Oe is a delicious writer: has Bellow's intelligence and wit, but with a lighter touch, demonstrated best in this book.

A toss - up between this and Darkness at Noon, Koestler is the greatest anti - totalitarian writer on the list. This one is the greater pyschological portrait, of a collaborator.

This is what Faulkner does best: a mess of perspectives; blood, soil and history. Modernism at its rawest.

This series has all of Updike's good habits but also his faults. He's the most amazing, pyrotechnic writers, but, like Swift or [more clearly] Thackeray, he treats his characters like God treated Job.

If the Beats were the hip, shallow counter culture, this is the counter - counter culture. Fierce, insane, and fantastic, it's almost unbearable to read in places, but persevere: it's well worth it.

Probably the funniest piece of fiction ever written.

Still the daddy of all novels, especially the big, sprawling social ones. It's a humbling book to read, because it literally teems with ideas, characters and life. Nothing matches it, still.