 | Heart Of Darkness : by Joseph Conrad
Buy used from: £0.01 Intense, subtle yet profound, and, above all, proleptic in its vision, the book is a savage condemnation of European imperialism. It is also about moral confusion. A great novel.
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 | The Sound and the Fury (Vintage Classics) by William Faulkner
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.45 Not an easy read, primarily because of the deliberate obscurity of form in the first two sections. But peresevere; and the fog lifts.
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 | The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul
Buy new: £5.72 / Used from: £0.79 Another not-very-easy read, but you must persist, so good is this novel in which Naipaul started a genre. The language is precise and evocative. Haunting and beautiful descriptions.
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 | 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Buy new: £5.09 / Used from: £2.76 Orwell's nightmarish, dystopic vision of future, the novel can't be more relevant to modern society. It has also gifted several phrases to english language.
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 | The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics) by F Scott Fitzgerald
Buy new: £4.42 / Used from: £0.91 Vividly evocates the swinging 20s in America. Prose is exquisite.
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 | The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Buy new: £4.89 / Used from: £0.89 Via its cynical protagonist and his apaprent aimlessness, the novel deals with themes such as alienation as a form of self-protection, intimacy and sexuality, and loneliness. Brilliant.
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 | To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Buy new: £4.32 / Used from: £1.47 With the racially charged atmosphere of 1960s as its backdrop the novels deals with universal issues. The narrative voice of a guileless 9 year old is a masterstroke.
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 | Seize the Day (Penguin Modern Classics) by Saul Bellow
Buy new: £4.92 / Used from: £2.50 In this tale of failure and dissolution, Bellow tackles big themes such as isolation and materialism via its protagonist for whom his day of reckoning has arrived. Sharp, focused, and brilliant.
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 | The Grass Is Singing by Doris May Lessing
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.42 A powerful and relentlessly penetrating study of racial relationships. The reader is left with great sorrow for the human condition at the end of the novel. Dazzling.
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 | Of Human Bondage (Vintage classics) by William Somerset Maugham
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.99 A powerful story of sexual obsession and human longing for conenction. And Maughm can make words do things very few can.
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 | The Fixer (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Bernard Malamud
Buy used from: £1.78 Based on the notorious 'Beilis Trial' in tsarist Russia, this novel glows with compassion.
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 | The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Buy new: £4.75 / Used from: £0.32 Autobiographical novel of Plath's nervous breakdown. Plath does not pull punches when it comes to men and Psychiatrists, although she doesn't blame them for her mental instability. Acutely observant.
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 | Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £2.58 An account of louche early-1930s-Berlin, on the backdrop of the last days of Weimer republic, on the brink of Nazism. The balance between comedy and outright horror is perfect.
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 | Catch-22 (Vintage Classics) by Joseph Heller
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £1.49 Mildly confusing at first reading due to its unusal plot structure and disorienting timeline, this is an extremely well-crafted, phantasmagoric satire.
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 | The Go-Between (Penguin Modern Classics) by L. P. Hartley
Buy new: £6.19 / Used from: £4.30 Right from its start and celebrated opening, this is an absolutely gripping tale which inexorably threads its way to its finale; the slow build up of tension is superb. A work of highest artistry.
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 | Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Buy new: £6.26 / Used from: £0.87 Enchanting, funny, beautifully writen, and enormously moving. Macon Dead is a remarkable literary creation.
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 | The Sword of Honour Trilogy: Men at Arms, Officers and by Evelyn Waugh
Buy new: £9.71 / Used from: £3.05 Waugh's magnum opus, comprising 3 novels. He is in a sombre mood here, so don't expect manically farcical and grotesquely bizarre situations, Waugh's trademark in his earlier, comic novels.
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 | Lucky Jim (Penguin Modern Classics) by Kingsley Amis
Buy new: £5.66 / Used from: £1.42 Characterized by Amis's mordant, biting humor, the novel brilliantly satirizes academic world. It started a genre that inspired many an author. One of the funniest novels I 've read.
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 | The French Lieutenant's Woman (Vintage Classics) by John Fowles
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £1.58 Despite its Victorian plot-structure and style of passages the novel is very much of its time in that its protagonists think in a 20th century way; the narrative style too is very much postmodern.
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 | A Malgudi Omnibus: "Swami and Friends", "Bachelor of Arts", "English Teacher" by R.K. Narayan
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.00 In this collection of 3 novels Narayan is insightful without being pedantic. These simple stories of human relationships shine with wit, compassion, humor and gentle irony.
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 | Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
Buy new: £17.09 / Used from: £20.48 A timeless, powerful satire on conformity and hypocrisy of American middle class by the first American to win the Nobel prize for literature. 'Babbit' is representative of all middle classes.
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 | The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics) by Ford Madox Ford
Buy used from: £1.66 An extraordinary, complex story, narrated in an endearingly meandering, yet ironic manner; the narrative form started a trend. Reflects the shifting morality and erosion of social norms. Outstanding.
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 | The Human Factor (Vintage classics) by Graham Greene
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.34 Inspired by the Philby affair. But this great novel is not just another cold war espionage-story. Greene brilliantly brings to the fore the (as the title suggests) human factor.
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 | Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck "Essentials") by John Steinbeck
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £1.00 A beautiful & moving story of friendship between two drifters living precariously on the fringe of society and their simple dreams and innocence. Its brevity & simplicity are matched by its brilliance
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 | Mrs. Dalloway (Wordsworth Classics) by Virginia Woolf
Buy new: £1.99 / Used from: £0.01 Woolf's most accessible novel that is remarkable as much for its celebrated 'stream-of-consciousness' technique as for its language and quirky use of punctuations!
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