Listmania!
Fiction and poetry that made me who I am (pre age 21)
The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics)The Trial (Penguin Modern Classics) by Franz Kafka
Buy new: £5.24 / Used from: £2.93
Cosmological guilt. A metaphor inside a metaphor inside a metaphor...
The Castle (Vintage Classics)The Castle (Vintage Classics) by Franz Kafka
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.90
The futile but obligatory quest for meaning
Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) by Franz Kafka
Buy new: £5.44 / Used from: £2.68
Don't you just hate those days when you wake up feeling like a giant beetle?
The Glass Bead Game (Vintage Classics)The Glass Bead Game (Vintage Classics) by Hermann Hesse
Buy new: £6.72 / Used from: £3.85
Transcendental civilisation
Steppenwolf (Essential Penguin)Steppenwolf (Essential Penguin) by Hermann Hesse
Buy new: £5.72 / Used from: £2.93
The still point between happiness and despair
SiddharthaSiddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Buy used from: £3.23
Rational spirituality
Eyeless in Gaza (Vintage Classic)Eyeless in Gaza (Vintage Classic) by Aldous Huxley
Buy new: £6.72 / Used from: £3.94
Privilege and commitment
Point Counter Point (Vintage Classic)Point Counter Point (Vintage Classic) by Aldous Huxley
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.59
The emergence of an individual despite fate and history
The Gormenghast TrilogyThe Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
Buy new: £9.98 / Used from: £2.49
The most pleasure I ever had from a book
The VivisectorThe Vivisector by Patrick White
Buy new: £8.99 / Used from: £5.76
We murder to dissect
Riders in the Chariot (Vintage Classics)Riders in the Chariot (Vintage Classics) by Patrick White
Buy new: £7.99 / Used from: £6.36
There is always hope for all of us, though the way may be strange and hard
The Solid MandalaThe Solid Mandala by Patrick White
Buy used from: £2.20
Chalk and cheese, brothers amd keepers
1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Buy new: £5.09 / Used from: £2.86
The young persons essential guide to political awareness.
Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics)Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jean-Paul Sartre
Buy new: £5.73 / Used from: £3.57
Understanding dawns in my young mind
Iron in the Soul (Penguin Modern Classics)Iron in the Soul (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jean-Paul Sartre
Buy new: £9.22 / Used from: £7.23
Culmination of the awesome Roads to Freedom trilogy. The closest I have come to living in another person's head
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Penguin Modern Classics)One Hundred Years of Solitude (Penguin Modern Classics) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Buy new: £6.46 / Used from: £1.63
The invention of magical realism
Le Grand MeaulnesLe Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
Buy used from: £0.48
Young love and nostalgia for it turned almost into music
Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Buy new: £5.01 / Used from: £0.01
Evil in theory and practise
The Brothers Karamazov (Penguin Classics)The Brothers Karamazov (Penguin Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Buy new: £6.46 / Used from: £4.25
Family, who needs it?
Complete Poems and Plays T.S. EliotComplete Poems and Plays T.S. Eliot by T.S. Eliot
Buy new: £8.96 / Used from: £8.69
The first poet to make my hair stand on end, and still my favourite to this day
Leaves of Grass (Dover Thrift Editions)Leaves of Grass (Dover Thrift Editions) by Walt Whitman
Buy new: £1.82 / Used from: £1.50
The first poet I read from cover to cover, and the man who taught me to at least try to love everything
Howl (Pocket Poets)Howl (Pocket Poets) by Allen Ginsberg
Buy new: £3.88 / Used from: £1.06
And then things got very strange
Gravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £4.65
Like Joyce's Ullyses on LSD, and with rather more laughs