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Prose Fiction

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Ignasi Ribó

Examples of Short Stories and Novels

Testo integrale

1The following extracts from Wikipedia provide a brief summary of the short stories and novels cited as examples throughout the textbook. The Wikipedia texts have been modified, expanded, or adapted as needed. Hyperlinks to the full entries are given in order to help students find additional information and references about these narratives in the course of their own research.

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21984 (1949) by George Orwell: A dystopian novel set in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation by a totalitarian party and its leader, Big Brother. The novel tells the story of a party member who becomes disaffected and is prosecuted as a thought criminal by the repressive state apparatus. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Nineteen_Eighty-Four

32001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke: A science-fiction novel, written in parallel with the film of the same name directed by Stanley Kubrick. It narrates a voyage to Jupiter of a human crew with the sentient computer Hal after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith affecting human evolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)

4Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll: A novel about a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland

5The Ambassadors (1903) by Henry James: A novel that follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad Newsome, his widowed fiancée’s supposedly wayward son. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether’s point of view. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Ambassadors

6Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell: A political allegory about a farm where animals revolt against their human owners only to become enslaved and exploited by the pigs, who establish a new system as oppressive and tyrannical as the previous one. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Animal_Farm

7Anna Karenina (1878) by Leo Tolstoy: A Russian novel narrating the tragic story of a married aristocrat/socialite and her extramarital affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. It is regarded as one of the most accomplished realist novels. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Anna_Karenina

8Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) by Jules Verne: An adventure novel narrating the story of the English aristocrat Phileas Fogg and his newly employed French valet Passepartout, as they attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the Reform Club. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days

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9Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) by Alfred Döblin: A modernist novel narrating, through montage and multiple points of view, the story of Franz Biberkopf, a convicted murderer who comes out from prison and struggles to survive in the underworld of Berlin during the interwar years. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Berlin_Alexanderplatz

10Bible: A collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. It contains texts from different authors and epochs, including narratives, songs, codes, chronicles, proverbs, letters, and other writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​BibleBlanquerna (ca. 1283) by Ramon Llull: A medieval novel chronicling the life of the eponymous hero, a nobleman who follows his religious vocation and is eventually elected as Pope. It is a major work of literature written in Catalan and one of the earliest predecessors of the modern European novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Blanquerna

11Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding: A novel written in the form of a personal diary chronicling a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Bridget_Jones%27s_Diary

12The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A philosophical novel set in nineteenth-century Russia dealing with ethical debates about God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernising Russia, with a plot that revolves around the subject of patricide. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Brothers_Karamazov

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13Candide (1759) by Voltaire: A satirical novella that tells the story of a young man, Candide, who grows up being indoctrinated with an optimistic philosophy by his mentor, until he is confronted with the reality of hardship and suffering in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Candide

14Casino Royale (1953) by Ian Fleming: The first in the James Bond series of spy novels, it begins with the British secret agent gambling at the casino in Royale-les-Eaux to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the treasurer of a French union and a member of the Russian secret service. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Casino_Royale_(novel)

15The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger: A novel in which Holden Caulfield, a teenager from New York City, describes events that took place in December 1949, when he was trying to deal with his feelings of anguish and alienation from society. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Catcher_in_the_Rye

16‘Cathedral’ (1983) by Raymond Carver: A short story narrating the unwelcome visit of a blind friend of the narrator’s wife for dinner. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Cathedral_(short_story)

17‘A Christmas Carol’ (1843) by Charles Dickens: A novella that tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who, after being visited by the ghost of his former business partner and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​A_Christmas_Carol

18The Counterfeiters (1925) by André Gide: A novel with many characters and crisscrossing plotlines, which revolve around the distinction of the original versus its copy. It is a novel-within-a-novel, with Édouard, the alter ego of Gide, intending to write a book of the same title. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counterfeiters_(novel)

19Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Russian novel about the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who kills an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Crime_and_Punishment

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20‘The Dancing Girl of Izu’ (1926) by Yasunari Kawabata: A lyrical and elegiac short story narrating the infatuation of a Tokyo student with a young dancing girl during a brief encounter with her family of itinerant performers on the Izu Peninsula. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Dancing_Girl_of_Izu

21Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century) by Longus: An Ancient Greek pastoral novel that tells the love story and adventures of a couple of young shepherds. It is one of the most ancient predecessors of the modern novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Daphnis_and_Chloe

22The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown: A thriller novel that follows an American symbologist after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris, when he becomes involved in a battle between powerful enemies over a religious mystery. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Da_Vinci_Code

23The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Bocaccio: A collection of novelle (short stories) told by a group of young men and women sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Decameron

24The Dharma Bums (1958) by Jack Kerouac: A novel narrating the protagonist’s search for meaning on his trip across the Western United States. The book had a significant influence on the hippie counterculture of the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Dharma_Bums

25‘Diary of a Madman’ (1835) by Nikolai Gogol: A short story presented as the personal diary of a minor civil servant in Russia during the repressive era of Nicholas I, as he descends into insanity. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Diary_of_a_Madman_(short_story)

26The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin: A utopian science-fiction novel set in two different planets divided into several states and dominated by two political and military rivals, one with a capitalist economy and patriarchal system and the other with an authoritarian system that claims to rule in the name of the proletariat. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Dispossessed

27Don Quixote (1605–1615) by Miguel de Cervantes: Generally considered the first and one of the greatest modern novels, it tells the story of a middle-aged impoverished country squire who, deluded by his readings of chivalric romances, recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, and sets out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs and bring justice to the world under the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Don_Quixote

28Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce: A collection of fifteen short stories that form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the twentieth century. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Dubliners

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29The Fall (1956) by Albert Camus: A philosophical novel consisting of a series of dramatic monologues in which the protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, reflects upon his life to a stranger. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Fall_(Camus_novel)

30‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe: A short story and a gothic mystery that begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the crumbling house of his friend, Roderick Usher, after receiving a letter from him. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher

31Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: An avant-garde novel, considered one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words to unique effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Finnegans_Wake

32‘Funes the Memorious’ (1942) by Jorge Luís Borges: A short story, included in the anthology Ficciones, telling the story of Ireneo Funes, a man who acquires a prodigious memory after suffering a head injury and can remember every single detail of his experiences. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Funes_the_Memorious

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33Germinal (1885) by Émile Zola: A naturalistic novel narrating the story of a young migrant worker who arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Germinal_(novel)

34The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy: A novel about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by social constraints and obligations. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_God_of_Small_Things

35The Golden Ass (ca. 170) by Lucius Apuleius: Also known as The Metamorphoses, this Ancient Roman novel tells the story of Lucius, who accidentally turns himself into an ass while practicing magic and sets out on a long journey, literal and metaphorical, to recover his human form. It is the only Ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Golden_Ass

36The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing: A novel telling the story of writer Anna Wulf through fragments of her notebooks that intermingle different aspects of her personal, political, and life experiences and reflections. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Golden_Notebook

37Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell: A novel narrating the struggles of young Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner in Georgia, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following the defeat of the Confederates in the Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Gone_with_the_Wind_(novel)The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck: A novel telling the story of the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures during the Great Depression. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Grapes_of_Wrath

38Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens: A novel that depicts the personal growth and development of an orphan nicknamed Pip, as he tries to escape poverty in the midst of England’s industrial expansion. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Great_Expectations

39The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald: A novel about the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan, set on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Great_Gatsby

40Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift: A satirical novel narrating the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, as he is repeatedly shipwrecked in distant and imaginary lands, inhabited by civilisations and creatures that ridicule aspects of human nature and society. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Gulliver%27s_Travels

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41‘Hansel and Gretel’ (1812) by the Brothers Grimm: A German fairy tale that recounts the ordeal of a young brother and sister kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch living in a forest house built of candy. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Hansel_and_Gretel

42Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) by J.K. Rowling: The first novel in the Harry Potter series, it tells the story of a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage as he makes close friends and a few enemies in his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone

43Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad: A novella that tells the story of Marlow’s obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, as he sets out to find him in the most remote parts of the Congo River basin. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Heart_of_Darkness

44‘Hills Like White Elephants’ (1927) by Ernest Hemingway: A short story focusing on a conversation between an American man and a woman at a Spanish train station while waiting for a train to Madrid. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Hills_Like_White_Elephants

45The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien: A children’s fantasy novel that narrates the quest of Bilbo Baggins, a home-loving hobbit, together with the wizard Gandalf and a party of thirteen dwarves, who set out to recover the treasure guarded by Smaug the dragon. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Hobbit

46The Human Comedy (1830–1850) by Honoré de Balzac: La Comédie humaine is a multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society during the Restoration (1815–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848), including such novels as Père Goriot or Lost Illusions, amongst many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​La_Com%C3%A9die_humaine

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47If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979) by Italo Calvino: A postmodern novel framed by a story about the reader trying to read a book with the same title as the novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​If_on_a_winter%27s_night_a_traveler

48Iliad (ca. 750 BC) by Homer: An Ancient Greek epic poem set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states. It tells of the battles and events that took place during the weeks that were dominated by a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles. It is the most influential work of ancient literature in the Western tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Iliad

49Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace: A complex and multifaceted postmodern novel centred on a junior tennis academy and a nearby substance-abuse recovery centre, touching with humour and melancholy on many topics, including addiction and recovery, suicide, family relationships, entertainment and advertising, film theory, and tennis. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Infinite_Jest

50In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) by Marcel Proust: A novel in seven volumes that follows the narrator’s recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood during late-nineteenth-century to early-twentieth-century upper-class France. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​In_Search_of_Lost_Time

51I, Robot (1950) by Isaac Asimov: A collection of science-fiction short stories sharing a common narrative frame and the theme of the interaction between humans and robots. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​I,_Robot

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52Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte: An English novel narrating the emotions and experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Jane_Eyre

53Journey to the End of the Night (1932) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline: A philosophical novel narrating the experiences of antihero Ferdinand Bardamu during the First World War, and his subsequent life in colonial Africa, his experience of the rise of American capitalism, and his time spent in bourgeois France, while expressing a nihilistic and cynical view of human nature, institutions, and society. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Journey_to_the_End_of_the_Night

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54‘The Killers’ (1927) by Ernest Hemingway: A short story about a pair of criminals who enter a restaurant seeking to kill a boxer, who is hiding out for unknown reasons. Hemingway’s minimalist use of an objective narrator in this story was highly influential. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Killers_(Hemingway_short_story)

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55Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) by Pierre Chordelos de Laclos: An epistolary novel telling the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use seduction as a weapon to socially control and exploit others, all the while enjoying their cruel games and boasting about their manipulative talents. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Les_Liaisons_dangereuses

56Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov: A novel that narrates the obsession and sexual relationship of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature professor, with a twelve-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, after contriving to become her stepfather. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Lolita

57The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J.R.R. Tolkien: An epic fantasy novel that tells the story of a party constituted of a few hobbits, two men, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard, as they set out on a difficult journey through Middle Earth with the aim of destroying the ring that could give absolute power to the Dark Lord Sauron. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Lord_of_the_Rings

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58Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert: A French novel narrating the story of Emma Bovary, the wife of a doctor who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. It is considered one of the masterpieces of realist narrative in literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Madame_Bovary

59The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann: A novel telling the story of Hans Castorp, who undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps, and ends up staying there for seven years, until the First World War concludes. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Magic_Mountain

60The Maltese Falcon (1929) by Dashiell Hammett: A detective novel about a beautiful young woman who hires Sam Spade to find her missing sister, who supposedly ran off with a crook, and gets him involved in the search for the jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Maltese_Falcon_(novel)

61The Man Without Qualities (1930–1943) by Robert Musil: An unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various drafts considered to be one of the most significant European novels of the twentieth century. The novel takes place during the last days of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and has a winding plot that often veers into allegorical and ironical dissections on a wide range of existential themes concerning humanity, society, culture, and identity. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Man_Without_Qualities

62The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka: A novella written in German that narrates the awkward and agonising experience of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, who wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect and becomes estranged from his own family. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Metamorphosis

63Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville: An adventure novel telling the story of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of a whaler, to take revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale that, on a previous whaling voyage, bit off Ahab’s leg at the knee. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Moby-Dick

64The Mother (1906) by Maxim Gorky: A socialist realist novel, portraying the life of a woman who works in a Russian factory doing hard manual labour and fighting poverty and hunger among other hardships, in the midst of revolutionary unrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Mother_(Gorky_novel)

65Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf: A modernist novel narrating a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First-World-War England. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Mrs_Dalloway

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66Nausea (1938) by Jean-Paul Sartre: An existentialist novel about a dejected historian who experiences with a sense of nausea how reality encroaches on his intellectual and spiritual freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Nausea_(novel)

67Night (1960) by Elie Wiesel: A novel based on the author’s experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of Second World War. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Night_(book)

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68Odyssey (ca. 750 BC) by Homer: An Ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. Partly a sequel to the Iliad, it tells of the hazardous return home to Ithaca of the war hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths) after the fall of Troy. It is one of the most influential works of literature in the Western tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Odyssey

69Oedipus Rex (429 BC) by Sophocles: An Athenian tragedy widely regarded as the masterpiece of the genre. It dramatises the story of Oedipus, who has become king of Thebes while unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his father, Laius (the previous king), and marry his mother, Jocasta. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Oedipus_Rex

70The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway: A novella that tells the story of an epic battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin near the coast of Cuba. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea

71One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez: A novel telling the story of several generations of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, in the metaphoric country of Colombia. The magical realist style and thematic substance of the novel established it as an important representative of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude

72One Thousand and One Nights (medieval): A collection of Middle-Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age and framed by the story of a sultan and his wife Scheherazade, who succeeds in remaining alive thanks to her storytelling. Some of the stories in the book have become widely known around the world, such as ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, ’ ‘Sindbad the Sailor, ’ or ‘Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​One_Thousand_and_One_Nights

73On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac: A novel narrating the travels across the United States of two countercultural characters, who try to live as intensely as possible against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. It is considered the most significant literary work of the Beat generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​On_the_Road

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74Pale Fire (1966) by Vladimir Nabokov: A novel presented as a 999-line poem titled ‘Pale Fire, ’ written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary written by Shade’s neighbour and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Pale_Fire

75The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde: A philosophical novel about a handsome young man who makes a Faustian bargain that allows him to pursue a hedonistic and libertine life and stay always young and beautiful, while his portrait ages and records all of his excesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

76A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce: A novel tracing the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce, as he questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man

77Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen: A romance novel that narrates the emotional development of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgements and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Pride_and_Prejudice

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78The Red and the Black (1830) by Stendhal: A historical psychological novel chronicling the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. The title refers to the tension between the clerical (black) and secular (red) interests of the protagonist. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Red_and_the_Black

79‘A Report to an Academy’ (1917) by Franz Kafka: A short story in the form of a conference given by an ape named Red Peter, who tells his scientific audience how he learned to behave like a civilised human and how he has been affected by this transformation. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​A_Report_to_an_Academy

80The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy: A post-apocalyptic short novel telling the journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed most of life and civilisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Road

81Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe: A novel presented as an autobiography by the eponymous character, a castaway who spends twenty-eight years on a remote tropical desert island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Robinson_Crusoe

82Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ca. 1321) by Luo Guanzhong: Historical novel set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history. It tells the story, in part historical, in part legendary and mythical, of the feudal lords and their retainers, who tried to replace the dwindling Han dynasty or to restore it. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms

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83Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert: A historical novel set in Carthage during the 3rd century BC, immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt which took place shortly after the First Punic War. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Salammb%C3%B4

84‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891) by Arthur Conan Doyle: The first short story featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who is engaged in solving a mystery involving European royalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​A_Scandal_in_Bohemia

85The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne: A historical novel telling the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter from an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity in the context of a seventeenth-century Puritan colony in Massachusetts. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Scarlet_Letter

86Second Thoughts (1957) by Michel Butor: A novel written in the second person telling the story of a middle-aged man who takes the train from Paris to Rome to visit his lover, whom he has not informed of his arrival. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Second_Thoughts_(Butor_novel)

87Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen: A novel that narrates the life and romantic vicissitudes of the three Dashwood sisters as they move with their widowed mother from their family home. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Sense_and_Sensibility

88‘A Simple Heart’ (1877) by Gustave Flaubert: A short story about an innocent and loyal peasant girl named Felicité who picks up work in a widow’s house as a servant. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Three_Tales_(Flaubert)#.22A_Simple_Heart.22

89‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ (1936) by Ernest Hemingway: A short story narrating the last moments and bitter memories of a writer who has been fatally injured while on a safari in Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Snows_of_Kilimanjaro_(short_story)

90A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-) by George R.R. Martin: An unfinished (at the time of writing) series of epic fantasy novels narrating the conflicts between rival kingdoms in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

91The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A loosely autobiographical novel, presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist who falls in love with Charlotte, a beautiful girl engaged to another man. It is one of the most influential novels of the Romantic movement in literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther

92The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner: A novel narrating thirty years in the life of the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Sound_and_the_Fury

93‘The Storm’ (1898) by Kate Chopin: A short story narrating the sexual affair between a married man and a married woman during a storm in nineteenth century Louisiana. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Storm_(short_story)

94Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson: A gothic mystery novella about a London lawyer who investigates the relationship between his old and reputable friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde

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95Tale of Genji (1010) by Murasaki Shikibu: A psychological novel recounting the life of Hikaru Genji, the son of an ancient Japanese emperor and a low-ranking concubine, while describing the customs of the aristocratic society of the Heian period. It is considered the earliest predecessor of the modern novel in the Eastern tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Tale_of_Genji

96‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe: A short story told by an unnamed narrator who attempts to demonstrate his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Tell-Tale_Heart

97Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe: A novel depicting pre- and post-colonial life in late-nineteenth-century Nigeria through the life of Okonkwo, an Igbo leader and local wrestling champion in the fictional village of Umuofia. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Things_Fall_Apart

98To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee: A novel narrating three years in the life of six-year-old Scout Finch at the time of the arrest and trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman in a small town of Alabama during the Great Depression. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

99Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding: A comic morality tale that narrates the life of Tom Jones in order to explore human nature and the contrast between virtue and evil in human society. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_a_Foundling

100To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf: A modernist novel centred on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​To_the_Lighthouse

101Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) by Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel purporting to be the autobiography of the eponymous character. Its style, marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices, has been highly influential amongst modernist and postmodernist authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy,_Gentleman

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102Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce: A novel that chronicles an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin. The novel is constructed as an ironic parallel to Homer’s epic poem Odyssey. It is one of the most influential works of modernist literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Ulysses_(novel)

103The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera: A philosophical novel that narrates the lives of two women, two men, and a dog, while exploring the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and its aftermath. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being

104Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe: A novel depicting the brutality and immorality of slavery in the southern United States, which pleads for Christian love to overcome cruelty. A bestseller at the time, the novel helped to further the abolitionist cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin

105The Unnamable (1953) by Samuel Beckett: A modernist novel consisting entirely of a disjointed monologue from the perspective of an unnamed and immobile protagonist. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Unnamable_(novel)

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106Vanity Fair (1847–1848) by William Thackeray: A novel that follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Vanity_Fair_(novel)

107The Virgin Suicides (1993) by Jeffrey Eugenides: A novel written in the first person plural from the perspective of an anonymous group of teenage boys who struggle to find an explanation for the deaths of five sisters. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​The_Virgin_Suicides

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108War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy: A novel that chronicles the history of the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. It is regarded as a central work of Russian literature and one of Tolstoy’s finest literary achievements. https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​War_and_Peace

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