The Telegraph recently ran this article titled “The 20 best novels of all time.” Of course, such pieces are always quirky, and are mostly intended to start arguments. So here goes!
The literary critic who authored the piece is Claire Allfree, who says:
The attentive reader will immediately spot omissions. There is, for instance, no Austen, no Dickens, no Forster – and that’s just some of the British names.
And no Thomas Hardy, who probably would place two on my top 20 list. Also no Trollope, who deserves more respect than he gets from critics. Among non-British authors, Flaubert leaps to mind.
And in order to avoid an arbitrary list of great novels, or of novels that are obviously canonical, I’ve tried to opt for books that have changed the way we think about the novel form.
So: we are forewarned. To make the selection more eccentric still, the books are organized by era, beginning with the Middle Ages, when few if any of what we would call novels were written, and culminating in the 21st century, when few if any memorable novels have been written.
So here they are:
* The Tale of Genji (1021). Haven’t read it. It crops up on lists like these, similar to the vastly older Epic of Gilgamesh. Haven’t read that, either.
* The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). A seminal work, but I would rather get a root canal.
* Robinson Crusoe (1719). Honestly, I can’t remember whether I have read it or not. But Defoe is an important figure in English history. I don’t doubt that it is a very good book. The Telegraph critic writes:
the first metafictional novel in English, with this story of a castaway in the South Atlantic, presented as a true account “edited” by Defoe.
That seems notable. But screw this:
It has, in recent decades, also become hotly debated thanks to its imperialist connotations.
* Moby-Dick (1851). I have read it a couple of times, and am still not sure what to make of it. Worth reading, especially if you care about American literature? Definitely. Top 20 of all time? Dubious.
* Thérèse Raquin (1867). By Zola. I haven’t read any of his books, including this one. But it sounds pretty good. French literature tends to be underrated, in my opinion.
* War and Peace (1867). Yes, it’s a great book. I prefer Anna Karenin, which I re-read not many years ago. But Tolstoy is a top five author by any standard.
* Middlemarch (1871). Another great choice. All of her books are good, in my opinion, except Daniel Deronda, especially The Mill on the Floss.
* New Grub Street (1891). This is a book by someone named George Gissing with which I am not familiar.
The best known book by Gissing, an unfairly neglected figure, was also one of the first novels to explore life at the dog-end of Victorian literary culture. In doing so, it acknowledged the emergence of a new breed: the literary hack. The story of two writers, one an uncommercial literary novelist, the other an impoverished journalist, it brilliantly explores the relationship between writing and commerce, the biting demands of poverty and the role of the artist in an increasingly industrialised society – all of which resonate all the more powerfully today.
I don’t know. Might be worth checking out.
* Ulysses (1922). Yeah. I read it for the second and last time within the last year or two. It is fun, but not, in my opinion, a top 20 choice.
* In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927). I am fond of Proust. At the end of finals one term in my senior year of college, I went to the Dartmouth bookstore–as I always did when a term ended–to buy a book. I chose Swann’s Way. On the following six occasions when a term ended, in college and then law school, I would buy the next volume. There have been few things in life that I enjoyed more than delving into Proust when I finally had nothing I had to do.
Scott Moncrieff, the great translator of Proust into English, rendered the text literally for the most part, but took liberties with titles. He called Proust’s work Remembrance of Things Past. After I had read a volume or two I saw the actual French title, and was skeptical of Moncrieff’s translation. I had a college friend who spoke excellent French, and asked her one day, “What does a la recherche du temps perdu mean?” She said, “Remembrance of things past.” I said, “No, it doesn’t. What is the actual translation?” She thought for a moment and said, “In search of lost time.” In recent years, Proust’s work has finally become widely known in English by its real title.
I have read all of Proust twice, and half of it three times. It is fun to read, but is it even a novel? In some respects, it is more like an extraordinarily long essay. But a lot of what I think I know about France, and even life, I learned from Proust.
* The Great Gatsby (1925). As I have said before here, I think Gatsby is overrated, in part because the central character of Gatsby is a cipher. In my opinion, Tender Is the Night is a vastly better book, and I recommend that if you haven’t read either. The Beautiful and Damned is pretty good, too, and searingly–in some ways–autobiographical.
* Party Going (1939). By someone named Henry Green. Never heard of it.
Henry Green is one of the most unjustly neglected exponents of British fiction – and one of its most radical. This savagely satirical novel is his masterpiece. It’s set on the eve of the Second World War, concerns a group of entitled young aristocrats en route to France, who find themselves stuck in a hotel above a London station when the fog shuts down the railways. Very little happens as the bright young things blithely knock back cocktails and gossip about each other….
I think I can skip it.
* Invisible Man (1952). I believe Scott is a huge fan of this book, but I haven’t read it.
* Things Fall Apart (1958). By Chinua Achebe, it was a pioneer of the African novel. I haven’t read it.
* The Country Girls (1960). By Edna O’Brien, and having to do with Ireland. I haven’t read it.
* The Golden Notebook (1962).
Doris Lessing’s magnum opus has suffered a little from its unwieldy structure, and a lot from being pigeon-holed as a “feminist novel”, but it’s indisputably significant. It consists of four notebooks written by Anna Wulf, a writer with communist leanings who uses each one to record a different aspect of her life….
Haven’t read it, probably won’t.
* The Master and Margarita (1966). The Devil comes to Moscow. By the Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, it is a very fun book, especially if you are a college student. If you haven’t read it, you should consider doing so, although I believe there are controversies about translations.
* The Rings of Saturn (1995). Never heard of it, and never heard of its author, W.G. Sebald.
It recounts a nameless narrator’s four-day walk along the Suffolk coast in liberally digressive style: the landscape around him prompts numerous imaginative detours into such subjects as colonial exploitation in The Congo, nature and mental illness.
I think I will skip it.
* My Struggle (2009–2011). This is not the famous My Struggle, but rather one by the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard.
My Struggle is a six-volume first-person sequence about Knausgaard’s life, in which nothing is too inconsequential to relate: the series includes a 50-page description of a child’s birthday party.
I didn’t read the first one, won’t read this one either.
* Conversations with Friends (2017). By Sally Rooney. Rooney is apparently big these days, but I won’t be buying this one.
Reviewing lists like this one reminds us that great novels were written between around 1750 and the later 20th century. Maybe one or two since then. But I suspect most of our readers will react to this list as I did: it leaves out many great books that millions have enjoyed, while promoting a handful that few have, or will, read.
The only reason to highlight lists like this one is to promote debate. Have at it in the comments! What are your favorite novels? Are the recent books promoted in this piece any good? Have any of our readers actually read them? Not many, I suspect. But feel free to share your own lists.
Coming soon: a similar Telegraph piece on the 20 greatest nonfiction books of all time. Spoiler alert: the Bible doesn’t make the list.
