Obooki’s Favourite Novels

(no distinction is made in this list between novels and autobiographies)

Favourite 53 Novels

(Disclaimer: May not be 53 novels)

• Mário de Andrade, Macunaíma (Brazil, 1928)
• Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina (Yugoslavia, 1945)
• Miguel Ángel Asturias, The President (Guatemala, 1933)
• Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin (France, 1831)
• Anna Banti, Artemisia (Italy, 1947)
• John Barth, Chimera (USA, 1972)
• Samuel Beckett, Murphy (Ireland, 1938)
• Andrei Bely, Petersburg (Russia, 1916)
• Emmanuel Bove, My Friends (France, 1924)
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (England, 1847)
• Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Marguerita (Russia, 1928)
• Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers (England, 1980)
• Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes (Austria, 1985)
• Karel Čapek, War with the Newts (Czechoslovakia, 1936)
• Alejo Carpentier, Explosion in a Cathedral (Cuba, 1962)
• Ermanno Cavazzoni, The Voice of the Moon (Italy, 1987)
• Something by Colette (it doesn’t really matter what) (France)
• Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (England, 1860)
• Joseph Conrad, The Rescue (England, 1920)
• Grazia Deledda, La Madre (Italy, 1920)
• Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (England, 1837)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Eternal Husband (Russia, 1870)
• George Eliot, Silas Marner (England, 1861)
• William Faulker, The Mansion (USA, 1959)
• Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller (Switzerland, 1954)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Germany, 1774)
• Witold Gombrowicz, Pornografia (Poland, 1960)
• Alasdair Gray, 1982 Janine (Scotland, 1984)
• Knut Hamsun, Mysteries (Norway, 1892)
• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (England, 1892)
• Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk (Czechoslovakia, 1923)
• Henry James, The Ambassadors (USA, 1903)
• László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance (Hungary, 1989)
• Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard (Italy, 1958)
• Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (Russia, 1840)
• Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress (Poland, 1971)
• Doris Lessing, Under My Skin (England, 1994)
• Wyndham Lewis, Tarr (England, 1918)
• Andreï Makine, Le Testament Français (France, 1995)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (Colombia, 1985)
• Guy de Maupassant, A Woman’s Life (France, 1883)
• Herman Melville, Pierre (USA, 1852)
• Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow (Japan, 1969)
• George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (Ireland, 1888)
• Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift (Russia, 1938)
• Juan Carlos Onetti, Body Snatcher (Uruguay, 1964)
• Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut (France, 1731)
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (France, 1913)
• Eça de Queiroz, Cousin Basilio (Portugal, 1878)
• Gregor von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (Austro-Hungary, 1979)
• Frederick Rolfe, The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (England, 1909)
• Luis Martin Santos, Time of Silence (Spain, 1962)
• John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat (USA, 1935)
• Stendhal, The Life of Henri Brulard (France, 18??)
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (England, 1759)
• Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Nigeria, 1952)
• Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten (Germany, 1909)
• Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (USA, 1905)
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando (England, 1928)
• Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone (China, 1764)
• Émile Zola, Germinal (France, 1885)