100 Novels That Shaped Our World (BBC)
Stories have the power to change us. BBC-Arts asked a panel of leading writers, curators and critics to choose 100 genre-busting novels that have had an impact on their lives, and this is the result. These English language novels, written over the last 300 years, range from children’s classics to popular page turners. Organised into themes, they reflect the ways books help shape and influence our thinking. There was months of deliberation and reflection by the panel but what would you have chosen? Share the novel that's shaped you on their Facebook page or using #mybooklife on Twitter.
Identity —
- Beloved — Toni Morrison
- Days Without End — Sebastian Barry
- Fugitive Pieces — Anne Michaels
- Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Homegoing — Yaa Gyasi
- Small Island — Andrea Levy
- The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath
- The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy
- Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe
- White Teeth — Zadie Smith
Love, Sex & Romance —
- Bridget Jones’s Diary — Helen Fielding
- Forever — Judy Blume
- Giovanni’s Room — James Baldwin
- Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
- Riders — Jilly Cooper
- Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
- The Far Pavilions — M. M. Kaye
- The Forty Rules of Love — Elif Shafak
- The Passion — Jeanette Winterson
- The Slaves of Solitude — Patrick Hamilton
Adventure —
- City of Bohane — Kevin Barry
- Eye of the Needle — Ken Follett
- For Whom the Bell Tolls — Ernest Hemingway
- His Dark Materials Trilogy — Phillip Pullman
- Ivanhoe — Walter Scott
- Mr Standfast — John Buchan
- The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler
- The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins
- The Jack Aubrey Novels — Patrick O’Brian
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy — J.R.R. Tolkein
Life, Death & Other Worlds —
- A Game of Thrones — George R. R. Martin
- Astonishing the Gods — Ben Okri
- Dune — Frank Herbert
- Frankenstein — Mary Shelley
- Gilead — Marilynne Robinson
- The Chronicles of Narnia — C. S. Lewis
- The Discworld Series — Terry Pratchett
- The Earthsea Trilogy — Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Sandman Series — Neil Gaiman
- The Road — Cormac McCarthy
Politics, Power & Protest —
- A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini
- Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
- Home Fire — Kamila Shamsie
- Lord of the Flies — William Golding
- Noughts & Crosses — Malorie Blackman
- Strumpet City — James Plunkett
- The Color Purple — Alice Walker
- To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
- V for Vendetta — Alan Moore
- Unless — Carol Shields
Class & Society —
- A House for Mr Biswas — V. S. Naipaul
- Cannery Row — John Steinbeck
- Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee
- Our Mutual Friend — Charles Dickens
- Poor Cow — Nell Dunn
- Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — Alan Sillitoe
- The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne — Brian Moore
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel Spark
- The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro
- Wide Sargasso Sea — Jean Rhys
Coming of Age —
- Emily of New Moon — L. M. Montgomery
- Golden Child — Claire Adam
- Oryx and Crake — Margaret Atwood
- So Long, See You Tomorrow — William Maxwell
- Swami and Friends — R. K. Narayan
- The Country Girls — Edna O’Brien
- The Harry Potter series — J. K. Rowling
- The Outsiders — S. E. Hinton
- The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ — Sue Townsend
- The Twilight Saga — Stephanie Meyer
Family & Friendship —
- A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
- Ballet Shoes — Noel Streatfeild
- Cloudstreet — Tim Winton
- Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Gibbons
- I Capture the Castle — Dodie Smith
- Middlemarch — George Eliot
- Tales of the City — Armistead Maupin
- The Shipping News — E. Annie Proulx
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — Anne Bronte
- The Witches — Roald Dahl
Conflict & Crime —
- American Tabloid — James Ellroy
- American War — Omar El Akkad
- Ice Candy Man — Bapsi Sidhwa
- Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier
- Regeneration — Pat Barker
- The Children of Men — P.D. James
- The Hound of the Baskervilles — Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Mohsin Hamid
- The Talented Mr Ripley — Patricia Highsmith
- The Quiet American — Graham Greene
Rule Breakers —
- A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
- Bartleby, the Scrivener — Herman Melville
- Habibi — Craig Thompson
- How to be Both — Ali Smith
- Orlando — Virginia Woolf
- Nights at the Circus — Angela Carter
- Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
- Psmith, Journalist — P. G. Wodehouse
- The Moor’s Last Sigh — Salman Rushdie
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name — Audre Lorde
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| The panel are Radio 4 Front Row presenter and Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, authors Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal and Alexander McCall Smith, and Bradford Festival Literary Director Syima Aslam |
