unknown · 5/10 picks in the top 100
"I decided that the only way to complete this impossible task was to make an argument. Here is mine: the novel is the place we speculate, where we push ideas beyond their limits. These 10 books turn imagination into inquiry, and inquiry back into imagination: a literary ouroboros. They are tales of power and memory, technology and faith, survival and creativity. They ask what it means to have a body and a soul, and what care we owe other bodies and souls. They expand our moral vocabulary, shake our certainties, and make the present – and future – feel contingent rather than inevitable. They are dreams and nightmares, prophecies and farces. And proof that how we dare to imagine the world shapes how we live in it. "
| # | Title | Author | Critics | Readers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Praiseworthy | Alexis Wright | — | |
| 2 | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | #30 | =39 |
| 3 | Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | #59 | =57 |
| 4 | The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood | #36 | =41 |
| 5 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | #16 | #7 |
| 6 | The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | =46 | |
| 7 | The Left Hand of Darkness | Ursula K Le Guin | #89 | — |
| 8 | The Stand | Stephen King | =80 | |
| 9 | Piranesi | Susanna Clarke | =70 | |
| 10 | Parable of the Sower | Octavia E Butler | — |
This voter’s picks that didn’t make the critics’ 100 but made the Guardian’s reader-voted 100.
| Readers | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| =46 | The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams |
| =70 | Piranesi | Susanna Clarke |
| =80 | The Stand | Stephen King |
Voters with the most books in common.