author · 5/10 picks in the top 100
"I wish I had 10 more to choose because I left out some of my favourite writers – Dickens, Austen, George Eliot, Philip Roth, James Baldwin,Toni Morrison, as well as the great French and Russian classics, and indeed novels from my home country of New Zealand such as The Bone People or Owls Do Cry. But I wanted to get a wide scope of the books which have shaped my thinking, some of the most influential and brilliantly written that I've read and, crucially, go back to read. That I feel is an important distinction in these choices. "
| # | Title | Author | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Model Childhood | Christa Wolf | |
| 2 | The Makioka Sisters | Jun'ichirō Tanizaki | |
| 3 | The Golden Bowl | Henry James | #52 |
| 4 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | #16 |
| 5 | To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf | #4 |
| 6 | Nervous Conditions | Tsitsi Dangarembga | #74 |
| 7 | All Our Yesterdays | Natalia Ginzburg | |
| 8 | The Rainbow | DH Lawrence | #77 |
| 9 | The Secret Agent | Joseph Conrad | |
| 10 | Villette | Charlotte Brontë |
Voters with the most books in common.