The Guardian: 100 best novels written in English
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The Guardian: 100 best novels written in English

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100 items
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The Guardian: 100 best novels written in English

TheBookworm
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100 picks in “The Guardian: 100 best novels written in English”, curated by TheBookworm on TheLysts.

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Showing 41–50 of 100
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The Guardian: 100 best novels written in English — 10 items
NameTitleAuthorYearSynopsis
41The Good Soldier—Ford Madox Ford1915Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.
42The Thirty-Nine Steps—John Buchan1915John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down.
43The Rainbow—DH Lawrence1915The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.
44Of Human Bondage—W Somerset Maugham1915Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.
45The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton1920The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture.
46Ulysses—James Joyce1922This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.
47Babbitt—Sinclair Lewis1922What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.
48A Passage to India—EM Forster1924EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of empire.
49Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—Anita Loos1925A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.
50Mrs Dalloway—Virginia Woolf1925Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.
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