75 articles
A Handful of Dust
A Handful of Dust is a 1934 novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, his fourth, tracing the collapse of a country gentleman's marriage and often called his masterpiece.
A High Wind in Jamaica (novel)
A High Wind in Jamaica, also published as The Innocent Voyage, is Richard Hughes's 1929 debut novel about the Bas-Thornton children, sent from Jamaica after a hurricane and captured by pirates; ranked 71st on the Modern Library's 100 best novels list.
A Lost Lady
A Lost Lady is a short 1923 novel by Willa Cather, published by Alfred A. Knopf, portraying Marian Forrester of Sweet Water, Nebraska, through young Niel Herbert's eyes.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's 1916 semi-autobiographical modernist novel, follows Stephen Dedalus's religious and artistic awakening in Dublin; serialized in The Egoist 1914-1915, published by Huebsch.
An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy is Theodore Dreiser's 1925 two-volume naturalist novel about Clyde Griffiths, based on Chester Gillette's 1906 murder of Grace Brown, and adapted into the films An American Tragedy (1931) and A Place in the Sun (1951).
Appointment in Samarra
Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's 1934 debut novel about Julian English, a Cadillac dealer in fictional Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, whose three-day social collapse ends in suicide; title from Maugham's Sheppey.
As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying is William Faulkner's 1930 modernist novel about the Bundren family's nine-day journey to bury Addie in Jefferson, told in 59 stream-of-consciousness monologues by 15 characters, titled from Homer's Odyssey.
Babbitt
Babbitt is a satirical 1922 novel by Sinclair Lewis following two years in the life of George F. Babbitt, a real estate broker in the fictional midwestern city of Zenith.
Bambi, a Life in the Woods
Bambi, a Life in the Woods (Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde) is Felix Salten's 1923 Austrian adult novel about a roe deer, translated by Whittaker Chambers in 1928, banned by the Nazis, and adapted into Disney's 1942 film.
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel subtitled The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, chronicles Charles Ryder's bond with the Catholic Flyte family; published by Chapman & Hall and the Book Society, adapted in the 1981 Granada serial and 2008 film.
Call It Sleep
Call It Sleep is Henry Roth's 1934 debut novel, following young Jewish immigrant David Schearl in the slums of New York's Lower East Side; rediscovered in the 1960s, it became a bestseller.
Capricornia
Capricornia is a 1938 novel by the Australian writer Xavier Herbert, his first, set in a fictional northern Australia and centered on the treatment of Aboriginal people by white settlers.
Coming Up for Air
Coming Up for Air is a 1939 novel by George Orwell about George Bowling, an insurance salesman who revisits his childhood village on the eve of war.
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Death Comes for the Archbishop is Willa Cather's 1927 Knopf novel about French priests Jean Marie Latour and Joseph Vaillant building the Catholic church in New Mexico, modeled on Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy and Father Joseph Machebeuf.
Death on the Installment Plan
Death on the Installment Plan (Mort à crédit) is a 1936 novel by French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a prequel to Journey to the End of the Night.
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is James Joyce's final novel, published 4 May 1939 after seventeen years as "Work in Progress". Written in multilingual dream language about HCE's night-dream, structured on Vico's cycles, 628 pages, ending mid-sentence.
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (The Wild Palms) is Faulkner's 1939 novel of two interwoven narratives, lovers on the run in New Orleans and a convict on a flooded Mississippi, published against Faulkner's preferred Psalm 137 title.
Invitation to a Beheading
Invitation to a Beheading (Приглашение на казнь) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov about a teacher sentenced to death, written in 1934 and published in 1938.
Journey to the End of the Night
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit), Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 debut novel following Ferdinand Bardamu through war, colonial Africa and America; Prix Renaudot winner famous for its spoken-language style.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell's third novel (Gollancz, 20 April 1936), satirizes Gordon Comstock's war on the money-god and lower-middle-class aspidistra respectability; it sold about 2,000 copies and was disowned by Orwell as a 'silly potboiler'.
Kokoro (こゝろ)
Kokoro (こゝろ), a novel by Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki, was serialized in 1914. It follows an unnamed university student and the solitary older man he calls Sensei.
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence's final novel (Tenderness), privately printed in Florence 1928, banned until Grove 1959 and Penguin 1960, whose R v Penguin Books obscenity acquittal sold three million copies in three months.
Light in August
Light in August is a 1932 novel by William Faulkner, his seventh and fourth set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, centered on three outsiders in Jefferson, Mississippi.
Look Homeward, Angel
Look Homeward, Angel (1929), Thomas Wolfe's debut novel, is a highly autobiographical coming-of-age story following Eugene Gant from birth to college, set in a fictionalized Asheville; banned locally, praised by Sinclair Lewis, adapted to a Pulitzer-winning Broadway play.
Man Alone
Man Alone is a 1939 realist novel by New Zealand writer John Mulgan, following an English ex-soldier through Depression-era New Zealand; its title names a recurring figure in the country's fiction.
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway is a 1925 Virginia Woolf novel, set on a single June day in 1923, following hostess Clarissa Dalloway and shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith through London.
Murphy
Murphy is a 1938 novel by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, his first published novel, about a work-shy Dubliner in London seeking a private mental retreat.
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman about Philip Carey, a clubfooted orphan, his destructive love for Mildred Rogers, and his path to a family life; first filmed in 1934 with Bette Davis.
Oil!
Oil! is Upton Sinclair's 1926-27 novel about the Southern California oil boom, following Bunny Ross, son of tycoon J. Arnold Ross, amid Teapot Dome-era corruption, labor strikes, and socialism; banned in Boston and loosely adapted as There Will Be Blood (2007).
Orlando: A Biography
Orlando: A Biography is Virginia Woolf's 1928 Hogarth Press novel, inspired by lover Vita Sackville-West, following a poet who lives four centuries and changes sex halfway through.