Recommended Novels

Last update: 16 Feb 2026 15:31
First version: 22 November 2005

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I have separate recommendations pages for fantasy, mysteries and science fiction. This is for the residual class, of books that don't belong to any of those genres, except for those which are what I've taken to calling "scientist fiction", stories by non-scientists about the creative lives and travails of scientists; those get their own notebook, too.

• Iain Banks
  • The Business
  • Whit, or, Isis Amongst the Unsaved
• Roberto Bolano, Nazi Literature in the Americas
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Steven Brust, The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
• Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe
• A. S. Byatt
  • Angels and Insects
  • Possession
• Italo Calvino
• Albert Camus, The Plague
• Joseph Conrad
  • Heart of Darkness
  • Lord Jim
  • Nostromo
• Jenny Davidson, Heredity
• Joan Didion
• Norman Douglas, South Wind
• E. M. Forster, A Room with a View
• Anatole France
• George MacDonald Fraser, The Pyrates
• Amitav Ghosh
  • The Hungry Tide
  • The Ibis trilogy:
    1. Sea of Poppies
    2. River of Smoke
    3. Flood of Fire
• Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
• Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
• Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
• Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk
• Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
• Victor LaValle, The Devil in Silver
• J. Robert Lennon, Castle
• Mark Leyner
  • My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist
  • Et Tu, Babe?
  • Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog
• Amin Maalouf, Ports of Call
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West
• R. K. Narayan
  • The Man-Eater of Malgudi
  • Waiting for the Mahatma
• Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
• Patrick O'Brian
• Orhan Pamuk
  • My Name Is Red
  • The White Castle
• Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
• Jill Paton Walsh, Knowledge of Angels
• Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey
• Richard Powers
  • Gain
  • The Gold-Bug Variations
• Frederic Prokosch, The Seven Who Fled [Review: Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Every Man Is Vile]
• E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
• Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 [I actually can't finish any of his other books]
• Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
• Vita Sackville-West, Challenge
• Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
• Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse
• Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
• Dubravka Ugresic, Fox
• Gore Vidal