Postwar British fiction: a reading list
1. A FIFTIES’ NOVEL, OR A NOVEL BY ANGUS WILSON OR GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim
John Wain: Hurry On Down
John Braine: Room at the Top
Alan Sillitoe: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Angus Wilson: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes or The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot or No Laughing Matter or As If by Magic
2. “CATHOLIC” WRITERS
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter or The Quiet American or The Comedians or Travels with My Aunt
Muriel Spark: Memento Mori or The Comforters or The Bachelors or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
3. WILLIAM GOLDING, SAMUEL BECKETT OR ANTHONY BURGESS
William Golding: Lord of the Flies or The Inheritors or The Spire or Rites of Passage
Samuel Beckett: Molloy
Anthony Burgess: The Malayan Trilogy (The Long Day Wanes) or Enderby or A Clockwork Orange or The Wanting
Seed or Tremor of Intent or Earthly Powers or End of the World News
4. IRIS MURDOCH: The Bell or The Unicorn or The Black Prince or The Sea, the Sea or The Nice and the Good
5. A NOVEL OF MANNERS OR A NOVEL OF SENSIBILITY
Elizabeth Bowen: The Heat of the Day
L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between
Ivy Compton-Burnett: Manservant and Maidservant or A Heritage and Its History
Rosamond Lehmann: The Echoing Grove
Barbara Pym: A Glass of Blessings or Excellent Women
Elizabeth Taylor: A Wreath of Roses or Palladian
Margaret Drabble: Waterfall
Anita Brookner: Hotel du Lac
Kate Atkinson: Behind the Scenes at the Museum
6. FEMININE NOVELS AND FEMINIST NOVELISTS
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook or The Fifth Child
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Jeanette Winterson: The Passion or Sexing the Cherry or Written on the Body
A. S. Byatt: Possession or Angels and Insects
Fay Weldon: The Life and Times of a She-Devil
Marina Warner: Indigo
Sarah Waters: Affinity
7. ANGELA CARTER: The Magic Toyshop or Nights at the Circus or Wise Children
8. HISTORICAL FICTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION
J.G. Farrell: Troubles or The Siege of Krishnapur
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman
Graham Swift Waterland
Timothy Mo: An Insular Possession
Robert Nye: Falstaff or Merlin or Faust
Julian Barnes: The History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters
V. S. Naipaul: The Mimic Men or In a Free State
Lawrence Norfolk: Lemprière’s Dictionary or The Pope’s Rhinoceros
D. M. Thomas: The White Hotel
9. THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES
Martin Amis: Money or Success
Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot
J.G. Ballard: Empire of the Sun
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor or Chatterton or English Music
Ian McEwan: The Innocent
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
Bruce Chatwin: On the Black Hill
10. SALMAN RUSHDIE: Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses or Shame
11. A CONTEMPORARY NOVEL
Jim Crace: Being Dead or Quarantine or The Gift of Stones
Jonathan Coe: What a Carve Up!
Pat Barker: Regeneration
Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia
Zadie Smith: White Teeth
Timothy Mo: Sour Sweet
Julian Barnes: England, England
Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones’s Diary
Nick Hornby: High Fidelity
Meera Syal: Anita and Me
Salley Vickers: Miss Garnet’s Angel
Monica Ali: Brick Lane
Jane Rogers: Mr. Wroe’s Virgins
12. A SCOTTISH NOVEL
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory or The Crow Road or Complicity
Alan Warner: Morvern Callar
Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting
James Kelman: How Late It Was, How Late
Alasdair Gray: Poor Things or Lanark
Janice Galloway: The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
Ali Smith: Hotel World
George Mackay Brown: Beside the Ocean of Time
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What follows after this point is NOT COMPULSORY; you do not have to read a novel from this category for the
exam; this is simply a list of good writers and novels)
OTHER NOTABLE CONTEMPORARY WRITERS
(a fuller list would include a nuber of books by writers on the list above)
Nicola Barker: The Behindlings; Clear; The Badmans
William Boyd: An Ice-Cream War; The New Confessions
Jenny Diski: The Dream Mistress; Like Mother; Rainforest
Robert Edric: The Book of the Heathen; In Desolate Heaven; Peacetime; Elysium
Lucy Ellman: Varying Degrees of Hopelessness; Sweet Desserts; Doctors and Nurses
Tibor Fischer: Voyage to the End of the Room
James Flint: Habitus
Margaret Forster: The Lady’s Maid
Romesh Gunesekera: The Reef; The Sandglass
Abdulrazak Gurnah: Paradise
Victor Headley: Yardie; Excess
Tobias Hill: The Cryptographer; The Lover of Stones
Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist
A. L. Kennedy: Looking for a Possible Dance
Toby Litt: Deathkidsongs
Tim Lott: White City Blue; The Love Secrets of Don Juan
Duncan Maclean: The Bunker Man
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black
James Meek: The People’s Act of Love
Martin Millar: The Good Fairies of New York; Ruby and the Stone Age Diet; Lux the Poet
David Mitchell: Ghostwritten; The Cloud Atlas; Black Swan Green
Julie Myerson: Laura Blundy; Something Might Happen
Andrew O’Hagan: Our Fathers
Tim Parks: Cara Massimina; Mimi’s Ghost
Iain Pears: In the Place of Fallen Leaves; In a Land of Plenty
Michele Roberts: The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Will Self: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; How the Dead Live; The Book of Dave
Rupert Thomson: The Insult; Divided Kingdom; Soft
Alan Wall: The Lightning Cage; China
RECOMMENDED “POPULAR FICTION”
Science fiction, fantasy, cyberpunk, steampunk
John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos or The Chrysalids
J. G. Ballard: The Drowned World; Crash; Terminal Beach; The Atrocity Exhibition; The Concrete Island
Michael Moorcock: Mother London; the Jerry Cornelius novels
Brian Aldiss: Helliconia trilogy; The Hothouse; Arthur C. Clarke: Space Odyssey 2001
Robert Holdstock: Mythago Wood; The Hollowing
Ian Watson: Chekhov’s Journey
Douglas Adams: A Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Iain M. Banks: Consider Phlebas; The Player of Games
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials trilogy
Jon Courtenay Grimwood: the Arabesk novels
China Mieville: Perdido Street Station
Terry Pratchett: The Colour of Magic; Mort
Jeff Noon: Vurt ; Pollen
Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon
Neil Gaiman: the Sandman books
Gothic fiction
Mervyn Peake: the Gormenghast trilogy
Patrick McGrath: The Grotesque; Asylum
Crime fiction
Michael Dibdin: the Aurelio Zen novels (Ratking; Dead Lagoon; Cosi Fan Tutti; A Rich Full Death); The Last
Sherlock Holmes Story
Ian Rankin: the Inspector Rebus novels (e.g. Black and Blue; Dead Souls; Knots and Crosses; Falls)
Colin Dexter: the Inspector Morse series (e.g. Last Bus to Woodstock)
Philip Kerr: Berlin Noir
P. D. James: The Skull Beneath the Skin; Original Sin; Devices and Desires
Ruth Rendell: e.g. The Kindness of Ravens
Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine: King Solomon’s Carpet; The Minotaur
Louise Welsh: The Cutting Room
Elizabeth George: the Inspector Lynley novels
C. J. Sansom: the Matthew Shardlake series (e.g. Dissolution; The Sovereign)
Hugh Laurie: The Gun-Seller
Christopher Brookmyre: Boiling the Frog; Quite Ugly One Morning
Nicci French: Killing Me Softly
Spy fiction
Ian Fleming: Casino Royale; Dr. No; From Russia with Love
John LeCarré: The Man Who Came in from the Cold; the Smiley novels (esp. the Karla trilogy, esp. The Honourable
Schoolboy)
Other
George Macdonald Fraser: the Flashman novels; Patrick O’Brien: the Aubrey/Maturin novels (Master and
Commander)
Joanne Harris: Chocolat
Nick Hornby: High Fidelity; About a Boy
Alex Garland: The Beach
John King: The Football Factory; England Away; Kevin Sampson: Awaydays; Powder; Dougie Brimson: Billy’s Log;
The Crew
Ben Elton: This Other Eden; Dead Famous
Mark Haddon: The Curious Case of the Dog in Night-Time