English literature
Students of English are required to read literature in English regularly
throughout their studies so that by the end of your studies you should
have read at least 16 (Grund-und Hauptschule) / 18 (Realschule) fulllength works. Among these should be at least three works from the 17th 19th century, two plays and no more than five young-adult (YA) novels.
The following list is meant as a guide only. The list also includes shortstory and poetry collections. One collection counts as one “full-length”
work. If you read other books, you may, of course, include them on your
personal list.
I. Novels
17th – 19th century
British Isles
Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice (Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park)
Ballantyne, R(obert) M(ichael), Coral Island
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Carroll, Lewis, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone, The Woman in White
Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist (David Copperfield, Hard Times, Great Expectations;
Bleak House)
Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch
Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure (Tess of the D’Urbervilles)
Richardson, Samuel, Pamela
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe (Waverley,The Heart of Midlothian)
Smollet, Tobias, The Adventures of Roderick Random
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein
Sterne, Lawrence, Tristram Shandy
Stevenson, R.L., Treasure Island (Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels
Thackeray, William, Vanity Fair
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wyss ,J.D. Swiss Family Robinson
USA
Chopin, Kate, The Awakening
Cooper, James Fennimore, The Pioneers (The Last of the Mohicans)
Crane, Stephen, The Red Badge of Courage
Dreiser, Theodor, Sister Carrie
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter
Irving, Washington, Rip van Winkle (Sleepy Hollow)
James, Henry, The Portrait of a Lady
Melville, Herman, Moby Dick
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The Prince and the Pauper)
20th – 21st century
British Isles
Ali, Monica, Brick Lane
Amis, Kingsley, Lucky Jim
Banville, John, Birchwood (The Sea)
Barnes, Julian, England, England
Bennett, Alan, The Uncommon Reader
Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange
Byatt, Antonia, Possession (A Whistling Woman)
Chatwin, Bruce, The Songlines (The Black Hills)
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (Lord Jim)
Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Doyle, Roddy, The Barrytown Trilogy (The Snapper)
Faulks, Sebastian, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray
Fielding, Helen, Bridget Jones’s Diary
Forster, E.M., Howards End, Room with a View
Fowles, John, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Frayn, Michael, Spies
Golding, William, Lord of the Flies
Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory (The Heart of the Matter)
Hornby, Nick, High Fidelity (Fever Pitch, About a Boy, A Long Way Down)
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World
Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer: Heat and Dust
Joyce, James, Ulysses (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
Kipling, Rudyard, Kim
Lawrence, D.H., Sons and Lovers (Women in Love)
Lessing, Doris, The Golden Notebook, The Fifth Child
Lewycka, Marina: A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
Lodge, David, Changing Places (Nice Work,Author, Author, The British Museum is
Falling Down)
MacLaverty, Bernard, Cal (Lamb, Grace Notes, Anatomy School)
Manning, Olivia,The Balkan Trilogy
McCourt, Frank, Angela’s Ashes (Teacher Man)
McEwan, Ian, Amsterdam (Atonement; Saturday; On Cecil Beach)
Orwell, George, 1984
Rushdie, Salman, The Satanic Verses (Midnight Children)
Scott, Paul, The Raj Quartet, Staying on
Seth, Vikram, Two Lives, A Suitable Boy
Sillitoe, Alan, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Smith, Zadie, White Teeth
Spark, Muriel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings (The Hobbit)
Wells, H.G., The Time Machine
Woolf, Virginia, Mrs Dalloway (Orlando, To the Lighthouse)
USA
Acosta, Oscar Zeta, The Revolt of the Cockroach People
Alexie, Sherman, Reservation Blues (The Lone Ranger or Tonto Fistfight in Heaven)
Anaya, Rudolpho, Bless Me, Ultima
Auster, Paul, Moon Palace (Brooklyn Follies)
Baldwin, James, Go Tell It on the Mountains
Bellow, Saul, Herzog (The Adventures of Augie March)
Boyle, T.C., Tortilla Curtain
Capote, Truman, In Cold Blood
Carter, Stephen L., The Emperor of Ocean Park
Cisneros, Sandra, Caramelo (House on Mango Street)
Crane, Hart, The Bridge
Diaz, Junot, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Doctorov E. L., Ragtime, (The March)
Dos Passos, John, USA Trilogy
Dreiser, Theodore, Sister Carrie
Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man
Erdrich, Louise, Beet Queen, (Love Medicine; The Master Butcher’s Singing Club)
Eugenides, Jeffrey Middlesex (The Virgin Suicides)
Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury (As I Lay Dying)
Fitzgerald, F.Scott, The Great Gatsby
Foer, Jonathan, Everything is Illuminated (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
Franzen, Jonathan, The Corrections
Guterson, David, Snow Falling on Cedars
Hegi, Ursula, Stones from the River
Heller, Joseph, Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises (For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to
Arms)
Hillerman, Tony, The Leaphorn Mysteries (The Blessing Way, Dance Hall of the
Dead, Skinwalkers)
Hong Kingston, Maxime, Woman Warrior
Hosseini, Khaled, The Kite Runner; A Thousand Splendid Suns
Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Hustvedt, Siri, What I Loved
Kesey, Ken, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Kinkaid, Jamaica, Lucy (Annie John)
Lahiri, Jumpha, The Namesake
Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird
London, Jack, Call of the Wild
Malamud, Bernhard, The Assistant
McCarthy, Mary, The Group
McCullers, Carson, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Momoday, Scott, House Made of Dawn
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita
Morrison, Toni, Beloved (Mercy)
Oates, Joyce Carol, Bellefleur (Them)
Piercey, Marge, Woman at the Edge of Time
Plath, Silvia, The Bell Jar
Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity’s Rainbow
Roth, Philip, The Human Stain; (Indignation; The Humbling)
Salinger, Jerome David, The Catcher in the Rye
Shriver, Lionel, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Silko, Leslie Marmon, Ceremony
Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath; Of Mice and Men
Styron, William, The Confessions of Nat Turner (Sophie’s Choice)
Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club
Tyler, Anne, The Accidental Tourist
Updike, John, Rabbit, Run
Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse Five
Walker, Alice, The Color Purple (Meridian)
Welch, James, The Indian Lawyer (Winter in the Blood)
Wharton, Edith, Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence
Wright, Richard, Native Son
II. Short Stories
Short stories by Sherman Alexie, Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Donald
Barthelme, Saul Bellow, Ambrose Bierce, T. C. Boyle, Raymond Carver, John
Cheever, Kate Chopin, Louis Chu, Sandra Cisneros, Stephen Crane, Margaret
Drabble, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Nadine Gordimer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Washington
Irving, Shirley Jackson, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Jumpha Lahiri, D.H.
Lawrence, Ursula LeGuin, Doris Lessing, Bernard MacLaverty, Bernard Malamud,
Katherine Mansfield, William Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, Alice Munro,
Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, Tillie Olsen, Jane Anne Philips, Edgar Allan
Poe, Katherine Anne Porter, Leslie Silko, Isaac B. Singer, James Thurber, Mark
Twain, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf, …
Butzko, Ellen (ed.), Caught between Cultures
III. Plays
British Isles
Ayckbourn, Alan, Absurd Person Singular
Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot (Endgame)
Bond, Edward, Saved
Brenton, Howard, Bloody Poetry
Churchill, Caryl, Top Girls
Eliot, T.S., Murder in the Cathedral
Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen
Hare, David, Teeth ‘n Smile, The Power of Yes
Osborne, John, Look Back in Anger
Pinter, Harold, The Birthday Party (The Caretaker, The Dumb Waiter)
Shaffer, Peter, Amadeus
Shakespeare, William, Tragedies (Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, King
Lear, …)
Shakespeare, William, Comedies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It,The
Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, …)
Shaw, G.B., Pygmalion (Saint Joan)
Stoppard, Tom, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Synge, J.M., The Playboy of the Western World
Thomas, Dylan, Under Milk Wood
Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Earnest
USA
Albee, Edward, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Baldwin, James, Blues for Mr. Charlie
Hansberry, Lorraine, A Raisin in the Sun
Jones, LeRoi (Baraka, Amiri), The Slave
Kopit, Arthur, Indians
Kushner, Tony, Angels in America
Mamet, David, Glengarry Glen Ross, (Oleanna)
Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman,The Crucible
Norman, Masha, ‘night Mother
O'Neill, Eugene, A Long Day's Journey into Night
Shepard, Sam, Buried Child (True West)
Uhry, Alfred, Driving Miss Daisy
Wasserstein, Wendy, The Heidi Chronicles
Wilder, Thornton, Our Town
Williams, Tennessee, A Streetcar Named Desire, (The Glass Menagerie)
Wilson, August, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences
IV. Poetry
Arnold, Matthew, Poems
Auden, W.H., Poems
Blake, William, Songs of Innocence and Experience
Browning, Elizabeth, Poems
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Lyrical Ballads
Cummings, E.E., The Complete Poems
Dickinson, Emily, Poems
Eliot, T.S., The Waste Land
Frost, Robert, Poems
Ginsberg, Allen, Kaddish and Other Poems
Heaney, Seamus, Poems (Bye Child)
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, Poems
Hughes, Langston, The Dream Keeper
Keats, John, Poems
Plath, Sylvia, The Collossus
Poe, Edgar Allan, Poems
Wordsworth, William, Lyrical Ballads
Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass
Sexton, Anne, Live or Die
Shakespeare, William, Sonnets
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Poems
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queen
Stevens, Wallace, Collected Poems
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, In Memoriam
Thomas, Dylan, Collected Poems
Williams, William Carlos, Selected Poems
Yeats, William Butler, Collected Poems
V. Literature from other English speaking countries
Africa
West and East Africa
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart
Aidoo, Ama Ata, The Dilemma of a Ghost
Naidoo, Beverley, The Other Side of Truth (Chain of Fire)
Okigboe, Ifeanyichuku Christopher, Collected Poems
Okri, Ben, Songs of Enchantment
P’Bitek, Okot, Song of Lawino (The Horn of My Love)
Soyinka; Wole, Death and the King’s Horseman
Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa, Petals of Blood
South Africa
Gordimer, Nadine, Burger’s Daughter
Fugard, Athol, Blood Knot and other Plays
Coetzee, John Maxwell, Disgrace; (Life and Times of Michael K)
Slovo, Gillian, Red Dust
Australia
Carey, Peter, Oscar and Lucinda (Illywhacker, The True History of the Ned Kelley
Gang)
Grenville, Kate, The Secret River (Searching for the Secret River, The Lieutenant)
Malouf, David, Johnny
Marsden, John, Letters from the Inside (YA)
Moloney, James, Angela (Gracey)(YA)
Richardson, Henry Handel, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (Ned Kelley)
White, Patrick, Voss
Canada
Atwood, Margaret, The Blind Assassin (The Handmaid’s Tale, Surfacing, Alias
Grace)
Davies, Robertson, The Deptford Trilogy
Highway, Tomson, The Rez Sisters
Martell, Yann, Life of Pi
Montgomery, Lucy Maud, Anne of Green Gables
Munroe, Alice, The Moons of Jupiter
Ondatjee, Michael, The English Patient
Caribbean
Braithwaited, Edward Kamau, The Arrivants
Diaz, Junot, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Naipaul, V.S., The Enigma of Arrival (A House for Mr. Biswas; Half a Life)
Philips, Caryl, Cambridge
Rhys, Jean, Sargasso Sea
Senior, Olice, Summer Lightning and Other Stories
Walcot, Derek, Omeros (Collected Poems)
India and Pakistan
Adiga, Aravind: White Tiger; Between Assassinations
Anand, Mulk Raj, Untouchable
Desai, Anita, Clear Light of Day
Desai, Kiran,The Inheritance of Loss
Hamid, Mohsin, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Kapur, Manju: Difficult Daughters
Lahiri, Jumpha, The Namesake (Interpreter of Maladies)
Mistry, Rohinton, A Fine Balance
Narayan, R.K., The Guide (God’s Little Soldiers)
Rai, Bali, (Un-)Arranged Marriage
Rao, Raja, The Serpent and the Rope (Kanthapura)
Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things
Whelan, Gloria, Homeless Bird
New Zealand
Frame, Janet, Living in the Maniototo
Grace, Patricia, Potiki
Hulme, Keri, The Bone People
Ihimaera, Witi Tame, The Matriarch
Jones, Lloyd, Mr Pip
Mahy, Margaret, Memory (YA)
Wendt, Albert, Leaves on the Bayan Tree
VI. Non-fiction (Travel literature, autobiographies, biographies, memoirs,
interviews, journals)
Ambrose, Stephen, Undaunted Courage
Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Bakeless, John (ed.), The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation
Bryson, Bill, Notes from a Small Island, Made in America, …
Bukowski, Charles: Ham on Rye
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez, The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca
Chatwin, Bruce, In Patagonia (Anatomy of Restlessness)
Coetzee, J.M., Youth
Corwin, Miles, And Still We Rise
Dahl, Roald, Boy
De Crevecoeur, Jean Letters from an American Farmer (III. What is an American?)
Didion, Joan, The White Album
Dirie, Waris, Desert Flower
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Du Bois, W.E.B., The Souls of Black Folk
Eisenstein, Bernice, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Nature
Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography
Fitzherbert, Katrin: True to Both Myselves
Hegi, Ursula, Tearing the Silence
Hoffman, Eva, Lost in Translation
Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Johnston, Lou Ann, Dangerous Minds
Kerouac, Jack, On the Road
King, Martin Luther, Letter from Birmingham Jail ( I Have a Dream)
Kluger, Ruth, Still Alive
Lincoln, Abraham, The Gettysbury Address
Macolm X, Macolm X
McCourt Frank, Angela’s Ashes (‘Tis; Teacher Man)
Myers, Walter Dean, Bad Boy
Obama, Barack, Dreams from my Father
Obama, Barack, The Audacity of Hope
Raban, Jonathan, Hunting Mister Heartbreak.
Rodriguez, Luis, Always Running
Rodriguez, Richard, Hunger of Memory
Sanghera, Jasvinder, Shame
Singer, Isaac, Love and Exile
Theroux, Paul, The Great Railway Bazaar,The Kingdom by the Sea
Thoreau, Henry, Civil Disobedience (Walden)
Turner, Frederick J., The Significance of the Frontier in American History
Twain, Mark, The Innocents Abroad
Uchida, Yoshiko, Journey to Topaz: A Story of Japanese-American Evacuation
Wiesel, Elie, Night
Wright, Richard, Black Boy
VII. Children’s Literature and Young Adult Literature/Teenage Fiction (old and
modern)
Aiken, Joan: Midnight is a Place
Alcott, Louisa, Little Women
Alexie, Sherman, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
Almond, David, Skellig
Andersen, Laurie Halse, Fever 1793 (Speak)
Baum, Frank L., The Wizard of Oz
Boyne, John: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Burnett Hodgson, Frances, The Secret Garden (A Little Princess, Little Lord
Fauntleroy)
Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland
Chbosky, Stephen, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Colgan, Trevor, The Stretford Enders
Cooper, Susan, King of Shadows
Cormier, Robert, The Chocolate War (I Am the Cheese)
Crew, Linda, Children of the River
Curtis, Christopher Paul, The Watsons Go to Birmingham.
Cushman, Karen, Catherine Called Birdy
Dahl, Roald, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Mathilda, Witches …)
DiCamillo, Kate, The Tale of Despereaux
Doherty, Berlie, Dear Nobody (The Snake Stone, Children of Winter, Street Child;
Deep Secret, Abela )
Dowd, Siobhan, The London Eye Mystery (A Swift Pure Cry)
Erdrich, Louise, The Birchbank House. (The Game of Silence)
Emecheta, Buchi, The Moonlight Bride.
Fleischman, Paul, Seedfolks (Bull Run)
Frost, Helen, Keesha’s House (Spinning Through the Universe; The Braid)
Gaiman, Neil, Coraline, The Graveyard Book
Gavin, Jamila, Coram Boy
George, Elizabeth Craighead, The Witch of Blackbird Pond; Julie and the Wolves
Graham, Kenneth, The Wind in the Willows
Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Heneghan, James, Torn Away (Wish Me Luck, The Grave; Payback)
Henkes, Kevin, Olive’s Ocean
Herrick, Steven: A Simple Gift (By the River)
Hesse, Karen, Out of the Dust (Letters from Rifka, Witness, A Light in the Storm)
Hobbs, Will, Crossing the Wire
Holm, Jennifer: Boston Jane
Horowitz, Anthony: Stormbreaker (Alex Rider Series)
Irwin, Hadley, Kim/Kimi
Jaramillo, Ann: La Linéa
Larson, Kirby: Hattie Big Sky
Lasky, Kathryn, Beyond the Great Divide.
Levoy, Myron, Alan and Naomi
Lewis, C.S., The Chronicles of Narnia
Lowry, Lois, The Giver (Gathering Blue, Messenger, Silent Boy, Number the Stars;
The Willoughbys .)
Lutzeier, Elizabeth, Bound for America.
MacDonald, George, At the Back of the North Wind
Magorian, Michelle, Good Night, Mr. Tom.
Meier, Stephenie: Twilight
Milne, A. A., The House at Pooh Corner
Moloney, James: Angela
Montgomery, L. M., Anne of Green Gables
Morpurgo, Michael: War Stories of Conflict
Myers, Walter Dean, Monster
Nelson, Blake, Paranoid Park
Nicholson, William, The Wind Singer
Norton, Mary, The Borrowers
Oates, Joyce Carol, Big Mouth and Ugly Girl (Freaky Green Eyes; Sexy)
O’Dell, Scott, My Name Is Not Angelica.
Patterson, Katherine, Lyddie
Paolini, Christopher, Eragon
Paulsen, Gary, Soldier’s Heart (Hatchet)
Peck, Richard, A Long Way From Chicago (A Year Down Under)
Potter, Beatrix, The Complete Tales
Pullman, Philip, The Dark Materials (also available as a play)
Taylor, Mildred, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (The Road to Memphis)
Rai, Bali, (Un-)Arranged Marriage
Rees, Celia, Witch Child
Rockport, Joyce: To Spoil the Sun
Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Sachar, Louis, Holes
Sedgewick, Marcus, The Foreshadowing
Sleator, William, House of Stairs
Snicket, Lemony, The Bad Beginning
Strasser, Todd: Give a Boy a Gun
Swindells, Robert, Abomination (Stone Cold)
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Hobbit
Trueman, Terry, Inside Out (Stuck in Neutral; No Right Turn)
Voigt, Cynthia, Homecoming
Walsh, Jill Paton, A Parcel of Patterns
Whelan, Gloria, Homeless Bird
Wilder, Laura Ingalls, Little House in the Big Woods
Wilson, Angela, The First Part Last
Woodson, Jacqueline, Locomotion
Yep, Laurence, Dragonwings, (Dragon’s Gate )
Yolen, Jane, The Devil’s Arithmetic
Zusak, Markus, The Book Thief
Young Adult Short Story Collections (edited by)
Bode, Janet: Death is Hard to Live With
Cart, Michael: Tomorrowland
Cresswell, Helen: The Puffin Book of Funny Stories
Gallo, Donald: Ultimate Sports
Horowitz, Anthony: The Puffin Book of Horror Stories
Scieszka, Jon: Guys Read