John Sutherland on the winner - To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
How many British admirers of Harper Lee’s novel have seen a mockingbird?
Scarcely more, I suspect, than have seen a dodo. Why does this novel,
published in 1960, set in the rural Deep South of the United States of
America, speak to us, worlds away, so powerfully? Why, put another way, do
we love it?
The easy answer, because it is so widely prescribed in schools, explains some
of the novel’s popularity, but not all of it.
Ask a different question and you get a different answer. To Kill a Mockingbird
is not, in these voters’ judgment, the best novel of the past six decades.
It’s their favourite. Is Harper Lee as good as Philip Roth? I’m not sure
that I would vote yes on that — but some might.
My guess is that those Cheltenhamites who voted Lee top of the list did so in
the belief that novels matter and that they relate, in important ways, to
things that matter outside the world of fiction. The thing that mattered
most in the early 1960s was human equality. It was given its finest and most
authoritative expression in the 1964 American Civil Rights Act.
That society-changing legislation decreed that there should be no more
“second-class citizens”, but one race — the human race, as the 1960s slogan
put it. Resistance to civil rights found its fiercest home in the South.
Lee’s own father (to whom she dedicated the book) was a lawyer who faced
down a Ku Klux Klan mob. What To Kill a Mockingbird asserts, in the
character of Atticus Finch, is that in its heart even the American South,
which had fought to preserve slavery, was “good”.
Is it the best novel of our time? In purely literary terms, it might be a hard
case to make. It’s not Proust, it’s not Virginia Woolf. But, as Henry James
said, the house of fiction has many rooms. One important room is reserved
for fiction that expresses the basic ideals of its time: such as Oliver
Twist, or The Grapes of Wrath. To Kill a Mockingbird will always have a high
place in that company.
John Sutherland is Emeritus Professor of English at University College
London
Numbers 2 to 20
2 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
This historical novel, set in 12th-century Kingsbridge, went stratospheric
when it was chosen for Oprah’s book club. Two Pillars of the Earth board
games were subsequently launched.
3 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Heller conceived of Yossarian, the focus of this dark, deeply funny satire on
bureaucratic operations in the US Army, as an anti-heroic version of Homer’s
epic hero Achilles. The New Yorker complained that the novel “doesn’t
even seem to be written; instead, it gives the impression of having been
shouted on to paper”. Everyone else liked it.
4 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
W. H. Auden regarded this epic high fantasy novel as a masterpiece, saying
that in parts it outshone Milton’s Paradise Lost.
5 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
A frustrated, directionless, sarcastic teen comes of age on the American East
Coast. Inevitably the F-word crops up in the process, partly why it became
the most censored book in American high schools and libraries between 1961
and 1982.
6 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on Jura while critically ill with
tuberculosis. It’s not clear why he chose the title. Originally it was The
Last Man in Europe.
7 The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Love story about a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to disappear on
unexpected time-travelling jaunts, leaving his wife struggling to cope with
his frequent absences and dangerous experiences. Written as a metaphor for
the author’s failed relationships.
8 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
Such a favourite among adults that they no longer feel ashamed to read in
public what started life as a children’s book.
9 The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Tartt’s first and most successful novel concerns the murder of a classics
student at a small New England university.
10 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Faulks dreamed of being a cab driver until, at 15, he read George Orwell and
decided to become a novelist instead. Birdsong, part of a trilogy
that includes The Girl at the Lion D’Or and Charlotte Gray,
put Faulks on the map — though it took him only three months to write.
11 A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The hardback version numbers 1,349 pages, but despite being one of the longest
novels yet published in a single volume in English, readers advise that
getting through it is worth the arm-ache.
12 Atonement by Ian Mc Ewan
Regarded as one of McEwan’s most complex and accomplished novels, it covers
themes of war, childhood, class, guilt and forgiveness in a tightly
controlled plot. Said to be an attempt by McEwan to insert his name
retrospectively into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and
1940s.
13 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Utterly original, though opinion is still divided as to whether what Nabokov
called “my most difficult book” elevates the “nymphet” theme to high art.
14 The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
Fowles, an admirer of Thomas Hardy, thought of this novel as the book
Victorian novelists had failed to write. Thrillingly it has three different
endings and the characters seem to jump off the page.
15 Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Màrquez
Lovesickness is an illness in the author’s fourth novel, apparently based on
the love affair of his parents. “The only difference is [my parents]
married,” he said.
16 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Post-apocalyptic, characteristically brutal tale of a journey taken by a
father and his young son across ravaged terrain. McCarthy sets himself up as
an Old Testament prophet predicting the slow death of civilisation after the
lights go out.
17 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The bestselling book in Spanish in modern history after Don Quixote
documents approximately 100 years in the life of the mythical village of
Macondo.
18 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his
best friend’s mother with a baseball. Many of Irving’s usual themes are
here: New England, incestuous desires, prostitutes, a deadly accident, and
an absent parent among them.
19 The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
Published posthumously in 1958, The Leopard chronicles the changes in
Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Most famous line: “If we
want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
20 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
One man torn apart by forces beyond his control (mainly women and war),
against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Russian
Civil War.
And the rest...
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
British schoolboys stranded on a deserted island try to govern themselves with
catastrophic results.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Like the
author, Pilgrim has been traumatised by his experience as an American
prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Heroic fantasy novel about a group of anthropomorphised rabbits. Feminist
critics have scolded Adams for the patronising attitude of his “male
chauvinist rabbits” towards the does.
World without End by Ken Follet
The day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the
cathedral city of … Kingsbridge. Sequel to Pillars of the Earth.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Follow-up to The Kite Runner reached number two in the Amazon charts even
before it was published. Concerns the lives of two Afghan women in the
second half of the twentieth century.
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Post-colonial magical realism from the man who coined “Naughty But Nice”.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Feminist dystopia, brilliantly observed, creepy and impossible to forget.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Children’s fantasy novel avidly read and well-regarded by adults. Best known
of the Narnia chronicles.
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Leo Devoe has scammed an airline out of $300,000 in life insurance by faking
his own death. Now a small-time Miami-based loanshark is on his tale.
Leonard wrote Westerns before turning to crime. “Your prose makes Raymond
Chandler look clumsy,” Martin Amis once told him.
Smiley’s People by John le Carre
David Cornwell aka Le Carre worked for MI5 and MI6 before turning to full time
writing. Smiley’s People was his ninth novel but not one of his best, he
claimed in an interview, preferring The Spy Who Came in from the Cold;
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Fast-paced, witty though often gory
thriller narrated by megalomaniacal serial killer and successful Manhattan
yuppie businessman, Patrick Bateman. The book is sold with an 18 certificate
in many countries.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The original misery memoir won the Pullitzer for autobiography, though some
residents of Limerick City have questioned the accuracy of McCourt’s
childhood memories.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency declared
by Ghandi.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Semi-autobiographical beat classic still as fresh as ever.
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
The often shocking and profoundly bleak story of the personal failures of a
South African professor.
Dune by Frank Herbert
Critically acclaimed sci-fi that went on to become the best-selling book in
the genre.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Exhilarating, powerful and complex third novel inspired by Calvino’s If On A
Winter’s Night A Traveller.
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
First of His Dark Materials trilogy has attracted criticism from evangelists
who claim it is anti-religion. Pullman received a third in English at Oxford
but his main inspiration as a writer came when he discovered the
illustrations of William Blake.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Murder and art in 16th Century Istanbul won the Impac prize in 2003. Pamuk
became a Novel Laureate in 2006 shortly after charges against him by
ultra-nationalists in Turkey were dropped: Pamuk had stated in an interview,
“Thirty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And
almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do.”
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Academic satire and Amis’s first published novel.
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Puzo was a pulp journalist before he wrote his first novel, The Dark Arena, in
the hope of earning money to feed his five children. He finally hit the
jackpot with The Godfather in 1969, It was his sixth book and introduced
words such as Omerta to a new audience.
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Mental and societal breakdown, classic Lessing territory, with an anti-war
message. The book was praised for its complexity and for “feminist
self-consciousness in its raw state.”
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Farmers in California were horrified by the book’s depiction of California
farmers’ attitudes and conduct toward the migrants, denouncing it as a ‘pack
of lies’ and labelled it ‘communist propaganda’.” Steinbeck won the Nobel
Prize twenty-three years after its publication, in 1962.
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Allende’s debut novel, conceived by the author when she heard her grandfather
was dying, began writing him a letter that became the starting manuscript.
The Magus by John Fowles
Gripping, dark and cultish novel set in Greece which tapped into the
preoccupations of mysticism and psychoanalysis that were prevalent in the
1960s. Film adaptation unfortunately bungled.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Satire on Soviet beaurocracy in which the Devil pays a visit to the atheistic
Soviet Union. Has several English translations.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Italian post-modern historical whodunit set (mainly) in a 14th Century
monastery.
We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Why did Kevin go off the rails? His mother obsessively trawls his past for
clues.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Seminal Scottish junkie novel.
Possession by Antonia Byatt
Two academics attempt to uncover the truth about the relationship between a
pair of Victorian poets before it is discovered by rival colleagues.
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Historical fiction set in 1900s New York traces the lives of three families.
Restoration by Rose Tremain
The physician Robert Merivel is appointed surgeon to all of Charles II dogs
with debauched results.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Yates’s first novel follows the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, confident
Connecticut suburbanites who look down on their fellow suburbanites. “If my
work has a theme,” said Yates. “I suspect it is a simple one: that most
human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
“In Zafon’s hands, every scene seems to come from an early Orson Wells movie,”
said Stephen King of this detective/coming-of-age novel set in post-war
Barcelona.
Immortality by Milan Kundera
Robert Musil, unhappy marriages, strange encounters on underground platforms,
death and, of course, sex preside in this overtly fictionalised heavily
philosophical novel.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
Le Carre fictionally recreates from personal experience the revelations of the
1950s and 60s that exposed the Cambridge Five.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Kesey worked the graveyard shift as an orderly in a mental health facility and
took psychoactive drugs which made him more sympathetic to the patients. He
claimed that he wrote the first three pages high on peyote.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Burgess dismissed Clockwork Orange as one of his lesser novels and hated
Kubrick’s adaptation.
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Groundbreaking and tragi-comic, it’s as fresh today as when it came out in
1961.
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Drug culture and undercover police officers in Orange County, California.
Partly autobiographical. Dick’s wife, Tessa, “participated to a great extent
in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me,” he stated in a
contract, “and I owe her one half of all income derived from it.”
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