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1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a "masterpiece".
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: A child’s-eye view of racial prejudice and weird neighbours in Thirties Alabama.
3. The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore: A rich Bengali noble lives happily until a radical revolutionary appears.
4. TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: Earth is demolished to make way for a Hyperspatial Express Route. Don’t panic.
5. One Thousand and One Nights Anon: A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.
6. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Werther loves Charlotte, but she’s already engaged. Woe is he!
7. Midnight’s Childrenby Salman Rushdie: The children of poor Hindus and wealthy Muslims are switched at birth.
8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre: Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.
9. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons : Hilarious satire on doom-laden rural romances. "Something nasty" has been observed in the woodshed.
10. The Tale of Genji by LadyMurasaki: The life and loves of an emperor’s son. And possibly the world’s first novel?
11. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch: A feckless writer has dealings with a canine movie star. Comedy and philosophy combined.
12. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing: Lessing considers communism and women’s liberation in what Margaret Drabble calls "inner space fiction."
13. Eugene Onegin byAlexander Pushkin: Passion, poetry and pistols in this verse novel of thwarted love.
14. On the Road by Jack Kerouac: Beat generation boys aim to "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles."
15. Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac: A disillusioning dose of Bourbon Restoration realism. The anti-hero "Rastingnac" became a byword for ruthless social climbing.
16. The Red and the Black byStendhal: Plebian hero struggles against the materialism and hypocrisy of French society with his "force diame."
17. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: "One for all and all for one:" the eponymous swashbucklers battle the mysterious Milady.
18. Germinal by Emile Zola: Written to "germinate" social change, Germinal unflinchingly documents the starvation of French miners.
19. TheStranger by Albert Camus: Frenchman kills an Arab friend in Algiers and accepts "the gentle indifference of the world."
20. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: Illuminating historical whodunnit set in a 14th-century Italian monastry.
21. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey: An Australian heiress bets an Anglican priest he can’t move a glass church 400km.
22. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys:Prequel to Jane Eyre giving moving, human voice to the mad woman in the attic.
23. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Carroll’s ludic logic makes it possible to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
24. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: Yossarian feels a homicidal impulse to machine gun total strangers. Isn’t that crazy?
25. The Trial by Franz Kafka: K proclaims he’sinnocent when unexpectedly arrested. But "innocent of what?"
26. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee: Protagonist’s "first long secret drink of golden fire" is under a hay wagon.
27. Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan: Gentle comedy in which a Gandhi-inspired Indian youth becomes an anti-British extremist.
28. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque: The horror of the Great Waras seen by a teenage soldier.
29. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler: Three siblings are differently affected by their parents’ unexplained separation.
30. The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin: Profound and panoramic insight into 18th-century Chinese society.
31. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Garibaldi’s Redshirts sweep through Sicily, the "jackals"...