The Greatest Novels

 

What are the greatest novels? This is not my area of expertise; I am a poetry guy. It is entirely likely that I have not read some of the greatest novels. But from my own experience, these are the novels that did not merely entertain, but took up residence in my mind, and changed how I looked at the world. 

At least, they changed me.

Crime and Punishment 
Don Quixote
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
1984
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis

No Flies on William Golding

 

I had not read Lord of the Flies since high school. When William Golding won the Nobel Prize back in the Eighties, people generally thought it was for too slender a body of work, and I more or less agreed. I had read a couple of his other novels, and they came nowhere near LOTF. Was he really winning the Nobel Prize for one novel?

I just reread the book; I am teaching it. Golding absolutely deserved the Nobel. If one book says all that needs to be said, isn’t that the greatest accomplishment of all?