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The Best Satirical Novels

Ranker Books
Updated January 1, 2025 45.5K views 66 items
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Only satirical novels. No short stories or essays.

List of the best satirical novels from various authors, such as Joseph Heller, Evelyn Waugh and Mark Twain, on various topics that are written to ridicule a popular point of view in order to have readers change their opinion about it. Some authors show up a few times on the list for their satirical writings so be sure that you are voting for your favorite satire book and not just the author behind the work.

Books such as Catch-22, Animal Farm and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are on this list because the authors present their own opinions on the subjects and usually give their solutions on how the issues can be resolved. Topics that are usually covered in satirical novels are politics, economy, religion and other forms of power in a society. A lot of these topics are the most pressing in a society and the topics can be considered taboo.

The list asks the question, "What is the best satirical novel?" with novels to vote on to get your favorite book to the top of the list. If what you think is the best satirical novel is not listed, then there is an option to add the novel to the list to be voted on by others.
Most divisive: Ham on Rye
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  • Catch-22
    1

    Catch-22

    Joseph Heller
    220 votes
    Catch-22 is a satirical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. It uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so that the timeline develops along with the plot. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home. The novel's title refers to a plot device that is repeatedly invoked in the story. Catch-22 starts as a set of paradoxical requirements that ensures the airmen cannot escape their duty even if they are mentally unfit to fly.
    • First Published: 1961-11-11
    • Subjects: Drama, World War II
    • Genres (Book): War novel, Black comedy, Satire, Historical fiction, Absurdist fiction
    • Original Language: American English, English Language
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
    2

    Slaughterhouse-Five

    Kurt Vonnegut
    165 votes
    Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier named Billy Pilgrim. It is generally recognized as Vonnegut's most influential and popular work. Vonnegut's use of the firebombing of Dresden as a central event makes the novel semi-autobiographical, as he was present during the bombing.
    • First Published: 1969
    • Subjects: Literary, American science fiction, Classics, Prisoner of war, World War II
    • Genres (Book): Philosophy, Speculative fiction, War novel, Black comedy, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Animal Farm
    3

    Animal Farm

    George Orwell
    273 votes
    Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin, and in his essay "Why I Write", he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, though the subtitle was dropped by U.S. publishers for its 1946 publication and subsequently all but one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime omitted it. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire.
    • First Published: 1945-08-17
    • Subjects: Monarch, Literary, Literature, Classics, Drama
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Roman à clef, Satire, Children's literature, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Brave New World
    4

    Brave New World

    Aldous Huxley
    160 votes
    Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540, the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited, and with Island, his final novel. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
    • Subjects: Literary, Technology, Brainwashing, Literature, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Utopian and dystopian fiction, Children's literature, Dystopia, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    5

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    Douglas Adams
    165 votes
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams' radio series of the same name. The novel was first published in London on 12 October 1979. It sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The namesake of the novel is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fictional guide book for hitchhikers written in the form of an encyclopedia.
    • First Published: 1979-10-12
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Comic novel, Comic science fiction, Humour, Science Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Cat's Cradle
    6

    Cat's Cradle

    Kurt Vonnegut
    113 votes
    Cat's Cradle is the fourth novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1963. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis in 1947, the University of Chicago awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology in 1971 for Cat's Cradle. The title of the book derives from the string game "cat's cradle." Early in the book, the character Felix Hoenikker was playing cat's cradle when the bomb was dropped, and the game is later referenced by his son, Newton Hoenikker.
    • First Published: 1963
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Science Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Gulliver's Travels
    7

    Gulliver's Travels

    Jonathan Swift
    130 votes
    Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, commonly known as Gulliver's Travels, is a satire by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. The book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Since then, it has never been out of print. Cavehill in Belfast is thought to have inspired part of book two of the novel. Swift imagined that the mountain resembled the shape of a sleeping giant safeguarding the city.
    • First Published: 1726
    • Subjects: Popular literature
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Science Fiction, Fantasy
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Importance of Being Earnest
    8

    The Importance of Being Earnest

    Oscar Wilde
    97 votes
  • Don Quixote
    9

    Don Quixote

    Miguel de Cervantes
    86 votes
    Don Quixote, fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It follows the adventures of a nameless hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is, and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. The story implements various themes, such as intertextuality, realism, metatheatre, and literary representation. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered one of the most influential works of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon.
    • First Published: 1605
    • Subjects: Music, 16th century, Literary, Literature, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Picaresque novel, Satire, Farce, Parody
    • Original Language: Old Spanish language, Spanish Language
  • The Master and Margarita
    10

    The Master and Margarita

    Mikhail Bulgakov
    48 votes
    The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written between 1928 and 1940, but unpublished in book form until 1967. The story concerns a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires. In part, it is an outcry against a suffocatingly bureaucratic social order.
    • First Published: 1967
    • Subjects: Jerusalem, Russia, Communism, Soviet Union
    • Genres (Book): Romance novel, Speculative fiction, Satire, Farce, Novel
    • Original Language: Russian Language
  • Candide
    11

    Candide

    Voltaire
    104 votes
    Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best; Candide: or, The Optimist; and Candide: or, Optimism. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds". Candide is characterised by its sarcastic tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious bildungsroman, it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact.
    • First Published: 1759-01
    • Subjects: French literature, Great Britain
    • Genres (Book): Picaresque novel, Bildungsroman, Satire, Philosophical fiction
    • Original Language: French Language
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    12

    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    Mark Twain
    129 votes
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels. It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication.
    • First Published: 1884-12
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Education, 19th century, Slavery, Mississippi River
    • Genres (Book): Humour, Satire, Children's literature, Fiction, Adventure fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Good Omens
    13

    Good Omens

    Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
    79 votes
    Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a World Fantasy Award-nominated novel written in collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan, the coming of the End Times, and the attempts of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to avert them, having become accustomed to their comfortable situations in the human world. A subplot features the growing up of the Antichrist, Adam, and his gang, and the gathering of the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 68 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
    • First Published: 1990-05-01
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Comic novel, Fiction, Comedy, Science Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Breakfast of Champions
    14

    Breakfast of Champions

    Kurt Vonnegut
    73 votes
    Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a charming but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer and extensive land and franchise owner who becomes obsessed with the writings of the other man, Kilgore Trout, taking them for literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fiction writer who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout hitch-hikes toward Midland City to appear at an art convention where he is destined to meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.
    • First Published: 1973
    • Subjects: Literary
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Fiction, Novel, Science Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    15

    Nineteen Eighty-Four

    George Orwell
    48 votes
    Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One, a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrimes". The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power." The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth, which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
    • First Published: 1949-06-08
    • Subjects: Brainwashing, Literature, Classics, English Language, English Literature
    • Genres (Book): Utopian and dystopian fiction, Social science fiction, Political fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • A Confederacy of Dunces
    16

    A Confederacy of Dunces

    John Kennedy Toole
    74 votes
    A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which appeared in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States. The book's title refers to an epigraph from Jonathan Swift's essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Its central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is an educated, but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico.
    • First Published: 1980
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Literary, Classics, French Quarter, New Orleans
    • Genres (Book): Tragicomedy, Fiction, Comedy
    • Original Language: English Language
  • A Clockwork Orange
    17

    A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess
    111 votes
    A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess published in 1962. Set in a near future English society that has a subculture of extreme youth violence, the novella has a teenage protagonist, Alex, who narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novella asks, "At what cost?". The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat". According to Burgess it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks. In 2005, A Clockwork Orange was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The original manuscript of the book has been located at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since the institution purchased the documents in 1971.
    • First Published: 1962
    • Subjects: Brainwashing, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Utopian and dystopian fiction, Satire, Dystopia, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Pride and Prejudice
    18

    Pride and Prejudice

    Jane Austen
    83 votes
    Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. Set in England in the early 19th century, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth. Though Austen set the story at the turn of the 19th century, it retains a fascination for modern readers, continuing near the top of lists of "most loved books." It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, selling over 20 million copies, and receives considerable attention from literary scholars.
    • First Published: 1813-01-28
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Literary, Education, 19th century, English Language
    • Genres (Book): Romance novel, Satire, Novel of manners, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Dead Souls
    19

    Dead Souls

    Nikolai Gogol
    18 votes
    Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character. Gogol masterfully portrayed those defects through Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov and the people whom he encounters in his endeavours. These people are typical of the Russian middle-class of the time. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence, it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form.
    • First Published: 1842
    • Subjects: Fraud, Literary, Literature, Serfdom in Russia, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Fiction
    • Original Language: Russian Language
  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
    20

    A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

    Mark Twain
    49 votes
    A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut is accidentally transported back in time to the court of King Arthur, where he fools the inhabitants of that time into thinking he is a magician—and soon uses his knowledge of modern technology to become a "magician" in earnest, stunning the English of the Early Middle Ages with such feats as demolitions, fireworks and the shoring up of a holy well. He attempts to modernize the past, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict against him by the Catholic Church of the time, which grows fearful of his power. Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, and severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor.
    • First Published: 1889
    • Subjects: Literary, Literature, Classics, Time travel, Great Britain
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Humour, Satire, Children's literature, Alternate history
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Sirens of Titan
    21

    The Sirens of Titan

    Kurt Vonnegut
    60 votes
    The Sirens of Titan is a Hugo Award-nominated novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history. Much of the story revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth.
    • First Published: 1959
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Mars in fiction
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Black comedy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Crying of Lot 49
    22

    The Crying of Lot 49

    Thomas Pynchon
    15 votes
    The Crying of Lot 49 is a novella by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero. The former actually existed and was the first firm to distribute postal mail; the latter is Pynchon's invention. The novel is often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction. Time included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
    • First Published: 1966
    • Subjects: Literary, Literature, California, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Screwtape Letters
    23

    The Screwtape Letters

    C. S. Lewis
    53 votes
    The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetic novel written by C. S. Lewis. It is written in a satirical, epistolary style and while it is fictional in format, the plot and characters are used to address Christian theological issues, primarily those to do with temptation and resistance to it. First published in February 1942, the story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior Demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter. The uncle's mentorship pertains to the nephew's responsibility for securing the damnation of a British man known only as "the Patient".
    • First Published: 1942
    • Subjects: Christianity, Theology, Classics, 20th century, Practical theology
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Humour, Satire, Fiction, Epistolary novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
    24

    God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

    Kurt Vonnegut
    51 votes
    God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is a play by Howard Ashman.
    • First Published: 1965
    • Subjects: Literature, Classics, Satire
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Hogfather
    25

    Hogfather

    Terry Pratchett
    35 votes
    Hogfather is the 20th Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, and a 1997 British Fantasy Award nominee. The Hogfather is also a character in the book, representing something akin to Father Christmas. He grants children's wishes on Hogswatchnight and brings them presents. He also features in other Discworld novels.
    • First Published: 1996
    • Subjects: Wizards
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Fiction, Fantasy
  • Thank You for Smoking
    26

    Thank You for Smoking

    Christopher Buckley
    47 votes
    Thank You for Smoking is a novel by Christopher Buckley, first published in 1994, which tells the story of Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobbyist during the 1990s.
    • First Published: 1994-05-17
    • Subjects: Smoking
    • Genres (Book): Satire, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Jesús de Valizas
    27

    Jesús de Valizas

    Rodrigo Tisnés
    11 votes
    • First Published: 2014
    • Subjects: Jesus Christ/ The Bible/ Satirical
    • Genres (Book): Novel
    • Original Language: Spanish
  • Fight Club
    28

    Fight Club

    Chuck Palahniuk
    82 votes
    Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy. In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into a film of the same name, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The film acquired a cult following despite lower than expected box-office results. The film's prominence heightened the profile of the novel and that of Palahniuk. Plans for a sequel to the book were announced in 2013.
    • First Published: 1996-08
    • Subjects: Literary
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Suspense, Mystery, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • American Psycho
    29

    American Psycho

    Bret Easton Ellis
    76 votes
    American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan businessman. A film adaptation starring Christian Bale was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. The Observer notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities." In 2008, it was confirmed that producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer were developing a musical adaptation of the novel to appear on Broadway. In January 2013, it was announced that this musical would open in London in December 2013.
    • First Published: 1991
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Suspense, Women, Adventure
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Suspense, Horror Film, Fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Jingo
    30

    Jingo

    Terry Pratchett
    27 votes
    Jingo is the 21st novel by Terry Pratchett, one of his Discworld series. It was published in 1997. The rising of a previously submerged island and the subconstituent sovereignty dispute were inspired by the real-life island of Ferdinandea.
    • First Published: 1997
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
  • The Golden Ass
    31

    The Golden Ass

    Apuleius
    10 votes
    The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass, is the only Ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The protagonist of the novel is called Lucius. At the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madaurus, in ancient Algeria, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The plot revolves around the protagonist's curiosity and insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to perform a spell to transform into a bird, he is accidentally transformed into an ass. This leads to a long journey, literal and metaphorical, filled with in-set tales. He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins.
    • Genres (Book): Picaresque novel
    • Original Language: Latin Language
  • Babbitt
    32

    Babbitt

    Sinclair Lewis
    31 votes
    Babbitt, first published in 1922, is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. Largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, it critiques the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure toward conformity. An immediate and controversial bestseller, Babbitt was influential in the decision to award Lewis the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930. The word "Babbitt" entered the English language as a "person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards".
    • First Published: 1922
    • Subjects: Literary, Literature, Classics, Drama, Theatre
    • Genres (Book): Satire, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Satyricon
    33

    The Satyricon

    Petronius
    32 votes
  • The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, Book One
    34

    The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, Book One

    Jaroslav Hašek
    34 votes
  • Decline and Fall
    35

    Decline and Fall

    Evelyn Waugh
    35 votes
    Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based in part on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author's characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s. The novel's title is a contraction of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The title alludes also to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse. Waugh read both Gibbon and Spengler while writing his first novel.
    • First Published: 1928
    • Subjects: Literature, World, Rome, Classics, Ancient Rome
    • Genres (Book): Satire, Fiction, Comedy, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Infinite Jest
    36

    Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace
    45 votes
    Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a North American dystopia, centering on a junior tennis academy and a nearby substance-abuse recovery center. The novel touches on many topics, including addiction and recovery, family relationships, entertainment and advertising, film theory, United States-Canada relations, and tennis. The novel famously includes 388 endnotes that cap almost a thousand pages of prose, which, together with its detailed fictional world, have led to its categorization as an encyclopedic novel. In 2005 it was included by Time magazine in its list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. By 2006, 150,000 copies of Infinite Jest had been sold, and the book has continued to sell steadily and attract critical commentary.
    • First Published: 1996-02-01
    • Subjects: Tennis, Substance dependence
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Tragicomedy, Fiction, Postmodernism
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Much Obliged, Jeeves
    37

    Much Obliged, Jeeves

    P. G. Wodehouse
    10 votes
    Much Obliged, Jeeves is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1971 by Barrie & Jenkins, London, and in the United States on 15 October 1971 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York under the name Jeeves and the Tie That Binds. The two editions have slightly different endings. Wodehouse's American editor gave the US edition its title and rewrote the last page, adding Jeeves' disclosure about the eighteen pages from the Junior Ganymede Club Book, and his expressed desire to remain permanently in Wooster's employment. Written only a few years before his death, Much Obliged, Jeeves is the second-to-last appearance of Wodehouse's characters, Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. It forms the fourth and final instalment of the Totleigh Towers saga, though it actually takes place at Brinkley Court, the home of Bertie's Aunt Dahlia, near the town of Market Snodsbury.
    • First Published: 1971-10-15
    • Subjects: Butler, England
    • Genres (Book): Fiction, Comedy
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Northanger Abbey
    38

    Northanger Abbey

    Jane Austen
    33 votes
    Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written circa 1798–99. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10 to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who decided against publishing. In the spring of 1816, the bookseller was content to sell it back to the novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum—£10—that he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was by then the author of four popular novels. The novel was further revised by Austen in 1816/17, with the intention of having it published. Among other changes, the lead character's name was changed from Susan to Catherine, and Austen retitled the book Catherine as a result. Austen died in July 1817. Northanger Abbey was brought out posthumously in late December 1817, as the first two volumes of a four-volume set that also featured another previously unpublished Austen novel, Persuasion.
    • First Published: 1817-12
    • Subjects: Literary, Education, Literature, Classics, Drama
    • Genres (Book): Romance novel, Satire, Fiction, Reference, Gothic fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Gog
    39

    Gog

    Giovanni Papini
    17 votes
    Gog is a 1931 satirical novel by the Italian writer Giovanni Papini. It tells the story of Goggins, nicknamed Gog, a Hawaiian-American who made a fortune during World War I and travels around the world. An English translation was published in 1931, but was poorly received. The American Mercury wrote in its review: "There are, here and there, some ingenious and amusing passages, but in the main the ideas are not striking, nor is their exposition very impressive. The book, indeed, only bears out what was suggested in Papini's life of Christ: that there is little in him save a somewhat sophomoric and trashy cleverness."
    • First Published: 1931
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction
    • Original Language: Italian
  • The Loved One
    40

    The Loved One

    Evelyn Waugh
    24 votes
    The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy is a short satirical novel by British novelist Evelyn Waugh about the funeral business in Los Angeles, the British expatriate community in Hollywood, and the film industry.
    • First Published: 1948-02
    • Subjects: Popular literature, Literary, Literature, California, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Satire, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel
    41

    Gargantua and Pantagruel

    François Rabelais
    11 votes
    The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The text is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and features much crudity, scatological humor, and violence. The censors of the Collège de la Sorbonne stigmatized it as obscene, and in a social climate of increasing religious oppression, it was treated with suspicion, and contemporaries avoided mentioning it. According to Rabelais, the philosophy of his giant Pantagruel, "Pantagruelism", is rooted in "a certain gaiety of mind pickled in the scorn of fortuitous things". Rabelais had studied Ancient Greek and he applied it in inventing hundreds of new words in the text, some of which became part of the French language. Wordplay and risqué humor abound in his writing.
  • The Camp of the Saints
    42

    The Camp of the Saints

    Jean Raspail
    18 votes
    The Camp of the Saints is a 1973 French apocalyptic novel by Jean Raspail. The novel depicts a hypothetical setting whereby Third World mass immigration to France and the West led to the destruction of Western civilization. It sparked controversial reactions ranging from prophetic to discriminatory. Almost forty years after publication the book returned to the bestseller list in 2011.
    • First Published: 1973
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: French Language
  • A Handful of Dust
    43

    A Handful of Dust

    Evelyn Waugh
    18 votes
    A Handful of Dust is a novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1934, it is often grouped with the author's early, satirical comic novels for which he became famous in the pre-Second World War years. Commentators have, however, drawn attention to its serious undertones, and have regarded it as a transitional work pointing towards Waugh's more substantial postwar fiction. The story concerns the misfortunes of Tony Last, a contented but shallow English country squire who, having been betrayed by his wife and seen his illusions shattered one by one, seeks solace by joining an expedition to the Brazilian jungle, only to find himself trapped in a remote outpost as the prisoner and plaything of an insane settler. Waugh incorporated several autobiographical elements into the story, notably his own recent desertion by his young wife. In 1933–34 he had undertaken a journey into the South American interior, and a number of incidents and personalities from the voyage are incorporated into the novel. Tony's singular fate in the jungle was first used by Waugh as the subject of an independent short story, published in 1933 under the title "The Man Who Liked Dickens".
    • First Published: 1934
    • Subjects: Literary
    • Genres (Book): Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • 1979
    44

    1979

    Christian Kracht
    26 votes
    • First Published: 2001
    • Subjects: Decadence
    • Genres (Book): Novel
    • Original Language: German
  • The Eyre Affair
    45

    The Eyre Affair

    Jasper Fforde
    22 votes
    The Eyre Affair is the first published novel by English author Jasper Fforde, released by Hodder and Stoughton in 2001. It takes place in alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
    • First Published: 2001-07-19
    • Subjects: Wales, Espionage, Fathers and Daughters
    • Genres (Book): Alternate history, Fiction, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Ham on Rye
    46

    Ham on Rye

    Charles Bukowski
    28 votes
    Ham on Rye is a 1982 semi-autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Written in the first person, the novel follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s thinly-veiled alter ego, during his early years. Written in Bukowski’s characteristically straightforward prose, the novel tells of his coming-of-age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
    • First Published: 1982-09-01
    • Subjects: Literary, Literature, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Autobiographical novel, Fiction
  • The Magic Christian
    47

    The Magic Christian

    Terry Southern
    17 votes
    The Magic Christian is a 1959 comic novel by American author Terry Southern about an odd billionaire who spends most of his time playing elaborate practical jokes on people. It is known for bringing Southern to the attention of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who had received a copy as a gift from Peter Sellers, and subsequently hired him as co-writer for Dr. Strangelove when Kubrick decided to make that film a black comedy/satire, rather than a straightforward thriller. In 1969, The Magic Christian was made into a film starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr; the story was much altered and relocated from New York City to London.
    • First Published: 1959
    • Genres (Book): Comic novel, Comedy
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Scoop
    48

    Scoop

    Evelyn Waugh
    20 votes
    Scoop is a 1938 novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, a satire of sensationalist journalism and foreign correspondents.
    • First Published: 1938
    • Subjects: Literary, Foreign Correspondent, Scoop, 20th century, British Cuisine
    • Genres (Book): Children's literature, Fiction, Comedy, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • War with the Newts
    49

    War with the Newts

    Karel ÄŒapek
    20 votes
    War with the Newts, also translated as War with the Salamanders, is a 1936 satirical science fiction novel by Czech author Karel ÄŒapek. It concerns the discovery in the Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, an intelligent breed of newts, who are initially enslaved and exploited. They acquire human knowledge and rebel, leading to a global war for supremacy. There are obvious similarities to ÄŒapek's earlier R.U.R., but also some original themes. War with the Newts was described as a "classic work" of science fiction by science fiction author and critic Damon Knight.
    • First Published: 1936
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Science Fiction
    • Original Language: Czech Language
  • World War Z
    50

    World War Z

    Max Brooks
    41 votes
    World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is an apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks. The novel is a collection of individual accounts narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following the devastating global conflict against the zombie plague. Other passages record a decade-long desperate struggle, as experienced by people of various nationalities. The personal accounts also describe the resulting social, political, religious, and environmental changes. World War Z is a follow-up to Brooks' "survival manual" The Zombie Survival Guide, but its tone is much more serious. It was inspired by The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel, and by the zombie films of George A. Romero. Brooks used World War Z to comment on government ineptitude and American isolationism, while also examining survivalism and uncertainty. The novel was a commercial hit and was praised by most critics. Its audiobook version, performed by a full cast including Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, and John Turturro, won an Audie Award in 2007. A film inspired by the novel, starring Brad Pitt, was released in 2013.
    • First Published: 2006-09-12
    • Subjects: Zombie apocalypse, Suspense, Adventure, Horror Film, Military
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, War novel, Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, Humour, Satire
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn
    51

    Last Exit to Brooklyn

    Hubert Selby, Jr.
    23 votes
    Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby, Jr. The novel has become a cult classic because of its harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s and for its brusque, everyman style of prose. Although critics and fellow writers praised the book on its release, Last Exit to Brooklyn caused much controversy because of its frank portrayals of taboo subjects, such as drug use, street violence, gang rape, homosexuality, transvestism and domestic violence. It was the subject of an important obscenity trial in the United Kingdom and was banned in Italy.
    • Genres (Book): Satire
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Boomsday
    52

    Boomsday

    Christopher Buckley
    17 votes
    Boomsday is a 2007 novel by Christopher Buckley, which is a political satire about the rivalry between squandering Baby Boomers and younger generations of Americans who do not want to pay high taxes for their elders' retirement.
    • First Published: 2007-04-02
    • Subjects: Computers, Espionage
    • Genres (Book): Satire, Fiction, Political fiction
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Pickwick Papers
    53

    The Pickwick Papers

    Charles Dickens
    10 votes
    The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is Charles Dickens's first novel. He was asked to contribute to the project as an up-and-coming writer following the success of Sketches by Boz, published in 1836. Dickens increasingly took over the unsuccessful monthly publication after the original illustrator Robert Seymour had committed suicide. With the introduction of Sam Weller in chapter 10, the book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise. After the publication, the widow of Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any specific input, writing that "Mr Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the book."
    • First Published: 1836-03
    • Subjects: Men, England
    • Genres (Book): Fiction, Novel, Social criticism
    • Original Language: English Language
  • The Praise of Folly
    54

    The Praise of Folly

    Desiderius Erasmus
    7 votes
    In Praise of Folly is an essay written in Latin in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in 1511. The essay was inspired by De Triumpho Stultitiae, written by the Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli, born at Tredozio, near Forlì. Erasmus revised and extended the work, which he originally wrote in the space of a week while sojourning with Sir Thomas More at More's estate in Bucklersbury. In Praise of Folly is considered one of the most notable works of the Renaissance and played an important role in the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.
  • Whatever
    55

    Whatever

    Michel Houellebecq
    23 votes
    Whatever is Paul Hammond's English translation of Extension du domaine de la lutte by Michel Houellebecq.
    • Subjects: Literary
    • Genres (Book): Fiction
  • Decameron
    56

    Decameron

    Giovanni Boccaccio
    15 votes
  • Slow Horses
    57

    Slow Horses

    Mick Herron
    15 votes
    Slow Horses is a book written by Mick Herron.
    • First Published: 2010
    • Genres (Book): Thriller, Fiction
  • Lucky Jim
    58

    Lucky Jim

    Kingsley Amis
    5 votes
    Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It is Amis' first novel and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. Set sometime around 1950, Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. The tone is often truculent and plain-spoken, but its diction and style are wide-ranging and finely modulated. The novel pioneers the characteristic subject matter of the time: a young man making his way in a post-war world that combines new and moribund attitudes. The preliminary pages quote an "old song": "Oh, lucky Jim, How I envy him...". It is supposed that Amis arrived at Jim Dixon's surname from 12 Dixon Drive, Leicester, the address of Philip Larkin from 1948 to 1950, while he was a librarian at the university. Lucky Jim is dedicated to Larkin, who helped inspire the main character and who contributed significantly to the structure of the novel. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
    • First Published: 1954
    • Subjects: Literary, Classics
    • Genres (Book): Comic novel, Fiction, Novel
  • Super Sad True Love Story
    59

    Super Sad True Love Story

    Gary Shteyngart
    17 votes
    Super Sad True Love Story is the third novel by American writer Gary Shteyngart. The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail.
    • First Published: 2010-07-27
    • Genres (Book): Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Company
    60

    Company

    Max Barry
    14 votes
    Company is a book written by Max Barry. In 2006 it became Barry's third published novel, following Jennifer Government in 2003. The novel is set in a modern corporation.
    • First Published: 2006-01-17
    • Subjects: Business ethics
    • Genres (Book): Speculative fiction, Satire, Novel
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Straight Man
    61

    Straight Man

    Richard Russo
    15 votes
    Straight Man is a novel by Richard Russo set at the fictional West Central Pennsylvania University in Railton, Pennsylvania. It is a mid-life crisis tale told in the first person by William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the unlikely interim chairman of the English department. Notable moments include the chairman's hiding in the rafters as the faculty vote on his dismissal, his threat of killing a campus pond duck every day until the department receives a budget, flirtations between faculty and students, satires on academic scholarship and stardom, and love and health in the season of grace. It is rumored that the material for this book came from Russo's experiences teaching at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Southern Connecticut State University or at Penn State Altoona.
    • First Published: 1997
    • Subjects: Midlife crisis
    • Genres (Book): Fiction, Novel
  • Mother's Milk
    62

    Mother's Milk

    Edward St Aubyn
    17 votes
    Mother's Milk is a novel written by Edward St Aubyn.
  • Faserland
    63

    Faserland

    20 votes
    Faserland is the debut novel by Christian Kracht, published in 1995. It is considered to have triggered the new wave of German pop literature. It is the swan song of the generation of the 80's, whose characteristics are so carefully described in the book that it has been called the "cult novel of a generation". Critics often compare the book to those of the American author Bret Easton Ellis. Faserland has been translated into Russian, Latvian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Korean, Romanian and Hebrew.
  • A Big Boy did it and Ran Away
    64

    A Big Boy did it and Ran Away

    Christopher Brookmyre
    17 votes
    A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away is Christopher Brookmyre's sixth novel. It features the first appearance of policewoman Angelique de Xavia, who is one of the main characters in The Sacred Art of Stealing.
    • First Published: 2001
    • Genres (Book): Black comedy, Crime Fiction, Satire, Suspense, Mystery
    • Original Language: English Language
  • Life & Opinions of Tristam Shandy
    65

    Life & Opinions of Tristam Shandy

    12 votes
  • Day of the Oprichnik Vladimir Sorokin
    66

    Day of the Oprichnik Vladimir Sorokin

    9 votes