Top 100 cult books – a list
You know what it’s like. You log on to your Facebook account and you are suddenly confronted with a book list challenge. The list will have a corny title like ‘100 Books to read before you die’ or the ‘100 greatest novels of all time’ and it will ask you how many of the 100 titles you have read. Some of your friends will have already undertaken the ‘challenge’ and Facebook will dutifully inform you that they have read 80 or 90 or even 95 books on the list. By contrast, when you look at the list, you can only notch up a paltry 14 or 15 titles. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ you invariably think at this point. ‘Am I really that uncultured? ... Or could it be that I’m reading the types of books that don’t usually make it to these lists?’
Well, here’s a different sort of list – a list of what I consider to be the 100 top cult books ever written. By cult I don’t mean ‘little known’ or ‘only appreciated by a few’ (although some of the books in the list could well be described in these terms). I simply mean books which, in some way or the other, have a transgressive edge which separates them from more conventional forms of writing.
It's also a personal and entirely subjective list - so don't be surprised if you see titles here that you yourself might consider boring and/or mainstream.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the moment I hit the enter button and publish this piece online, I will start remembering other titles that could have been on the list... That’s just the way it goes with these things, isn’t it?
1. John Fante, Ask the Dust – When I first read Ask the Dust, I was in a state of shock. How can a novel as good as this only be known to a few cognoscenti?
2. Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir – Every big city is steeped in mysteries, Paris more than most.....
3. Venedikt Yerofeyev, Moscow to the End of the Line – Yes, it’s about a drunk who‘s feeling a bit sorry for himself. But it’s also a staggeringly moving and beautiful poem in prose.
4. Charles Bukowski, Ham On Rye – The closest Bukowski came to literary writing. A remarkable novel.
5 Gregor Von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite – Savage and disturbing, a lyrical masterpiece from the heart of Mitteleuropa.
6. Georges Simenon, The Long Exile – Most people think of Simenon and they think of the portly, pipe-smoking Maigret. But Simenon also wrote a magnificent series of hard-hitting ‘romans dur’, or ‘hard novels.’ The Long Exile is one of the best.
7. Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon – Georges Bataille was a state-appointed librarian. He was also one of the most controversial and transgressive writers of the twentieth-century. Please read him!
8. Yukio Mishima, The Sea of Fertility – Okay, so The Sea of Fertility is not really a book, but a tetralogy of four novels. Read it anyway. You’ll be hard pressed to find writing as intense and forceful as this.
9. Enid Starkie, Baudelaire – Dr Starkie has been accused of Christianising the drug-addicted, semi-Satanic Baudelaire, but who cares? This is one helluva biography, regardless.
10. Mark SaFranko, No Strings – A tour-de-force by the master of modern American noir. Seedy, fast-paced and supremely stylish.
11. Gerald Kersh, Night and the City – If you think that the eponymous Jules Dassin film is good, try reading the stunning novel on which it was (very loosely) based – it’s even better!
12. Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square – Schizophrenia and alcohol don’t mix – or do they?
13. Louis Ferdinand Celine, Death on the Installment Plan – The French master of the three dots at his furiously filthy best.
14. Gordon Bowker, Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry – Think your life is messed-up? Then read this biography. I guarantee it will make you feel better by the time you finish reading it.
15. Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl – ‘There are certain sores in life that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it.’ Is there a novel anywhere with a better opening line?
16. Alexander Baron, The Lowlife – Why is Alexander Baron hardly remembered these days? I just don’t get it!
17. Gustav Meyrink, The Golem – If you are looking for esoteric truths in Meyrink, don’t bother. If you are looking for bags of eerie atmosphere, then step right in. You won’t be disappointed.
18. George Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges – You don’t have to be a death-obsessed romantic to appreciate Rodenbach. But it certainly helps!
19. Joseph Roth, Flight Without End – Was Joseph Roth the patron saint of exiles and the dispossessed? I’d be inclined to say so!
20. Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train – Highsmith, the arch-priestess of American noir, at her most compelling.
21. Stig Dagerman, A Burned Child – If you want to know why Stig Dagerman committed suicide at the age of 31, A Burned Child offers plenty of clues.
22. Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me – Thompson had an undoubted gift for flawed, mentally deranged narrators. Lou Ford, the protagonist of The Killer Inside Me, is about as flawed as they come.
23. Knut Hamsun, Hunger – The father of all underground novels. Still as fresh today as when it was written in 1893.
24. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory – It is a testimony to Graham Greene’s creative genius that he could write such dark and twisted novels and still be a best-selling author.
25. Thomas Bernhard, Extinction – If I had to pick one book on this list as my favourite, I’d probably pick Bernhard’s Extinction. No one captures the sheer messed-upness of life like Bernhard does.
26. Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave – The last book that made me cry ... and I’m not the kind who blubs over his kindle.
27. Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup – Dark and savagely funny, a glorious slice of contemporary noir from the Japanese enfant terrible.
28. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz – No one wrote about memory like Sebald did. His death at the age of 57 robbed us of a true literary giant.
29. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman – There are some novels which leave you thinking, ‘How the hell did the author come up with something like that?’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman is one of those novels.
30. Sam Selvon, Lonely Londoners – Anybody who thinks Creolised writing is not a suitable medium for literary expression should read Selvon’s novel. It's a perfect little masterpiece, as far as I’m concerned.
31. Dan Fante, Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving – I’m a big fan of Dan Fante. Always have been and always will be.
32. Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory – Probably the saddest book I’ve ever read. Michel Houellebecq is a dark prophet indeed.
33. Haldoror Laxness, World Light – It was during a holiday to Iceland some years ago that I discovered the incomparable Haldoror Laxness.
34. J. M. Coetzee, The Master of Petersburg – Yes, I know that Coetzee is a mainstream name, but his books are still uncommonly good.
35. Günter Grass, Cat and Mouse – Same as above. Another great twentieth-century novelist.
36. Jose Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ – Think of the irony: Saramago, the confirmed atheist and Marxist, presents us with a much more believable Christ than the Christ offered to us by the established Christian churches.
37. William L. Gresham, Nightmare Alley – The finest American noir novel of all time, in my opinion.
38. M. Ageyev, Novel With Cocaine – On the surface it is about a man’s increasing addiction to cocaine, but it’s also a remarkably atmospheric existentialist novel.
39. Mario Sa-Carneiro, Lucio’s Confession – Sa-Carneiro wrote like he was mad, which, in all honesty, he probably was. A uniquely disquieting writer.
40. Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf – Basic fodder for angst-ridden teenage rebels in the Sixties and Seventies, but still one of the all-time literary greats, in my opinion.
41. Simon Blumenfeld, Jew Boy – Chances are you haven’t heard of Simon Blumenfeld, which is a shame cos he's damned good.
42. Italo Svevo, The Confessions of Zeno – One of the best things James Joyce ever did was ‘discovering’ Italo Svevo!
43. Robert Irwin, Memoirs of a Dervish – Sixties counterculture explored, but without any of the usual dewy-eyed bullshit.
44. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity – One of Cain’s shortest, but arguably his very best.
45. Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery – A much maligned book, but I still prefer it to the Name of the Rose.
46. Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt – Imagine a herd of dead horses with their heads sticking out of a frozen lake. Welcome to the nightmarish but insanely poetic world of Signior Curzio Malaparte.
47. Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – Baroque and brutal, like some kind of self-detonating Fabergé egg.
48. Don Delillo, Libra – Prelude to a certain death in Dallas. I think this is Delillo’s finest novel.
49. Wilson Harris, The Palace of the Golden Peacock – Yes, it’s weird. And yes, parts of it don’t make sense. But it’s still one disarmingly poetic book.
50. Bronislaw Malinowski, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term – A warts-and-all peek into the soul of a tormented genius.
51. Witold Gombrowicz, Pornografia – Poland’s finest son. A darkly comic masterpiece.
52. Elias Canetti, Auto-de-Fé – Nasty, nasty, nasty, but ever so funny!
53. Henry Miller, Black Spring – Part-novel, part-philosophical meditation, this is the book which announced Miller's arrival as a major creative force.
54. Comte de Lautreamont, Maldoror – Subversive and disquieting. Easy to see why the Surrealists were so enamoured with Monsieur Isidore-Lucien Ducasse..
55. Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea – How to be alienated from everyone and everything in ten easy steps.
56. J. G. Ballard, High Rise – Perverse, menacing, brilliant ... what is there not to like about Ballard, I ask?
57. Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature – Has there even been a more decadent and anti-heroic figure in literature than Jean Des Esseintes?
58. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky – Ever heard of the expression ‘out on a limb’?
59. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita – You could live a thousand lifetimes and never get to write prose as chiselled and as perfect as Nabokov’s.
60. Emanuel Litvinov, Journey to a Small Planet – Nostalgia without cloying sentimentality. A beautifully wrought memorial to a vanished world.
61. Alfred Jarry, Days and Nights – Vivid and hallucinatory. An unexpectedly brilliant novel from the creator of the Ubu plays.
62. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment – Well, you didn’t think that I was going to leave the great Russian master out of this list, did you?
63. J. R. Ackerly, My Father and Myself – This is the type of book that only an Englishman could have pulled off. And a damn fine book it is too.
64. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Of Love and other Demons – My favourite Marquez. An impassioned little tale of love and obsession.
65. Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale – French noir at its cinematic best. No wonder Claude Chabrol was a big fan.
66. Robert Stone, Damascus Gate – Stone’s critics claimed that his book had little to do with modern-day Jerusalem, but I don’t really care: it’s a powerful book all the same.
67. Samuel Beckett, Murphy – Enigmatic and brilliant, though you’ll probably need a dictionary at hand while reading it.
68. Patrick Modiano, The Search Warrant – I was so pleased when in 2014 Modiano won the Nobel instead of the much-fancied Haruki Murakami!
69. Octave Mirbeau, Abbé Jules – Octave Mirbeau was a committed anarchist. He was also a damn fine writer who explored the darkest corners of the human psyche. Abbé Jules is his masterpiece.
70. André Breton, Nadja – Not all surrealist texts are readable. Luckily for us, Breton's Nadja is not your average surrealist work.
71. Wolfgang Koeppen, Death in Rome – A big fat dollop of post-war gloom set in the grandeur of Rome. Shame that Visconti was never tempted to make a film out of this book!
72. Shūsaku Endō, Foreign Studies – Yes, we all know how alienated Westerners feel when they come to live in Japan, but how do the Japanese feel when they go to settle in the West?
73. Nigel Jones, Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton – 'Darkly' being the operative word here.
74. Arthur Morrison, Child of the Jago – From the heart of the Victorian slums, a remarkably powerful and moving novel.
75. Stefan Grabinski, Dark Domain – Grabinski is known as the Polish Edgar Allan Poe. Incidentally, my novel Solitude House is based on one of his short stories.
76. Henri Barbusse, Hell – Is this a novel about voyeurism? Or it about man’s fundamental inability to communicate with others? I’ll let the reader decide for himself/ herself!
77. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita – Magical realism before magical realism even existed. Simply brilliant.
78 Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark – The Parisian demimondaines needed a patron saint. Jean Rhys heeded their cry!
79. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces – This is one of those books that you either love or hate. I’m happy to say that I fall in the first category.
80. Janusz Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man – I’ve read several Gulag memoirs. Bardach’s is probably the most harrowing.
81. Jack London, The Star Rover – If ever a novel merits the descriptive term ‘unique’, it’s got to be this splendid little monstrosity by Jack London.
82. Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo Trilogy – An Egyptian family saga. Poignant and heart-breaking.
83. Alberto Moravia, Contempt – A clinical dissection of a marriage gone wrong. Brutally honest writing.
84. Graham Robb, Rimbaud – 'Scholarly, humane and above all marvellously entertaining' - that's how the Guardian described this magnificent biography of Arthur Rimbaud by Graham Robb.
85. Camillo Boito, Senso – Read the book first and then watch the Visconti film with the delectable Alida Valli.
86. Alexander Trocchi, Young Adam – Man spots dead woman floating on a canal, becomes obsessed with his boss’s wife. Later reveals that the dead woman was his ex-girlfriend. That’s the plot in a nutshell.... Oh, by the way, the writing’s truly remarkable as well.
87. Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra – Grotesque, but in a good way. I can only think of one other book that rivals Terra Nostra for sheer inventiveness – and that is Coin Locker Babies by the Japanese writer Ryu Murakami.
88. Eric Ambler, Journey into Fear – Adrenaline and paranoia on the azure waters of the Med.
89. Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen – A remarkable first-person account of life in Auschwitz. Essential reading for anybody wanting to understand the inhumanity of the Nazi regime.
90. Stefan Zweig, Fantastic Night – Another great writer whose star, alas, seems to have waned.
91. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian – The American Wild West, reimagined and redefined. I really need to re-read this some day!
92. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle – Solzhenitsyn reminds me of Nabokov in the sense that you feel that every word and every sentence of his is in the right place.
93. Donald Barthelme, Forty Stories – Who says metafiction cannot be fun?
94. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried – A haunting meditation on the horrors of war. Probably the single best book to have come out of the Vietnam War.
95. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness – Essential reading. Then, now and always.
96. Robert Westerby, Wide Boys Never Work – Ever wondered where the term ‘wide boy’ originally came from? Then wonder no more.
97. Normal Collins, London Belongs To Me – A rivetingly good novel set in London before and after the Second World War. Over seven hundred pages, but utterly compelling.
98. Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One – Quintessential Waugh. Every page dripping with satirical malice.
99. Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf – He might be very Scandinavian in his interests, but for my money Lagerkvist is one of the finest writers to have won the Nobel Prize for literature.
100. Edward Lewis Wallant, The Tenants of Moonbloom – And finally ... the perfect antidote to most books on this list!