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You are here: Backpacker Resources > Travel Books > Travel Book for December 2009

Travel Book for December 2009

The Rough Guide to Classic Novels by Simon Mason

Preface

Classic novel are, by definition, first class. They have stood the test of time ‐ or show the qualities that make them likely to do so. Speaking for us, and to us, they tell the best stories and contain the greatest characters. Above all, they entertain.

In The Rough Guide to Classic Novels the emphasis is on precisely this quality. There are no novels here chosen simply for their worthiness or their prominence in literary history. All merit their inclusion by being, first and foremost, great pleasure givers.

In making the selection, I have also tried to be sensitive to two sorts of variety. Firstly, the variety of classic novels ‐ the extraordinary richness of fiction produced all over the world from the time of Don Quixote to the present day. Here Jane Austen rubs shoulders with Milan Kundera, Dostoevsky with Raymond Chandler, Voltaire with Kenzaburo Oe. Classic heavy weights from Tsarist Russia sit alongside Modernist masterpieces from the deep American South, solid triple‐deckers from Victorian London mix with mind bending fables from Brazil and Turkey. Secondly, I have borne in mind the variety of readers, whose tastes range from the traditional to the avant‐garde, across every conceivable type, style and genre. Whether your preference is for page‐turning plots or unforgettable characters, short challenging novels or long, spell‐binding ones, there is something here for you to try.

The result is a selection of 229 novels (or sequences of novels such as trilogies, etc) by novelists from 36 countries, published between 1604 and 2002. Titles are grouped alphabetically by author in a number of thematic chapters ‐ “ Comedy and satire”, “ Horror and mystery”, “ Crime and punishment”, “ Rites of passage”, “ Love, romance and sex” and so on ‐ to make them easier to locate. Each main entry ends with a suggestion for further reading, usually, but not always, by the same author, and for each work originally written in a foreign language, a recommended English translation is provided. Short reviews are also provided for any outstanding film or television adaptations of the novels discussed, and there are boxes throughout the book on a range of topics, such as the historical novel and Magic Realism.

As its title suggests, the guide is limited to novels. Authors whose main achievement is in short stories ‐ Chekhov, Maupassant and William Trevor are obvious examples ‐ appear only in the suggestions for further reading, alongside other great exponents of the genre, such as Hemmingway and Nabokov, who are also included as novelists.

Inevitably the selection is a personal one, and not likely to be the same as anyone else’s. Some novels choose themselves: who could exclude War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time or Moby Dick? But other choices are less obvious, perhaps more controversial. Together, they form a representative selection intended to stimulate readers’ curiosity about some of the world’s greatest novels. Enjoy!

Simon Mason, April 2008

The Rough guide to Classic Novels by Simon Mason is published by Rough Guides (paperback; £7.99). It is also available through roughguides.com and all good booksellers.