Tokyo Express
1958 · 160 pages
Two bodies lie on a Kyushu beach, arranged as lovers who died together, and the case turns on four minutes at Tokyo Station. Matsumoto pointed Japanese crime fiction straight at government corruption.
★ 4.5
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Honored Society
1964 · 265 pages
Lewis walked postwar Sicily and found monks running extortion from the confessional and Mafia bosses installed as mayors by American liberators, whose invasion, he argues, restored what Mussolini had nearly destroyed.
★ 4.7
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
A Novel
2021 · 512 pages
Nigeria's political and religious elite trade in body parts stolen from a hospital, a business one surgeon uncovers. Soyinka returned to the novel after nearly fifty years to write this unforgiving satire.
★ 4.8
The Death of Artemio Cruz
1962 · 307 pages
Artemio Cruz lies dying in 1959, a newspaper baron who fought in the Mexican Revolution and spent the decades after betraying it. His life returns in three voices: I, you, and he.
★ 6.5
The Secret History
550 · 176 pages
Justinian's official historian kept a second book he could not publish: the emperor a demon pacing the palace at night without a head, the empress insatiable. Nothing from antiquity carries this much hatred.
★ 6.7
All The King's Men
1946 · 656 pages
Willie Stark rises from county treasurer to governor believing good can be made only out of bad. Warren wrote the American novel of power, narrated by the aide he sends to dig dirt.
★ 6.8
Mr. President
1946 · 320 pages
In an unnamed Latin American capital, a beggar's killing of a colonel gives a dictator the pretext to destroy his enemies. Asturias renders the terror as fever dream, in prose that hallucinates.
★ 6.8
Old Man Goriot
1835 · 336 pages
In a shabby Paris boarding house, an old man sells off everything for two daughters ashamed to be seen with him. Balzac counts every franc and shows what money does to love.
★ 7.2
Dead Souls
1842 · 432 pages
Traveling the Russian provinces, a charming stranger buys serfs who have died but still count on the tax rolls. Gogol's landowners are grotesque and hilarious, and then the laughter turns on you.
★ 8.1
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
1789 · 155 pages
Short poems in simple meter about lambs, chimney sweeps, and a tiger burning in the forests of the night. Blake sets an innocent version beside a bitter one and lets you decide.
★ 8.2