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.

The Secret Agent

1907 · 320 pages

Conrad wrote the first great modern novel of terrorism. Verloc keeps a seedy London shop, informs on anarchists for a foreign embassy, and is ordered to bomb the Greenwich Observatory to frighten England.

★ 6.9

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

1974 · 103 pages

The tabloid Bild-Zeitung had branded Böll a terrorist sympathizer, so he answered with this: a quiet housekeeper spends one night with a wanted man and the papers take her honor apart.

★ 6.3

Bel Canto

2001 · 318 pages

Guerrillas storm a vice president's mansion somewhere in South America and hold the room for months. Among the hostages is a soprano who sings each morning, and everyone begins falling in love.

★ 5.5