The Rough Guide to Classic Novels (Rough Guides Reference Titles) [Paperback]

It is hard to identify what is most valuable about Simon Mason's Rough Guide to Classic Novels. It is, first and foremost, an astonishingly comprehensive guide to the very best in world literature, as ready to celebrate a quirky modern novel as it is to extol the virtues of a masterpiece of the past. It is also an extremely utilitarian resource: if you want to identify and track down one of the great books (which may be familiar to you only by reputation), the chances are good that it will be within these 370-odd pages (though, at times, the highly personal (even eccentric) choice of novels will surprise -- and give pause to -- some readers). But perhaps the greatest value of this compact yet information-packed guide is the absolutely irresistible impulse it stirs in the reader to grab handfuls of the books mentioned and consume them again (or, for that matter, todevour for the first time a celebrated novel that you have been feeling guilty about not reading).

Mason's literary erudition is jawdropping, and the coverage broad (from Tolstoy to Doris Lessing, and from Jane Austen to Raymond Chandler – the book at times overlaps with the same publisher’s Rough Guide to Crime Fiction). Combine all this with the highly accessible (but always apposite) analyses and breakdowns of the books discussed, and it's hard to imagine the enterprise being surpassed.

Of course, the Rough Guide imprint prides itself on its edgy, unstuffy approach, and the subject of classic literary fiction must have presented quite a challenge to Mason and his editor Joe Staines; in a dumbed-down age, the guide is a consummate demonstration that it is possible to celebrate the finest achievements of the human race in the arts and humanities without couching them in forbidding academic language. The sidebars and diversions shoehorned in here (including ‘Sex, Censorship and the Novel’, ‘Outsiders’ and a section on vampire fiction called ‘Literary Bloodsuckers’) give a particular pleasure, as do the pithy and highly opinionated squibs on film and TV adaptations of many of the great books included here.

Like many entries in the Rough Guide series, however, there should be a warning on the jacket: reading this guide is going to cost you a lot of small change plugging those gaps in your library. --Barry Forshaw

"... it reads like a novel and it's partly because Simon is a really great writer... The thing that distinguishes Simon's book from the other guides that there have been in in this area is he has squarely said it cannot be a classic if it's not entertaining...it's fantastic, it really is"

Get the lowdown on the best fiction ever written. Over 230 of the world’s greatest novels are covered, from Quixote (1614) to Orhan Pamuk’s Snow (2002), with fascinating information about their plots and their authors – and suggestions for what to read next. The guide comes complete with recommendations of the best editions and translations for every genre from the most enticing crime and punishment to love, sex, heroes and anti-heroes, not to mention all the classics of comedy and satire, horror and mystery and many other literary genres. With feature boxes on experimental novels, female novelists, short reviews of interesting film and TV adaptations, and information on how the novel began, this guide will point you to all the classic literature you’ll ever need.

The Rough Guide to Classic Novels is a practical, stimulating, sometimes controversial guide for the book lover. It selects and recommends 229 novels by writers from 36 different countries, published between 1604 and 2002.

The chosen titles are grouped together in a number of thematic sections - `Comedy and Satire', `Horror and Mystery', `Crime and Punishment', Rites of Passage, `Love and Sex' and so on - to make them easier to locate. Each main entry ends with a suggestion for further reading, and, for each work originally written in a foreign language, a recommended English translation.

Needless to say, it's packed with variety. Jane Austen rubs shoulders with Milan Kundera, Dostoevsky with Raymond Chandler, Voltaire with Kenzaburo Oë. Heavyweights from Tsarist Russia sit alongside Modernist masterpieces from the deep American South, and solid triple-deckers from Victorian London alongside mind-bending fables from Brazil and Turkey. Some of them will be familiar to you: who could leave out War and Peace or Jane Eyre or Madame Bovary? But also included are some wild cards - those unexpectedly brilliant novels which, like well-kept secrets, sometimes give the greatest thrills.

Simon Mason is a writer of adult and children's fiction and a passionate reader of classic novels