A Book That is Considered to be in the "Classic" Literary Canon

These books fulfill this category for UBN 2025.

Updated January 28, 2025
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The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Audiobook
F. Scott Fitzgerald's modern classic is one of the key novels of the 20th century. Jay Gatsby is one of the most famous residents of Long Island, New York. His sumptuous mansion, lavish parties and glamorous lifestyle are renowned throughout the neighbourhood. And yet, beyond the status symbols, no...
Frankenstein, : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
The world's most famous work of horror fiction: a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel presents the epic battle between man and...
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth and has influenced countless coming-of-age stories since. Holden Caulfield is a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up,...
One hundred years of solitude
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been one of the literary giants of the past century; his body of work is an undisputed cultural landmark and a touchstone for countless readers and writers alike. In the wake of the author's death, Penguin is reissuing what is arguably his most beloved novel...
Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua.
Paper Book
"A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." --Barack Obama  "African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe." --Toni...
Their eyes were watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Audiobook
"A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." --Zadie Smith One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century,...
The alchemist
Coelho, Paulo
Paper Book
Combing magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Winner of the Pulitzer Prize * Winner of the National Book Award   Published to unprecedented acclaim,The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in...
Night
Wiesel, Elie
Paper Book
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity- the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of...
The haunting of Hill House
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
The greatest haunted house story ever written--the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series! One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been...
Nineteen eighty-four
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken.
Paper Book
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the...
The Odyssey
Homer
Paper Book
A lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer's "nimble gallop" and brings an ancient epic to new life. The first great adventure story in the Western canon, the Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about...

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