50 Books You Should Read

Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Domain) by Alain-Fournier

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Set of Six by Joseph Conrad

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson

Kidnapped & Catriona by Robert L. Stevenson

The Master of Ballantrae by Robert L. Stevenson

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Stories by Augusto Monterroso

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Mister President by Miguel Ángel Asturias

War of Time by Alejo Carpentier

A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique

Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Letters from my Windmill by Alphonse Daudet

Odes by John Keats

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Childhood, Boyhood and Youth by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes

Lais by Marie de France

The Heptameron by Marguerite of Navarre

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Metamorphoses by Ovid

Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Disdain with Disdain by Agustín Moreto

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Odyssey by Homer

The Iliad by Homer

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

7 GREAT HISPANIC NOVELS

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Mario Vargas Llosa

The world of radio drama and an unusual loving relationship are two of the cornerstones of this novel. Its flexible structure is open to interpolated funny stories. Based on the author's real life experience, this novel combines a picture of Lima in the 1950s, and an examination of both the practical and creative aspects of writing.

The Vortex, José Eustasio Rivera

Trying to escape their problems, Arturo Cova and his mistress Alicia venture into the Colombian jungle. They start an initiation trip through the virgin rainforest, a hostile milieu masterfully depicted in the novel. The author had taken part in an expedition that denounced violence against Indians in rubber exploitation.

El señor Presidente (Mister President), Miguel Ángel Asturias

The echoes of the first European avant-garde can be seen in the narrative techniques employed in this novel, in which a dictatorship continues its grip on Guatemala through violence and cruelty.  A love story provides a counterweight to human degradation, while a whole country wonders what the next step is.

The Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier

The slave rebellion in Haiti and mentalities in contrast are the subjects of this novel, whose baroque prose is one of the greatest achievements of the Latin American novel. The presence of Voodoo and the circularity of time help shape this narrative.

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo

At the beginning of this book, two characters move along a dreamlike landscape. It is a symbolic, invented place, a peculiar hell where shadows of the dead feed on old feelings and hate. Later the reader realizes that they are only some of the sleepless ghosts that live in Comala.

Broad and Alien is the World, Ciro Alegría

Peruvian Indian groups are deprived of their lands and natural wealth, with the acquiescence of the authorities and the passivity and idleness of a local scholar. Classical narrative techniques are used in this book that focuses on the dehumanization of life.

A World for Julius, Alfredo Bryce Echenique

The lives and doings of an influential, aristocratic Peruvian family are the starting point of a novel of satire and social criticism. The author shows Julius’s expanding world and the decline of his family. A warm, tender and incisive portrait.