Classics
24 books about a journey home that took bloody ages.
The Odyssey
This tragedy features a brooding Danish prince who famously asks, "To be, or not to be?".
Hamlet
Heathcliff's intense and destructive love for Catherine Earnshaw is the focus of this Emily Brontë classic.
Wuthering Heights
Which city does the devil visit in the USSR to wreak havoc on in Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita' ?
Moscow
Winston Smith works in which government ministry in the dystopian novel "1984" by George Orwell.
Ministry of Truth
Popularised by Freud, Oedipus was prophecied to and ultimately succumbed to doing what in Sophocles' 'Oedipus Rex' ?
Unknowingly kill his father and marry his mother.
Three witches prophesy that a Scottish general will become King in this "Scottish Play".
Macbeth
An orphan named Pip encounters the eccentric Miss Havisham and the convict Magwitch in this Dickens novel.
Great Expectations
Raskolnikov's moral dilemmas after murdering a pawnbroker are central to this Fyodor Dostoevsky novel.
Crime and Punishment
Arguably the best name in all of literature, who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve in the Charles Dickens novella 'A Christmas Carol'?
Ebenezer Scrooge
Who gave us the tale of the lost city of Atlantis, in his work 'Timaeus and Critias' ?
Plato
"Two households, both alike in dignity" are the setting for this tale of star-crossed lovers in Verona.
Romeo and Juliet
George and Lennie dream of owning a farm in this John Steinbeck novella.
Of Mice and Men
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is the famous opening line of which Lev Tolstoi novel ?
Anna Karenina
Bilbo Baggins goes on an adventure with thirteen dwarves to reclaim the Lonely Mountain in this fantasy classic.
The Hobbit
Marking the beginning to Western civilisation proper, Homer opens with the famous line: "Sing to me Muse of Achilles' ...."
wrath / anger / fury / rage
In addition to his plays, Shakespeare composed a famous collection of 154 poems written in a strict 14-line format.
The Sonnets
Meursault commits a seemingly motiveless murder on a beach in Algiers in this Albert Camus novel.
The Stranger
Ivan Turgenev popularized the term "nihilist" through the character Bazarov in this 1862 novel.
Fathers and Sons
A boy gets bullied and abused for the first 10 years of his life but thankfully he manages to turn his life around and make something of himself.
Harry Potter
Which city is fated to be destroyed by the Romans in The Aeneid ?
Carthage
Who is described as two faced in 'Othello' ?
Iago
Subtitled "The Modern Prometheus," this Mary Shelley novel was partly written while she lived right next door to my school (and in Switzerland).
Frankenstein
Which Nobel prize winner wrote 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?' that exposed the harsh realities of the Soviet Gulag
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
In this spy fiction novel by Joseph Conrad, Mr Verloc regrettably and accidentally blows up his retarded brother-in-law.
The Secret Agent