On 5 November 2019, the BBC published a list of novels selected by a panel of six writers and critics, who had been asked to choose 100 English language novels "that have had an impact on their lives". [1] The resulting list of "100 novels that shaped our world", [1] called the "100 Most Inspiring Novels" by BBC News, [2] was published by the BBC to kick off a year of celebrating literature. [2] [3]
The list triggered comments from critics and other news agencies. News agencies from outside the United Kingdom, like Canadian broadcaster CBC News and Nigerian news website Legit.ng, profiled authors with works included in the list who were nationals of their countries. [4] [5] The Guardian noted surprising titles missing from the list, like Moby-Dick (1851), [6] and writing in The Daily Telegraph , Jake Kerridge called it "a short-sighted list that will please nobody." [7]
The BBC relied on six experts: Stig Abell, Mariella Frostrup, Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal, Alexander McCall Smith and Syima Aslam. [4] [6] The CBC characterized the panel as composed of "writers, curators and critics". [4] According to The Guardian, the list commemorated the publication of Robinson Crusoe (1719), 300 years earlier – "widely seen as the progenitor of the English-language novel". [6]
The panel broke their list into ten categories of ten items. [1]
| Title | Author | First published [8] | BBC category | Author's nationality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beloved | Toni Morrison | 1987 | Identity | American |
| Days Without End | Sebastian Barry | 2016 | Identity | Irish |
| Fugitive Pieces | Anne Michaels | 1996 | Identity | Canadian |
| Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 2006 | Identity | Nigerian |
| Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi | 2016 | Identity | Ghanaian American |
| Small Island | Andrea Levy | 2004 | Identity | British |
| The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath | 1963 | Identity | American |
| The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy | 1997 | Identity | Indian |
| Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | 1958 | Identity | Nigerian |
| White Teeth | Zadie Smith | 2000 | Identity | British |
| Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | 1996 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| Forever... | Judy Blume | 1975 | Love, Sex & Romance | American |
| Giovanni's Room | James Baldwin | 1956 | Love, Sex & Romance | American |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| Riders | Jilly Cooper | 1985 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston | 1937 | Love, Sex & Romance | American |
| The Far Pavilions | M. M. Kaye | 1978 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| The Forty Rules of Love | Elif Shafak | 2009 | Love, Sex & Romance | Turkish |
| The Passion | Jeanette Winterson | 1987 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| The Slaves of Solitude | Patrick Hamilton | 1947 | Love, Sex & Romance | British |
| City of Bohane | Kevin Barry | 2011 | Adventure | Irish |
| Eye of the Needle | Ken Follett | 1978 | Adventure | British |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | 1940 | Adventure | American |
| His Dark Materials (trilogy) | Philip Pullman | 1995 | Adventure | British |
| Ivanhoe | Walter Scott | 1819 | Adventure | British |
| Mr Standfast | John Buchan | 1919 | Adventure | British |
| The Big Sleep | Raymond Chandler | 1939 | Adventure | American |
| The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | 2008 | Adventure | American |
| The Jack Aubrey Novels (series) | Patrick O’Brian | 1969 | Adventure | British |
| The Lord of the Rings | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1954 | Adventure | British |
| A Game of Thrones | George R. R. Martin | 1996 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | American |
| Astonishing the Gods | Ben Okri | 1995 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | Nigerian |
| Dune | Frank Herbert | 1966 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | American |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 1818 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | British |
| Gilead | Marilynne Robinson | 2004 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | American |
| The Chronicles of Narnia (series) | C. S. Lewis | 1950 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | British |
| Discworld (series) | Terry Pratchett | 1983 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | British |
| Earthsea (trilogy) | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1968 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | American |
| The Sandman | Neil Gaiman | 1989 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | British |
| The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 2006 | Life, Death & Other Worlds | American |
| A Thousand Splendid Suns | Khaled Hosseini | 2007 | Politics, Power & Protest | Afghan-American |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | 1932 | Politics, Power & Protest | British |
| Home Fire | Kamila Shamsie | 2017 | Politics, Power & Protest | British |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding | 1954 | Politics, Power & Protest | British |
| Noughts & Crosses | Malorie Blackman | 2001 | Politics, Power & Protest | British |
| Strumpet City | James Plunkett | 1969 | Politics, Power & Protest | Irish |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker | 1982 | Politics, Power & Protest | American |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1960 | Politics, Power & Protest | American |
| V for Vendetta | Alan Moore | 1982 | Politics, Power & Protest | British |
| Unless | Carol Shields | 2002 | Politics, Power & Protest | Canadian |
| A House for Mr Biswas | V. S. Naipaul | 1961 | Class & Society | Trinidadian |
| Cannery Row | John Steinbeck | 1945 | Class & Society | American |
| Disgrace | J. M. Coetzee | 1999 | Class & Society | South African |
| Our Mutual Friend | Charles Dickens | 1864 | Class & Society | British |
| Poor Cow | Nell Dunn | 1967 | Class & Society | British |
| Saturday Night and Sunday Morning | Alan Sillitoe | 1958 | Class & Society | British |
| The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne | Brian Moore | 1955 | Class & Society | British Canadian |
| The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Muriel Spark | 1961 | Class & Society | British |
| The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro | 1989 | Class & Society | British |
| Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys | 1966 | Class & Society | British |
| Emily of New Moon | L. M. Montgomery | 1923 | Coming of Age | Canadian |
| Golden Child | Claire Adam | 2019 | Coming of Age | Trinidadian |
| Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | 2003 | Coming of Age | Canadian |
| So Long, See You Tomorrow | William Maxwell | 1979 | Coming of Age | American |
| Swami and Friends | R. K. Narayan | 1935 | Coming of Age | Indian |
| The Country Girls | Edna O’Brien | 1960 | Coming of Age | Irish |
| Harry Potter (series) | J. K. Rowling | 1997 | Coming of Age | British |
| The Outsiders | S. E. Hinton | 1967 | Coming of Age | American |
| The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ | Sue Townsend | 1982 | Coming of Age | British |
| Twilight (series) | Stephenie Meyer | 2005 | Coming of Age | American |
| A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | 1993 | Family & Friendship | Indian |
| Ballet Shoes | Noel Streatfeild | 1935 | Family & Friendship | British |
| Cloudstreet | Tim Winton | 1991 | Family & Friendship | Australian |
| Cold Comfort Farm | Stella Gibbons | 1932 | Family & Friendship | British |
| I Capture the Castle | Dodie Smith | 1948 | Family & Friendship | British |
| Middlemarch | George Eliot | 1871 | Family & Friendship | British |
| Tales of the City | Armistead Maupin | 1978 | Family & Friendship | American |
| The Shipping News | Annie Proulx | 1993 | Family & Friendship | American |
| The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Anne Brontë | 1848 | Family & Friendship | British |
| The Witches | Roald Dahl | 1983 | Family & Friendship | British |
| American Tabloid | James Ellroy | 1995 | Crime & Conflict | American |
| American War | Omar El Akkad | 2017 | Crime & Conflict | Egyptian Canadian |
| Ice Candy Man | Bapsi Sidhwa | 1988 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | 1938 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| Regeneration | Pat Barker | 1991 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| The Children of Men | P. D. James | 1992 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | Arthur Conan Doyle | 1901 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| The Reluctant Fundamentalist | Mohsin Hamid | 2007 | Crime & Conflict | Pakistani |
| The Talented Mr. Ripley | Patricia Highsmith | 1955 | Crime & Conflict | American |
| The Quiet American | Graham Greene | 1955 | Crime & Conflict | British |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | 1980 | Rule Breakers | American |
| Bartleby, the Scrivener | Herman Melville | 1853 | Rule Breakers | American |
| Habibi | Craig Thompson | 2011 | Rule Breakers | American |
| How to Be Both | Ali Smith | 2014 | Rule Breakers | British |
| Orlando | Virginia Woolf | 1928 | Rule Breakers | British |
| Nights at the Circus | Angela Carter | 1984 | Rule Breakers | British |
| Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | 1949 | Rule Breakers | British |
| Psmith, Journalist | P. G. Wodehouse | 1909 | Rule Breakers | British |
| The Moor's Last Sigh | Salman Rushdie | 1995 | Rule Breakers | British |
| Zami: A New Spelling of My Name | Audre Lorde | 1982 | Rule Breakers | American |
The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.
These novels have all sparked "debate about the novels that have had a big impact on us all personally and culturally".
Five Canadian books are on the list: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, Unless by Carol Shields, Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and American War by Omar El Akkad.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinua Achebe and Ben Okri's novels made the list of 100 novels that shaped the world.
There's no Wuthering Heights, no Moby-Dick, no Ulysses, but there is Half of a Yellow Sun, Bridget Jones's Diary and Discworld: so announced the panel of experts assembled by the BBC to draw up a list of 100 novels that shaped their world.