Great Books

The Idiot

January 7, 1985

The Idiot

January 7, 1985

Dostoevsky set himself the hardest problem in fiction: to put a genuinely good man into the world and make him convincing. He told his niece there was nothing harder, and...

The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 1

January 6, 1985

The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 1

January 6, 1985

He wrote it in fragments, in hiding, never letting the whole manuscript exist in one place. When the KGB found a copy, he told the West to publish, and the...

The Origins of Totalitarianism

January 5, 1985

The Origins of Totalitarianism

January 5, 1985

Written by a stateless refugee in New York, finished while Stalin was still alive. It remains the book people reach for when the ground starts to move.

1984

January 4, 1985

1984

January 4, 1985

The most quoted novel of the twentieth century, and the one people are most confident they have already read. It is stranger, sadder and shabbier than its reputation.

Crime and Punishment

January 2, 1985

Crime and Punishment

January 2, 1985

The most claustrophobic novel ever written, and one of the fastest. Dostoevsky puts you inside a mind and shuts the door behind you.

The Count of Monte Cristo

January 1, 1985

The Count of Monte Cristo

January 1, 1985

Twelve hundred pages, written in instalments for readers who had to wait a week between them, and not one of those readers stopped waiting. Nobody since has managed to put...