The 15 best books in history that will hook you from start to finish

Universal literature is full of books that have stood the test of time and have ended up becoming classics. Titles that we all know, even when we haven’t read them. However, a great canonical work does not have to be synonymous with tostonazo. We are not going to deny that, sometimes, it is. Although it can also happen that we simply have not found the right moment in which it fits us to read a certain story. However, this is not something that happens with this selection that we have made of the best novels in history to date. Although they are very different, they all have one thing in common: they hook you from the first moment and absorb you until the last page.

The book ThiefMarkus Zusak

Once upon a time there was a town where the nights were long and death told its own story. In the town lived a girl who wanted to read, a man who played the accordion and a young Jew who wrote beautiful stories to escape the horror of war. After a while, the girl turned into a thief who stole books and gave away words. With these words she wrote a beautiful and cruel story that is now an unforgettable novel, tremendously human and exciting, which describes the adventures of a nine-year-old German girl since she is given up for adoption by her mother until the end of World War II.

1984George Orwell

In the year 1984, London is a gloomy city in which the Thought Police control the lives of citizens in a suffocating way. Winston Smith is a pawn in this wicked gear and his job is to rewrite history to fit what the Party considers the official version of events. Until he decides to reconsider the truth of the system that governs and submits them.

The crooked lines of GodTorcuato Luca de Tena

Alice Gould is admitted to a mental institution. In her delirium, She believes she is a private investigator in charge of a team of detectives dedicated to solving complicated cases.. According to a letter from her private doctor, the reality is different: her paranoid obsession is to attempt the life of her husband. The extreme intelligence of this woman and her apparently normal attitude will confuse the doctors to the point of not knowing for sure if Alice has been wrongfully admitted or actually suffers from a serious and dangerous psychological disorder.

DiaryAnna Frank

After the invasion of Holland, the Franks, German Jewish merchants who emigrated to Amsterdam in 1933, hid from the Gestapo in an attic attached to the building where Anne’s father had his offices. Eight people remained in prison from June 1942 to August 1944, when they were arrested and sent to concentration camps. From his hiding place and in the most precarious conditions, Anne, a thirteen-year-old girl, wrote the shocking, one-of-a-kind testimony about Nazi horror and barbarism., and about the feelings and experiences of Anne herself and her companions. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen camp in March 1945 but her diary never will.

MetamorphosisFranz Kafka

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from a troubled dream, found himself in his bed turned into a monstrous insect“. Such is the abrupt beginning, which places us at the root under different rules. Written in 1912 and published in 1916, this story is considered one of the masterpieces of the 20th century due to the wealth of ideas and interpretations that it has always aroused. The stories “An artist of hunger” and “An artist of the trapeze” complete this volume.

The House of Spiritsby Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende’s first novel narrates the saga of a powerful family of Latin American landowners. The despotic patriarch, Esteban Trueba, has built a private empire with an iron fist that begins to falter with the passage of time and an explosive social environment. Finally, the personal decadence of the patriarch will drag the Trueba to a painful disintegration. Trapped in dramatic family relationships, the characters in this powerful novel embody the social and spiritual tensions of an era spanning much of the 20th century. A story in which the everyday coexists with the wonderful, love with the revolution and personal ideals with the harsh political reality.

The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar Wilde

A novel that reflects the fatality of the romantics: Oscar Wilde wanted to make beauty a refinement of intelligence and for that plunged its protagonist into an atmosphere of perversion dominated by art and the powers of a mystery that is beyond reality and that reason cannot explain. Dorian Gray continues to be, more than a hundred years after the death of its author, a cornerstone in the debates between ethics and aesthetics, in the relationships between good and evil, soul and body, art and life.

The catcher in the ryeby J.D. Salinger

At the express wish of the author, the publisher is not allowed to include in its promotional material any type of additional text, biographical information, quote or review related to this work. The interested reader, however, may have already heard of Holden Caulfield’s adventures in New York City…

wuthering heightsby Emily Bronte

The epic story of Catherine and Heathcliff, set on the bleak and desolate Yorkshire moors, is an amazing metaphysical vision of destiny, obsession, passion and revenge. With it, Emily Brontë, who published it under a male pseudonym, completely broke with the canons of decorum that Victorian England demanded in every novel, both in the chosen theme and in the description of the characters. The uniqueness of its narrative structure and the power of its language made it one of the most enduring and influential works in the history of literature.

diamond squareMercè Rodoreda

The story of Natalia, known as “Colometa”, is the representation of those women who had to live through a particularly harsh and cruel period in the history of Spain: the Civil War and the postwar period. Thus, he will see his loved ones leave and die, he will go hungry and miserable and will often find himself unable to raise his children. She plunged into an unhappy marriage with a selfish man, she renounces her own identity and gives all the prominence to her husband, accepting the conventions of the time. A literary gem and one of the best Spanish novels of the 20th century and the masterpiece, according to critics, of Catalan women’s literature.

Cold-bloodedTruman Capote

On November 15, 1959, in a small Kansas town, the four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered in their home. Five years later, on April 14, 1965, Dick Hickcock and Perry Smith were hanged for the deaths at the Kansas State Penitentiary. After carrying out long and detailed investigations with the real protagonists of the story, Truman Capote wrote the novel that definitively established him as one of the greats of 20th century American literature. Follow the life of the small town, sketch portraits of the victims, accompany the police in the investigations and, above all, concentrates on the two psychopathic criminals until building two perfectly outlined characters.

NothingCarmen Laforet

Andrea arrives in Barcelona to study Literature. Her illusions immediately clash with the atmosphere of tension and violent emotions that reigns in his grandmother’s house. Andrea recounts the contrast between this sordid family microcosm ―populated by hurt and harsh beings― and the fragile cordiality of her university relationships, centered on the beautiful and luminous Ena. Finally the two worlds meet and collide violently.

red and blackstendhal

It tells the story of Julien Sorel, who is convinced that his education will allow him to rise in social category. Love and ambitions will intermingle in her life, weaving the threads of a plot that will end in tragedy. Stendhal, the pseudonym by which Henry Beyle is known, is considered one of the greatest writers of the 19th century.

magic mountain, thomas mann

This is the story of Hans Castorp, a young and modest engineer who arrives at a sanatorium located in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin. The stay that he expected to be short expands in time and ends up forming part of this new way of life in which the passage of time is relativized. Sitting on the balcony of the sanatorium and wrapped in a blanket, Hans reflects on life, death and love. The result is one of the great masterpieces of universal literaturewhich offers a portrait of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century while at the same time making a profound reflection on the human condition.

the bell jarSylvia Plath

This is the story of a girl who has everything a young woman could want in 1950s New York: a promising career, a suitor studying medicine, and a whole life ahead of her. Esther Greenwood has won a scholarship to work at a fashion magazine in the big city and she feels that she will finally be able to fulfill her dream of being a writer. But Between cocktails, party nights and piles of manuscripts, he discovers a society that repudiates the aspirations of women. and her life begins to fall apart. Esther -the author’s alter ego- closes in on herself, as if she were trapped in a glass bell: continuously breathing the same stale air and with no possibility of escape.

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Cover photo | Southern

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