For students
Best Novels for IB Literature
IB Literature asks for range — works in translation, a global spread of voices, and the kind of formal richness that sustains a close analysis and an oral. The novels here reward exactly that scrutiny and travel well across the course's requirements.
Ranked by how much they give an IB reader and annotated with each one's strengths for the individual oral and the essays, from a translated masterwork to a formally daring landmark. Every title opens a full study guide.
- 13 books
- 10 authors
- 1915–1994 span
- 1
The Tin Drum
IB set textGünter Grass · 1959 · Novel · novel
- 2
In the Time of the Butterflies
IB set textJulia Alvarez · 1994 · Novel · novel
- 3
The House of the Spirits
IB set textIsabel Allende · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 4
The Stranger
IB set textAlbert Camus · 1942 · Novel · novel
- 5
Things Fall Apart
IB set textChinua Achebe · 1958 · Novel · novel
- 6
Norwegian Wood
IB set textHaruki Murakami · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 7
One Hundred Years of Solitude
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1967 · Novel · novel
- 8
Like Water for Chocolate
IB set textLaura Esquivel · 1989 · Novel · novel
- 9
The Trial
IB set textFranz Kafka · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 10
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1981 · Novella · novella
- 11
Love in the Time of Cholera
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 12
The Metamorphosis
IB set textFranz Kafka · 1915 · Novella · novella
- 13
Kitchen
IB set textBanana Yoshimoto · 1988 · Novella · novel
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