By era
Best Modernist Novels
Modernism broke the novel open to get at something the Victorians had left sealed: the actual texture of a mind in time. Stream of consciousness, shattered chronology, the single day made vast — these books rebuilt the form's plumbing to carry consciousness itself.
Ranked by the size of their formal gamble and annotated with each one's innovation, from the interior monologue to the day dilated into an epic. Every entry opens a full study guide.
- 24 books
- 14 authors
- 1900–1945 span
- 1
The Grapes of Wrath
Common CoreJohn Steinbeck · 1939 · Novel · novel
- 2
As I Lay Dying
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1930 · Novel · novel
- 3
Howards End
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1910 · Novel · novel
- 4
A Farewell to Arms
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 5
Lord Jim
AP Lit set textJoseph Conrad · 1900 · Novel · novel
- 6
Light in August
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1932 · Novel · novel
- 7
The Sun Also Rises
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1926 · Novel · novel
- 8
Their Eyes Were Watching God
AP Lit set textZora Neale Hurston · 1937 · Novel · novel
- 9
Mrs. Dalloway
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 10
For Whom the Bell Tolls
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 11
A Passage to India
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1924 · Novel · novel
- 12
The Stranger
IB set textAlbert Camus · 1942 · Novel · novel
- 13
To the Lighthouse
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1927 · Novel · novel
- 14
Absalom, Absalom!
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1936 · Novel · novel
- 15
Animal Farm
OCR set textGeorge Orwell · 1945 · Novella · novel
- 16
The Great Gatsby
AP Lit set textF. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 17
The Trial
IB set textFranz Kafka · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 18
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
AP Lit set textJames Joyce · 1916 · Novel · novel
- 19
Native Son
AP Lit set textRichard Wright · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 20
Orlando
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1928 · Novel · novel
- 21
Of Mice and Men
Edexcel set textJohn Steinbeck · 1937 · Novella · novella
- 22
The Sound and the Fury
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 23
The Metamorphosis
IB set textFranz Kafka · 1915 · Novella · novella
- 24
Billy Budd, Sailor
AP Lit set textHerman Melville · 1924 · Novella · novella
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