30 Brilliant Books Anyone Can Read In A Day

Kafka‘s masterful story of Gregor Samsa - who wakes to find himself transformed into a large, monstrous insect-like creature - is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century.
Length: 72 pages.

In The Outsider (1942), his classic existentialist novel, French-Algerian author Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. Length: 128 pages.

It was The Old Man and the Sea that won the great Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Enough said. Length: 112 pages.

A powerful dystopian novel from a writer who experienced firsthand the dehumanising conditions of Soviet Russia. Length: 112 pages.

Empire of the Sun author JG Ballard's unnerving tale of life in a modern tower block running out of control is a modern masterpiece. Length: 272 pages.

A genuine children's classic of the twentieth century that is much-loved by adults, too. Length: 96 pages.

Nobel Prize-winning author Garcia Márquez tells a powerful tale of poverty and undying hope in his moving novel No One Writes to the Colonel. Length: 80 pages.

Conrad's masterpiece is one of the most complex and darkest novellas of the human condition. Length: 116 pages.

A novel in two intertwining stories, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. Length: 160 words.

As in all Ballard’s best work, Concrete Island provides an unnerving study of our modern lives and world. Length: 208 pages.

Of Mice and Men remains Steinbeck's most popular work, achieving success as a novel, Broadway play and three acclaimed films. Length: 128 pages.

Memories Of My Melancholy Whores is a powerful, haunting novel about a man who so far has never felt love from the celebrated author of the One Hundred Years of Solitude. Length: 118 pages.

Immortalised by Audrey Hepburn's sparkling performance in the 1961 film of the same name, Breakfast at Tiffany's is Truman Capote's timeless portrait of tragicomic cultural icon Holly Golightly, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Length: 160 pages.

A novella filled with beauty, terror and strangeness, This Census-Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity.
Length: 160 pages.

Dostoyevsky's most revolutionary novel. Length: 136 pages

Jesus' Son is a visionary chronicle of dreamers, addicts, and lost souls. Length: 133 pages.

Celebrated 1925 novel that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. Length: 124 pages.

A plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. But order soon collapses and chaos descends. Length: 224 pages.

Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. Length: 144 pages.

A seminal and hugely imaginative work of early science fiction, H.G. Wells's The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel. Length: 144 pages.

This much-loved book follows two rival groups, the Greasers and the Socs, who are divided by their socioeconomic status. The story is told in first-person narrative by protagonist Ponyboy Curtis. Length: 224 pages.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a compelling, moving story exploring injustice and mob hysteria by one of Latin American's greatest ever writers. Length: 128 pages.

This haunting mystery novel is written in the voice of 18-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her sister and uncle on an estate in Vermont. The Blackwood family, six years before the events of the novel, experienced a family tragedy that resulted in the three living isolated from others in their small village. Length: 176 pages.

Bonjour Tristesse tells the story of Cécile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. Length: 240 pages.

'It is the history of a revolution that went wrong - and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine,' wrote Orwell for the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945. Length: 144 pages.

The film Blade Runner is loosely based on Dick’s novella. Length: 224 pages.

Forget Trainspotting, the Beat writer's first novel is a shocking exposé of the desperate subculture surrounding heroin addiction. Length: 208 pages.

A controversial bestseller when it appeared in 1971, it brings to life the hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror of Hunter S Thompson’s musings on the collapse of the American Dream.
Length 240 pages

The ‘poet laureate of American lowlife’ presents his alter-ego Henry Chinaksi - a shambling booze-hound staggering from one dead-end job to another. Length: 176 pages.

The Dharma Bums appeared just one year after the author's explosive On The Road had put the Beat Generation on the literary map and made Kerouac a literary superstar. Arguably his best novel. Length: 224 pages.