Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Power Novels


Twelve of the best novels on power:
  1. "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves
  2. "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
  3. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell
  4. "The Wall" by John Hersey
  5. "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk
  6. "The Way We Live Now" by Anthony Trollope
  7. "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler
  8. "The Time of the Assassins" by Godfrey Blunden
  9. "A Man in Full" by Tom Wolfe
  10. "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel
  11. "The Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe
  12. "The First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Update: Some others:
  1. "Tai-Pan" by James Clavell
  2. "Shogun" by James Clavell
  3. "Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian
  4. "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
  5. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
  6. "Lincoln" by Gore Vidal
  7. "The Last Hurrah" by Edwin O'Connor
  8. "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren

4 comments:

Dan in Philly said...

War and Peace?

Michael Wade said...

Dan,

"War and Peace" is filled with lessons for life.

Michael

Kurt Harden said...

Damn you man. My list grows.

twistedByKnaves said...

Not having read War and Peace, I'd make a small bid at the other end of the scale for the Ankh Morpork novels of Terry Pratchett. The interplay between the Machiavellian Lord Vetinari (the more or less benevolent tyrant) and his Philip Marlowe, Vimes of the Guard, is not always subtle but it does have the ring of truth.