The Best Fiction Books

Thomas Hardy, author of many classic novels including Tess of the d'Ubervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd, is best known for his books that explore the social mores and class divides of rural life in 19th-century England. Here, Mark Chutter—chair of the Thomas Hardy Society—talks us through five key texts by Hardy, and explains why they have stood the test of time.

China has long fascinated Western imagination. A country once seen as a distant empire, so culturally and geographically far from what we’re used to, is now more accessible than ever before. From the Opium Wars to open markets, our understanding of this country has continuously evolved over the years, fueled by fascination, uncertainty and exoticism.

Do you take perverse pleasure in reading about the end of the world as we know it? Us too. Here, we've gathered together a selection of the best post-apocalyptic novels ever to appear on Five Books to help you choose your next horrifying, exhilarating literary parlay into armageddon.

The Greek myth of Persephone and Hades has inspired numerous retellings. Bestselling author Melinda Salisbury introduces five books that feature these two beloved characters in all their complexity: stories that explore the peculiar predicament of Persephone, and the strange but powerful allure of the King of the Dead.

Long before we published books, tales were told around the campfire, or recited by a professional one episode at a time. So why not go straight to the wellspring of literature, and read stories so good they have been told and re-told for centuries? Here, Five Books contributing editor Tuva Kahrs recommends timeless books that began life in oral storytelling traditions from around the world, whose themes have resonated through the ages.

While rooted in specific Chinese contexts, these books transcend cultural boundaries and speak to universal questions about dignity, freedom, identity, and the longing to be seen, says novelist and writer Lijia Zhang. She talks us through five of the best works of fiction to come out of mainland China in the twentieth century.

Weird fiction uses the supernatural to throw all our experience into doubt, says author and academic Michael Cisco. He introduces us to five favourites, featuring everything from ghosts to fairies to cults – all subtly constructed, infused with real human feeling, and calculated to perturb.

From K-pop bands to webtoons, from award-winning cinema to blockbuster dramas such as Squid Game, Korean culture has taken the world by storm in recent years. But how about Korean literature? We asked Kim Ho-Yeon, author of bestselling novel The Second Chance Convenience Store, to introduce us to five unmissable 21st-century Korean novels.

From a book based on the actual love letters a British prime minister sent to his mistress in the run-up to World War I, to a fantastical tale that takes its cue from the Epic of Gilgamesh, there's a wide variety of novels to choose from on the shortlist of this year's Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. The comments are from the judging panel, chaired this year by British novelist Jim Crace.

John le Carré—often credited as the best spy novelist of all time—wrote 26 books over the course of his career. We asked Nick Harkaway, his son and the author of Karla's Choice (the best spy thriller of 2024, according to our interview with spy book expert Shane Whaley), to select the five best John le Carré novels: from the Cold War espionage stories that made his name to more contemporary thrillers set in a world of international crime syndicates.