The best novels in English: readers' alternative list

It’s the ideal postcolonial novel. Its inventive idiomatic prose highlights the malleability of the English language: no other writer (or translator) has evoked the true essence of another language in English. Period.” Steven Ikeme

“Brilliant, distinctive, thought-provoking and illuminating of a sense of place and time. Also quite readable.” Ryan

“This book is a seminal piece of great story telling. Set in the advent of colonialism and its implications for the native people, the clash of cultures of two different worlds.A story of how a way of life was replaced by another culture.” Kinnie Hindowah

“It’s an excellent example of black African writing in English of which I felt your list was sadly lacking. Black African novelists are often sorely under represented in literary criticism and lists of this kind. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe explores the colonial experience by arguably using the tools of colonialism itself, ie the English language. The story is told from the African perspective and his use of African colloquialisms and proverbs is genuinely subversive and innovative.” Nathan Loughran

2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)

“As a non-native English speaker and someone who grew up in an Asian culture, English as a language appears very articulate and clear to me. And most well written English literature works, including poems, embody such almost straightforward characters, both in their wording and storytelling ... until I read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I still remember how struck I was to see the English words be played in a way that’s mostly familiar to me in other Asian literature. The gentle singsong wording and wave-like storytelling combined with the vividness of English captured me like a dream. I’ve read many more English novels since, some as captivating and clever, but none carries the same magic.” Ling

“The God of Small Things – though a fairly recent book – resonates very strongly with me. It explores caste, sexism, colonialism and the strange unspoken rules that tie Indian families together. Like in most great novels, the prose itself is stunning, with imagery fresh and original and at the same time, somehow familiar. I’m a girl from a South Indian village and I was raised by a single mother and my grandmother. Perhaps it is this coincidence that ties me so strongly to the book, to see in tangible words the burden that history passes along to Indian women.” Sita

“I have never been so moved by a book as this one. Every character is complete and completely human; the plot is intricate and perfectly woven; the sentences sparkle with lapidary precision. When common words fail, she creates her own lexicon (a device I usually loathe in lesser hands) and creates poetry within the prose – ‘Furrywhirring,’ ‘Sariflapping,’ ‘ OrangedrinkLemondrink Man’, ‘fatly baffled.’ The description of the God of Small Things or mundane tragedies as a flippant, skipping boy in short pants is as evocative as it is heart breaking. Roy frames tragic personal stories within the context of the greater tragedy of Indian social strictures and politics. And the ending made me cry for two solid hours. I read the book four years ago and writing this critique is making my throat tighten even now, such is its incandescent power and brilliance.” Pam Norris