Miyamoto Musashi's road to becoming the greatest swordsman; Inoue's ink brush.
A disgraced executioner pushes his son across Edo Japan in a cart of hidden blades.
A woman's life in 14th-century Norway in three volumes; Undset's Nobel.
Four generations of the Trueba family and a coup; Allende's debut.
Jacob Frank, an 18th-century Jewish messiah, across Poland and Turkey in 900 pages numbered backwards.
A distillery family in Shandong during the Japanese invasion; Mo Yan's Nobel novel behind Zhang Yimou's film.
Four generations of a Korean family in Japan from 1910; Min Jin Lee's epic.
Warlords, strategists and the fall of the Han; the Chinese epic every game borrows.
The last day of Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, and a woman who returns; Vargas Llosa.
Shakespeare's son dies of plague and his wife Agnes grieves; the play is named after him.
Two retired Texas Rangers drive cattle to Montana; the western as great American novel.
Two boys in Kabul, a kite tournament and a betrayal that follows one to America.
Death narrates a girl stealing books in Nazi Germany.
Willie Lincoln's ghost and a graveyard chorus on one night in 1862; Saunders' Booker.
Two magicians in the England of the Napoleonic wars, with footnotes; Clarke's thousand pages.
A butler drives to Cornwall and considers what he gave up for a lord; Ishiguro's Booker.
A murderer with a perfect nose in 18th-century France distils the scent of girls.
Saleem Rushdie, born at the stroke of Indian independence, and a thousand children like him; the Booker of Bookers.
A murder among Ottoman miniaturists in 1591 Istanbul, told by everyone including the colour red.
A 15-year-old and a tram conductor in 1958 Heidelberg, and her trial years later.
Two women in Kabul across thirty years of war; Hosseini's second.
The first Mrs Rochester before the attic, in Jamaica; Jean Rhys answers Jane Eyre.
A boy in postwar Barcelona finds a novel in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and someone is burning every copy.
Oskar stops growing at three and drums through Danzig's twentieth century; Grass's Nobel.
A lie by a 13-year-old in 1935 and Dunkirk; McEwan's best.
The Biafran war through twins, a houseboy and an Englishman.
Okonkwo and his Igbo village as the missionaries arrive; the African novel.
Thomas Cromwell rises under Henry VIII in the present tense; Mantel's first Booker.
A poet-doctor and Lara through the revolution and civil war; smuggled out and given the Nobel.
Scarlett O Hara from Tara to the burning of Atlanta; a thousand pages and the most popular American novel.
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