Six stories across five centuries with the same actors; the Wachowskis and Tykwer's huge gamble.
Two Peking opera stars across fifty years of Chinese history; the only Chinese Palme d'Or.
The icon painter through medieval Russia, the Tatar raid and a boy casting a bell.
Leone's four-hour Jewish gangster epic across fifty years of New York.
Burt Lancaster as a Sicilian prince watching his world end, and Visconti's hour-long ball.
Leone's three-hour opera of a western, with Henry Fonda as the villain and a harmonica.
Lean's Russian Revolution romance, the ice palace and "Lara's Theme".
Warlords, strategists and the fall of the Han; the Chinese epic every game borrows.
Kvothe tells his own legend from behind an inn counter; the third book is still not out.
Four generations of a Korean family in Japan from 1910; Min Jin Lee's epic.
Jacob Frank, an 18th-century Jewish messiah, across Poland and Turkey in 900 pages numbered backwards.
Bridge crews, highstorms and Shardblades on Roshar; the Stormlight Archive begins at 1,000 pages.
Five parts, a missing German novelist and the murdered women of Santa Teresa; Bolano's unfinished monument.
Rand al Thor leaves the Two Rivers with an Aes Sedai; the Wheel of Time begins its fourteen books.
A torturer, a barbarian and a vain officer in Abercrombie's First Law; grimdark begins.
Winter is coming, Ned Stark rides south and the Wall; the first of A Song of Ice and Fire.
The Red Wedding and the Purple Wedding; the best of the series.
Daenerys in Meereen, Tyrion on a boat and Jon at the Wall; the last published volume, from 2011.
Five kings, a red comet and the Battle of the Blackwater.
A superflu kills 99% of humanity and the survivors gather in Boulder and Las Vegas; King's epic.
Three generations of a Cairo family from 1917 to 1944; Mahfouz's Nobel work.
Cersei rules, Brienne searches and half the cast is elsewhere.
Two retired Texas Rangers drive cattle to Montana; the western as great American novel.
Four families and a mother's search for a husband for Lata in 1950s India; 1,349 pages.
Six nested stories from 1849 to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii; Mitchell's puzzle box.
Cain and Abel in the Salinas Valley across two generations; Steinbeck's own favourite.
From the 1951 home run to the Cold War's waste; DeLillo's 800-page America.
A tennis academy, a halfway house and a film so entertaining it kills; 1,079 pages and 388 endnotes.
Jean Valjean, a loaf of bread and nineteen years; Hugo's Paris from the sewers to the barricades.
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