Read Half of a Yellow Sun

A Nigerian woman in America and the man she left in Lagos; Adichie on hair, race and home.

Okonkwo and his Igbo village as the missionaries arrive; the African novel.

Warlords, strategists and the fall of the Han; the Chinese epic every game borrows.

Sethe, a runaway slave, and the ghost of the daughter she killed; Morrison's masterpiece.

The Glanton gang scalp their way across the border in 1849 and the Judge dances; McCarthy's violent Bible.

Willie Lincoln's ghost and a graveyard chorus on one night in 1862; Saunders' Booker.

A butler drives to Cornwall and considers what he gave up for a lord; Ishiguro's Booker.

A lie by a 13-year-old in 1935 and Dunkirk; McEwan's best.