2023 Guardian Top 10s

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Top 10 Allegories

18/10/2023

18 October 2023
Top 10 Allegories
1. Aesop’s Fables
2. Plato’s cave
3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
4. La Grande Beuverie by René Daumal
5. Ice by Anna Kavan
6. The Trial by Franz Kafka
7. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
8. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
9. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
10. Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

Top 10 Grudge Holders in Fiction

27/9/2023

27 September 2023
Top 10 Grudge Holders in Fiction
1. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
2. Lote by Shola von Reinhold
3. Yes, I Am a Destroyer by Mira Mattar
4. The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
5. Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, trans. Morgan Giles
6. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
7. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
8. Extinction by Thomas Bernhard, translated by David McClintock
9. SS Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy, trans. Alastair McEwen
10. Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko

Top 10 Books About Solitary Living

30/8/2023

30 August 2023
Top 10 Books About Solitary Living
1. The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy
2. Bluets by Maggie Nelson
3. Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik
4. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
5. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
6. Look at Me by Anita Brookner
7. Accident: A Day’s News by Christa Wolf
8. Assembly by Natasha Brown
9. The Years by Annie Ernaux
10. The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Top 10 Female Spies in Fiction

23/8/2023

23 August 2023
Top 10 Female Spies in Fiction
1. While Still We Live, Helen MacInnes (1944)
2. The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (1948)
3. Moonraker, Ian Fleming (1955)
4. The Hothouse By the East River, Muriel Spark (1973)
5. The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carré (1983)
6. Black Widow: The Name of the Rose by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Daniel Acuña (2011)
7. A Quiet Life, Natasha Walter (2016)
8. Transcription, Kate Atkinson (2018)
9. Who Is Vera Kelly? Rosalie Knecht (2018)
10. American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson (2019)

Top 10 Books Set in Cornwall

16/8/2023

16 August 2023
Top 10 Books Set in Cornwall
1. The Lip by Charlie Carroll
2. Rough Music by Patrick Gale
3. Homesick by Catrina Davies
4. The Lighthouse by PD James
5. A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman
6. The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir
7. Yoruba Man Walking by Bernardine Evaristo
8. The Swordfish and the Star by Gavin Knight
9. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

Top 10 Books About Chosen Families

2/8/2023

02 August 2023
Top 10 Books About Chosen Families
1. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
2. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
3. Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E Butler
4. The Bone People by Keri Hulme
5. The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
6. Silas Marner by George Eliot
7. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. The Beggars’ Strike, or, the Dregs of Society by Aminata Sow Fall
9. Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez
10. The Overstory by Richard Powers

Source

Top 10 Books by Neglected Female Thinkers

31/7/2023

26 July 2023
Top 10 Books by Neglected Female Thinkers
1. This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray
2. Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated by Anna Maria van Schurman
3. Essays and Speeches by Maria W Stewart
4. Femininity and Domination by Sandra Lee Bartky
5. Extant Writings of Im Yunjidang
6. Reflections Upon Marriage by Mary Astell
7. Love’s Work by Gillian Rose
8. Maria: Or, The Wrongs of Woman Illustrated by Mary Wollstonecraft
9. Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen by Olympe de Gouges
10. The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete

Top 10: Good Sex in Fiction

19/7/2023

19 July 2023
Top 10: Good Sex in Fiction
1. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
2. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
3. Normal People by Sally Rooney
4. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence
5. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
6. Secretary by Mary Gaitskill
7. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
8. Riders by Jilly Cooper
9. Forever by Judy Blume
10. Warming Her Pearls by Carol Ann Duffy

Top 10 Books About Awakenings

12/7/2023

12 July 2023
Top 10 Books About Awakenings
1. Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
2. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
3. Keeping in Touch by Anjali Joseph
4. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
5. 2040 by Jorie Graham
6. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, translated by Susan Bernofsky
7. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
8. English Magic by Uschi Gatward
9. The Cellist by Jennifer Atkins
10. Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir

Top 10 Elderly Heroines in Fiction

5/7/2023

05 July 2023
Top 10 Elderly Heroines in Fiction
1. Great-great-grandmother Irene in The Princess and the Goblins by George MacDonald
2. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple
3. Matty in the Crooked Heart trilogy by Lissa Evans
4. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)
5. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
6. Marian in The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington (1974)
7. Janina in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)
8. Aunt Augusta in Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene (1969)
9. Granny Weatherwax in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett
10. Maud in An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten (2018)