50 Great American Novels

The Great American Novel (or the GAN as it is sometimes called) is something that has always been up for debate because of the fact America has had such an incredible output of literature in a far shorter space of time than other countries. The question of which epic best represents America was never really there, but the question of which piece of literature best represents the American experience has always been there since the country first put out its literary culture upon the world.

Now, I am a massive fan of American Literature. American Literature is some of the greatest literature ever written and why? Well because you cannot really 'define' what American Literature is. American Literature is everything from William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison, from Ernest Hemingway to Langston Hughes, from Edith Wharton to Nella Larsen. There is no real stamp to say that this is the key to American Literature or that is the best work of American Literature because every piece of American Literature varies in experience, cultural history and from state to state it can even vary in the way the characters speak to each other. There's so much to explore in American Literature and even in its modern classic realm of the 20th century, no two sub-cultures are anything alike. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Beat Generation, from the Southern Gothic to the Jazz Age - there are so many great and interesting sub-cultures to get your hands on that once you start reading these books, you really can't stop.

The rules for this list are simple - only one book per author is allowed and even though the books aren't really in any special order, I have put my personal favourite ones at 10-1.

It is such an important aspect of literature and I would like to share my 50 favourite American Novels with you right now.

50-41

50. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

49. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

48. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

47. The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West

46. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

45. Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs

44. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

43. The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

42. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

41. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

40-31

40. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

39. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

38. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

37. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

36. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

35. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

34. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

33. Misery by Stephen King

32. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

31. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

30-21

30. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

29. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

28. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

27. Beloved by Toni Morrison

26. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

25. The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck

24. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J Gaines

23. Native Son by Richard Wright

22. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

21. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

20-11

20. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

19. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

18. The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

17. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

15. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

14. Quicksand by Nella Larsen

13. The Cider House Rules by John Irving

12. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

11. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

10-1

10. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

9. The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

7. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

6. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

5. Just Above My Head by James Baldwin

4. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

3. Answered Prayers by Truman Capote

2. Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville

1. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner