Orange Prize for Fiction: 50 Essential Reads

This list comprizes books by contemporary authors which the Orange Prize for Fiction finds to be essential reading.

Books I have Read are highlighted in Blue; follow the links to reviews

1. A Prayer For Owen Meany – John Irving (read my review)
2. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
3. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
4. Atonement – Ian McEwan (read my review)
5. Being Dead – Jim Crace
6. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
7. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
8. Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
9. Disgrace – J. M. Coetzee  (read my review)
10. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
11. Faith Singer – Rosie Scott
12. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters (read my review)
13. Fred and Edie – Jill Dawson
14. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
15. Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
16. Grace Notes – Bernard MacLaverty
17. High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
18. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
19. Hotel World – Ali Smith
20. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides  (read my review)
21. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (read my review)
22. Misery – Stephen King
23. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow – Peter Hoeg
24. Money – Martin Amis
25. Music and Silence – Rose Tremain (read my review)
26. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
27. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
28. Riders – Jilly Cooper
29. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
30. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood (read my review)
31. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
32. The Golden Notebook – Doris M. Lessing
33. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (read my review)
34. The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende
35. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
36. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
37. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver (read my review)
38. The Rabbit Books – John Updike
39. Regeneration – Pat Barker (read my review)
40. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
41. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
42. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
43. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
44. The Women’s Room – Marilyn French
45. Tracy Beaker – Jacqueline Wilson
46. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
47. Unless – Carol Shields
48. What a Carve-Up – Jonathan Coe
49. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
50. White Teeth – Zadie Smith