Nathaniel Rich

In a blistering satire wherein segregation is reintroduced in a small California town, novelist Paul Beatty takes aim at just about everyone in America.

Mary Gaitskill’s novel about a stunning and cruel supermodel would be unrecognizable to the cookie-baking hyper-friendly #girlsquads of today.

<p>In <i>Independence Day</i>, the Everyman hero of of Richard Ford’s series glides along as his own revolution is surrendered.</p>

A critical hit when it was published, this novel of a toxic America full of people poisoned by reality has achieved the status of unquestioned literary classic.

<p>Edward Abbey’s madcap <i>Monkey Wrench Gang</i> inspired the likes of Earth First!—and the incoherent motives of both radical groups led to pretty much nothing.</p>

<p>Well before he’d even touched LSD, the novelist /pharmaceutical visionary saw the potential of mind control for fun and profit in the <i>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch</i>.</p>

<p>In <i>Lolita</i>, Vladimir Nabokov wrote a love letter to the English language, skewered ’50s America, and created a pedophile protagonist who was both loathsome and likeable.</p>

Long before he wrote the gritty Harlem crime novels that would secure his reputation, the take-no-prisoners author crafted a debut novel so dark it still unsettles.

<p>Alicensed pilot himself, Faulkner tackled the bizarre subculture of daredevil fliers in <i>Pylon</i>, a novel permeated with the Depression’s desperate neuroticism.</p>

The 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a massive hit—everybody from the Prince of Wales to William Faulkner loved it—and personifies the Jazz Age.