Molloy is one of the funniest works ever written. Philosophy, theology, and virtually any kind of structured thought is fair game for satire. Unstructured thought isn't let off the hook either. The word surface is superb - sentences sing, laugh, and shudder. 'Watt' is equally good.

There's nothing out there quite like his stories. Tightly controlled and abstract at times, bloodthirsty at others, once read many become unforgettable.

An imaginative romp, which stabs at the history from which it was born. Less easy to read than a superficial gloss might suggest. Behemoth, the black cat to end all black cats, steals the show.

Influenced by Faulkner, and with the exile's perceptive eye aimed at the heart of Australia, this book is, I think, Carey's masterpiece - the stylistic experiments succeed, the characters echo the empty fear of the continent, the legend is reshaped. With storytelling skills honed over decades, it's also a riproaring read.

A hostile vision of America, disguised by a narrator who is nominally little older than a child. Technically accomplished, and with a style inclined to the ineffectually poetic, this book stayed with me more than other of Doctorow's works, although 'Ragtime' is perhaps held in higher regard by critics.

In some ways an ugly, limited and frustrating book, 'Middlemarch' burns into one's memory with the horror of its insights into human motivation. Nestling under the tea cosy, within the silver teapot, is a stew of arsenic. Ostensibly about middling matters in an English country town, this book casts a scathing gaze upon the sexes, ambition, and human cowardice.

The prose is gorgeous, the settings decorated with wealth and lust, and the story engaging enough for the pages to turn of their own accord - but once done, the book screams at the injustice of society, and even suggests that America was founded upon criminality, if not in point of law then in spirit.

History enwrapped in a grotesque fable. The blinding force of Grass's imagination stands as antidote to the evil his tale recounts. Brave, hopeful, and political. 'The Flounder' is another favourite.

One of the supreme prose stylists of recent times. Excessive, outrageous, and hilarious. All his books are worth investigating, but this and 'The Blood Oranges' are compelling. The stories of Donald Barthelme might also appeal.

Johnson is a poet, and he writes prose that delights, startles, and leaves me awestruck. The emotional honesty is heart-rending. One of the best living writers.

There's a little nook in my brain which resembles the hamlet in Kafka's book - the phone calls, the furtive inhabitants, K's predicament. 'The Trial' and the stories (especially 'The Burrow') all are fantastic. Kafka read his work to his friends - he and they thought it wildly humorous. So do I, but this aspect is underplayed by most commentators.

Historical fiction, rendered at a human scale. The novel's intimacy is astonishing, given the breadth of its canvas. The prose is supple and rich. A highly lauded film version, by Visconti, exists, but the original book is incomparably more alive and exciting. Will the final image ever be forgotten by any reader?

A masterwork of Modernism. Here the narrator is the most seductive, and the most sinister, fact dancing with fiction in the most disturbing of circumstances. The prose is often beautiful, while the subject matter approaches the century's appalling depths.

One can't deny the power of Marquez' imagination. It's as if he has set the Bible in the middle of the jungle. A virtuoso with language, but not the most intimate of writers.

Critics like to say that this book is largely a cynical examination of middle-American culture...Um...It's about sex, isn't it? It's ghoulishly funny too. The prose, as with all of Nabokov, is magnificent, but neurotically perfected rather than wild and untamed. None of his books are conventional, and none easily comprehended.

Stupendously funny. O'Brien makes the absurd patently ridiculous. If you thought David Foster Wallace was good with footnotes, take a look at the master. If you like The Goons, Monty Python, and actually get tickled by Beckett, then this will have you in stitches.

Someone's turned five radios on at once. And seven televisions. And the riders of the Apocalypse are writing symbols in the sky. That's what reading this feels like. It's not exactly enjoyable. The words themselves are tortured, and the content ominously close to forbidding redemption, but as an entity 'Gravity's Rainbow' is remarkable (and scary).

A novel is a good way, most likely one of the best ways, to see what is going on inside another skull. Now Sartre was not the world's most likeable person, by all accounts, but his thought processes were and remain dazzling. Be warned that after being dazzled you might not feels so good - even a bit nauseous.

Sebald's novels, if you can call them that, evoke a tremendous spirit of sympathy. The narrative voice leaves you room to feel your own emotional responses, and guides you with hints as to its own. His experiments with form and structure are well judged. With Sebald you meet wonderful characters, and his own wonderful mind.

The new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky is stunning - their version of 'War and Peace' is said to be scheduled for release in 2007. 'Anna Karenina' more than lives up to its iconic status. Love as deception, not least of one's self, is contrasted with love as a powerful positive force, one that grapples with and enhances reality.