17 Amazing Books Featured in the “Fahrenheit 451” Movie

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is a beloved and acclaimed novel that tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.

This classic novel follows Janie Crawford as she sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a black woman in the 1930s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Read the full review of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD.

Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel is a tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdoms. It centers on Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith.

Considered by some to be “the Great American novel,” this story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his powerful love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale that has been essential reading since it was published.

John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California.

THE COMPLETE STORIES brings together all of Franz Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death.

Richard Wright’s powerful novel about Bigger Thomas, a young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Fyofor Dostoyevsky’s revolutionary novel follows a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

In essays, images, and poetry, CITIZEN is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in contemporary society.

Iconic detective Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of millionaire Samuel Ratchett inside of his locked compartment on a moving train where every passenger is a suspect.

Kurt Vonnegut’s classic antiwar novel, which centers on the firebombing of Dredsen and Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time.

Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, futilely resists the devaluing of his traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

Toni Morrison audaciously transfigures the coming-of-age story as she follows Milkman Dead from his rust-belt city to the place of his family’s origins. SONG OF SOLOMON introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

The Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s is brought to life through the voices of five unforgettable characters. Among them is Ugwu, a houseboy who comes to his master a naive child and ends the novel a wary ex-soldier. As war drags on and the differences between Ugwu and the once-privileged family he serves shrink, their shared, raw humanity is all that remains.

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. Set against London’ s racial and cultural tapestry, WHITE TEETH revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—this is a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis, and stunning in the intensity of its prose.

Read the full review of PLAY IT AS IT LAYS.

Oscar Wilde’s only novel tells the story of a vain and wealthy young man who sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality; his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world.