An Alternate Ninety-Nine Novels
A selection of novels chosen by our guests on the Ninety-Nine Novels Podcast.
On 2 October 2024, the Burgess Foundation launched its fourth series of the podcast based on Anthony Burgess’s book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (details below). The podcast explores Anthony Burgess's choice of his favourite books from the twentieth century and aims to consider each novel on the list through conversation with writers and experts. In its first three series, the podcast has explored the lives of authors, revelled in the discovery of little-known literary gems, found new ways to read classic novels, and gained a better understanding of Burgess's own influences and preoccupations.
Burgess’s list is a highly personal selection of books and, in his introduction to Ninety-Nine Novels, he sets out the criteria that influenced his choices. He writes that, 'all the novelists listed here have added something to our knowledge of the human condition (sleeping or waking), have managed language well, have clarified the motivations of action, and have sometimes expanded the bounds of imagination. And they entertain, or divert, which means to turn our faces away from the repetitive patterns of daily life and look at humanity and the world with a new interest and even joy.'
Burgess also demands his list be considered, explored, discussed and disagreed with: 'If you disagree violently with some of my choices I shall be pleased. We arrive at values only through dialectic.' He also invites the reader to 'decide on his own hundredth. He may even choose one of my own novels'. Taking our lead from this invitation, we ask each of our guests which novel they would add to Burgess's selection in the hope of creating an alternate, and updated, list of ninety-nine novels that are worth reading. Our guests can choose any novel, as long as it is not already on the original list.
Here is a selection of ten novels, chosen by our guests, in order of publication. Click the orange text for a link to the relevant episode. More of our guests’ selections can be found in the full episodes of Ninety-Nine Novels, and we will be adding more throughout the new series.
Ninety-Nine Novels: Ten Alternate Choices
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (1939), chosen by David Morrell
A British hunter decides to assassinate a European dictator. He is foiled by enemy agents, who plan to torture and execute him. When they bungle the job, the would-be assassin escapes and becomes prey, and has to shed the trappings of civilisation to survive. David Morrell says: ‘When I was trying to be a writer, learning to be a writer, I was writing very bad academic novels. I was lent a copy of Rogue Male. I read it and I said, you mean you're allowed to write this way? And that changed my life.’
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns (1954), chosen by Avril Horner
A quaint English village undergoes a series of calamities: first the river bursts its banks, then the miller drowns himself and the butcher slits his own throat, and finally a virus ravages the community, sparking hysteria and changing the inhabitants forever. Avril Horner says: ‘It’s a sort of Grand Guignol novel. It's dark and tragic, but also has very blackly comic moments. But also, of course, it asks, where is God?’
Venetia by Georgette Heyer (1958), chosen by Kim Sherwood
A Regency-set romance, in which Venetia Lanyon, a young woman who leads a peaceful, unadventurous life on her father’s country estate, falls for the rakish Lord Damerel, a man whose way of life has scandalised the buttoned-up Yorkshire community. Kim Sherwood says: ‘Heyer wrote very witty, very funny historical romances. She kind of invented the Regency romance in its twentieth century iteration.’
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958), chosen by Tim Kendall
A young boy is sent to live with his uncle in a flat that was once part of a grand estate. When a grandfather clock strikes thirteen, Tom is transported back in time to when the house was in its prime and had a large garden. In this Victorian idyll, he begins a friendship with a child called Hatty. Tim Kendall says: ‘It seems to me to be not just the perfect children's novel, but it stands in comparison with the very best adult fiction that was written at the time.’
Ice by Anna Kavan (1967), chosen by David Ian Paddy
A nuclear war has devastated the Earth and caused a mass of ice to slowly consume the land. In this precarious reality, a man pursues a mysterious silver-haired girl even as he is coming to terms with his deteriorating world. David Ian Paddy says: ‘It's one of those books that's an act of supreme imagination. It's a novel about obsession, a novel about a strange way of re-seeing the world.’
A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1967), chosen by Barbara Cooke
Set during Kenya’s independence from colonial rule, a village attempts to come to terms with the betrayal of a beloved freedom fighter by one of their own during the Mau Mau Rebellion. Barbara Goode says: ‘It's very important, politically, and it's a real landmark text of English language writing in Africa.’
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970), chosen by Alison Arant and Sterling L Bland Jr.
A young black foster child prays for the blue eyes of her privileged white schoolmates so she can be seen as beautiful, as her violent and abusive family history threatens her present. Alison Arant says: ‘In my own thinking through questions of race, it's been a profound book.’ Sterling L Bland Jr. says: ‘I think it's a powerful book in terms of how it speaks to the kind of issues that Burgess himself raised when he was putting together his thoughts about “The Novel,” what a novel should be, what a novel should do.’
Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney (1975), chosen by Simon Malpas
In this dystopian vision of the American counterculture, a character known only as The Kid visits Bellona, a fictional city in the middle of the United States, which is isolated from the rest of the country and where criminal gangs wander the streets. Simon Malpas says: ‘It's a very, very experimental novel. It's a very, very complex, challenging, very funny, but very bleak and disturbing novel.’
Black and Blue by Ian Rankin (1997), chosen by Tom Williams
DI John Rebus is on the hunt for a murderer he suspects of being the infamous serial killer Bible John. Meanwhile he is the subject of an internal investigation and being hounded by television journalists who believe he has performed a miscarriage of justice. Tom Williams says: ‘It's a really extraordinary crime novel and Rankin really is a master of the form.’
A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar (2014), chosen by Glyn Morgan
In an alternate world, the Nazi Party has failed to gain power and their former leader has fled to London where he has set himself up as a private detective and taken the name Wolf. Meanwhile, a German prisoner is distracting himself with fantastical dreams. Glyn Morgan says: ‘It’s a really imaginative, really powerful and visceral novel that also has something really meaningful to say about our changing relationship with fascism, right-wing politics, and isolationism.’
Find out more
The first episode of Ninety-Nine Novels series four is on Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov’s unique and puzzling 1962 novel. Our special guest for this episode is Brian Boyd, the leading expert in Nabokov’s life and work, who has written extensively about Pale Fire.
You can find it wherever you prefer to get your podcasts or you can stream below:
Anthony Burgess would never use 'alternate' in this sense: it just jars. Please use 'alternative'!