Love Stories Across the World

1

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

A married aristocrat's passionate affair with Count Vronsky unfolds against the backdrop of Russian high society, while a parallel plot follows Levin's search for meaning in rural life. Tolstoy considered it his first true novel.

1878 Russia

2

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

A provincial doctor's wife, bored with her dull marriage, pursues romantic fantasies through adultery and extravagant spending, spiralling toward ruin. Flaubert was tried for obscenity upon publication; the novel is now seen as the masterpiece of literary realism.

1857 France

3

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

The witty Elizabeth Bennet navigates society's expectations of marriage while sparring with the proud Mr. Darcy. Austen's most popular novel combines romantic comedy with sharp social satire of rural English life.

1813 United Kingdom

4

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

The foundling Heathcliff's consuming passion for Cathy and his vengeance on those who separated them spans two generations in the wild Yorkshire moors. Emily Brontë's only novel is considered a unique achievement in English Romantic fiction.

1847 United Kingdom

5

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez

Florentino Ariza waits fifty-one years, nine months, and four days for Fermina Daza to be widowed so he can renew his declaration of love. García Márquez's most romantic novel, set in an unnamed Caribbean port city.

1985 Colombia

6

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami

Toru Watanabe recalls his student years in Tokyo during the late 1960s and his relationships with two very different women against a backdrop of student radicalism and personal loss. Murakami's most realistic and most commercially successful novel.

1987 Japan

7

Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata

A wealthy dilettante from Tokyo travels repeatedly to a remote hot-spring resort in the mountains of northwest Japan and falls into a relationship with a geisha. Kawabata's spare, haiku-like prose captures beauty and transience.

1948 Japan

8

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende

Four generations of the Trueba family in an unnamed South American country, from the early 20th century through a coup modelled on Pinochet's 1973 takeover of Chile. Allende began the novel as a letter to her dying grandfather.

1982 Chile

9

Jane Eyre

Emily Brontë

Orphan Jane Eyre works as a governess at Thornfield Hall, falls in love with its brooding owner Mr. Rochester, and discovers his terrible secret. Charlotte Brontë's debut novel was a landmark in the development of the literary protagonist with an inner life.

1847 United Kingdom

10

Giovanni's Room

Toni Morrison

An American in Paris falls into a passionate relationship with an Italian barman, Giovanni, while his American fiancée is traveling in Spain. Baldwin's second novel was groundbreaking in its frank portrayal of homosexual desire.

1956 United States