Coming of Age

1

In Our Time

Ernest Hemingway

A collection of short stories and vignettes alternating between Nick Adams's experiences in Michigan and brief sketches from the war. Hemingway's first major work, which established his minimalist "iceberg theory" style.

United States 1925

2

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Herman Melville

Young Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have adventures along the Mississippi River, including witnessing a murder and searching for treasure. Twain's affectionate portrait of childhood on the frontier.

United States 1876

3

The Catcher in the Rye

Herman Melville

Sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield recounts the days following his expulsion from prep school, wandering New York City and railing against the "phoniness" of the adult world. One of the most controversial and widely read American novels.

United States 1951

4

Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Fifteen-year-old Kambili lives under the tyranny of her devout Catholic father in post-independence Nigeria. Her slow awakening to freedom and selfhood drives Adichie's debut novel, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Nigeria 2003

5

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

Two narratives unfold in parallel: a fifteen-year-old boy fleeing his father's Oedipal prophecy, and an elderly man who can talk to cats and make fish rain from the sky. A signature blend of the mundane and the metaphysical.

Japan 2002

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.

Japan 1987

7

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

Young Scout Finch watches her father, lawyer Atticus Finch, defend a Black man falsely accused of rape in Depression-era Alabama. Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut sold over 40 million copies and remains a staple of American school curricula.

United States 1960

8

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

The orphan Pip is lifted from poverty by a mysterious benefactor and discovers that wealth and status do not bring happiness. Dickens's most personal novel and one of his finest achievements in plotting and characterisation.

United Kingdom 1861