The best novels to challenge hardcore readers

Stephen Downes Author Of The Hands of Pianists
By Stephen Downes

Who am I?

I’ve always loved challenging books. They work your brain and confront your ideas. They’re written in a foreign tongue that somehow or other we understand. In my 2019 PhD, I examined how W. G. Sebald used nostalgia and the uncanny in his four great prose fictions to create their uniqueness. My own The Hands of Pianists is greatly influenced by Sebaldian techniques. It received a rave review from arguably Australia’s best literary critic Peter Craven. Five of my short stories have been longlisted and shortlisted in recent UK competitions. Last Meal won the UK’s 2020 Fiction Factory prize. A few of my food-themed non-fiction books have won Australian and international awards. 

I wrote...

The Hands of Pianists

By Stephen Downes

Book cover of The Hands of Pianists

What is my book about?

In The Hands of Pianists, a neurotic freelance writer aims to prove that pianos kill elite pianists. For decades, he has grappled with the guilt that followed an accident in which he severed his talented sister’s fingers. A concert pianist, she had a promising career ahead of her. After the accident, she committed suicide. Her brother, the novel’s narrator, investigates the violent deaths at 31 of three great pianists, his detective work taking him from Melbourne to Geelong, Sydney, the south of France, London, Sussex, and the Czech Republic. Top Australian literary critic Peter Craven says The Hands of Pianists is as good as W. G. Sebald’s four great prose fictions. It’s a ‘compelling literary novel’ by a ‘born artist’.

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

The Books I Picked & Why

The Rings of Saturn

By W.G. Sebald, Michael Hulse

Book cover of The Rings of Saturn

Why this book?

What makes a great novel? One that will be read forever? Top critics and commentators such as Harold Bloom and Nicholas Royle say the greatest fiction is written in a foreign language that somehow or other we understand. It is strange, unusual, uncanny, yet tells us profound truths about the human condition. The Rings of Saturn did even more for me; I thought it was miraculous. On the face of it, the narrator simply hikes through East Anglia. But he blends reportage, history, philosophy, mental ruminations, and much else in a melancholic commentary on life. Even translated from German, Sebald’s writing is mesmeric. Rings is a text that shapes your thinking in new ways. Sebald and his four peculiar ‘prose fictions’ would surely have won a Nobel prize had he not died in a car accident in 2001.

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

The Green Child

By Herbert Read

Book cover of The Green Child

Why this book?

First published in 1935, The Green Child is among the strangest books you’ll ever read. It enchanted me, forcing me to believe that Olivero, a South American dictator, could fake his own assassination, return to his roots in England, and save a speechless translucent creature, the Green Child, from her sadistic husband. I revelled in the exquisite writing – Sir Herbert Read was a renowned stylist who penned the classic English Prose Style -- and the improbable’s being made real. At one time Norton Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard, Read called his novel a philosophical myth to which ‘all types of Fantasy should conform’. It was his only long fiction. One reviewer called it an ‘organic fusion of thought and imagination into a crystalline beauty’.

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

The Loser

By Thomas Bernhard

Book cover of The Loser

Why this book?

Another crazy narrative, The Loser is 169 pages devoid of chapters and paragraphs. Its narrator explains how he and his friend Wertheimer got to study with the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. But they become so overwhelmed by his talent, so smitten, that the narrator gives up any attempts to become a concert pianist. Wertheimer commits suicide. Let yourself be hypnotised by this novel’s strange repetitions, its relentless tone, its odd philosophising, and unusual reportage. Bernhard, an Austrian who died in 1989, studied music then became a poet, playwright, and novelist. His fictions won Germany’s three most prestigious literary prizes, and many commentators believe they form among the 20th-century’s most important bodies of literature. 

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

Mrs. Dalloway

By Virginia Woolf

Book cover of Mrs. Dalloway

Why this book?

No great events, nothing unusual happens in Mrs. Dalloway’s 140-odd pages. It took my breath away, though, because of Virginia Woolf’s microscopic examination of her main characters’ personalities through their own thoughts. You reach a point where it’s hard to believe the writer knows so much about them, knows how their minds work. And all this takes place in a single day in central London. Clarissa Dalloway, wife of an MP, is putting on a dinner party that night and she needs flowers. What a ridiculously creaky springboard from which to launch one of the world’s greatest novels! But it works, rewarding the persistent, avid reader. First published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway will be read forever.

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

Moby-Dick

By Herman Melville

Book cover of Moby-Dick

Why this book?

A long book, Moby-Dick tells you all you need to know about 19th-century American whaling, detailing scrimshawing, how to measure a whale’s skeleton, and the intricacies of whales’ tails. But the novel is also about the men who go after Leviathan, in particular, Captain Ahab, and the tragedies that often befall them. What makes the novel so strange is its sustained allegorical character. The White Whale – Moby Dick – may represent evil, and Captain Ahab’s chase after it the grapple between good and evil. You might think it means something else – up to you. And only in the last 40 or so of nearly 500 pages do we witness this duel from ringside seats. It’s a breathtaking book, one of the greatest and the strangest.

When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.

Closely Related Book Lists

The best books that make our pandemic look mild

Pamela Bedore Author Of Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature Pamela Bedore

The best fiction books incorporating dreams

Matt Watters Author Of Dream Phaze - Germination Matt Watters

The best books of Nordic horror guaranteed to get rid of “hygge”

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir Author Of I Remember You: A Ghost Story Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

The best classic books that expose the cruelty of society

Robin Friedman Author Of Nothing Robin Friedman

Distantly Related Book Lists

The best travel books from the golden age of globetrotting

Roff Smith Author Of Cold Beer and Crocodiles: A Bicycle Journey into Australia Roff Smith

The best books whose dystopian visions were eerily prescient

Paul Haddad Author Of Aramid Paul Haddad

The best science fiction books in aesthetic universes

Ethan Marek Author Of Tolerance Book One Ethan Marek

The best books of spiritual ecological thought

Leah Naomi Green Author Of The More Extravagant Feast: Poems Leah Naomi Green