The series is set three centuries after a thermonuclear apocalypse, wherein the only known survivors of the human race live in a space colony consisting of spaceships joined together in orbit around the Earth and governed by The Chancellor, who leads its legislative council. Resources are so scarce that all crimes, no matter how small, are punishable by death, unless the perpetrator is under 18 years of age. If the western literary canon is founded on Homer, then it is founded on women’s silence. Barker’s extraordinary intervention, in which she replays the events of the Iliad from the point of view of the enslaved Trojan women, chimed with both the #MeToo movement and a wider drive to foreground suppressed voices. In a world still at war, it has chilling contemporary resonance. Before Sasha's funeral, Clarke reunites with her parents at Mount Weather. She reconciles with Wells but will not resume their past relationship because she is romantically involved with Bellamy. Rooney’s second novel, a love story between two clever and damaged young people coming of age in contemporary Ireland, confirmed her status as a literary superstar. Her focus is on the dislocation and uncertainty of millennial life, but her elegant prose has universal appeal. Chart-topping history of humanity … Yuval Noah Harari. Photograph: Olivier Middendorp 21 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), translated by Harari with John Purcell and Haim Watzman (2014)

An electrifying memoir that captured a moment in thinking about gender, and also changed the world of books. The story, told in fragments, is of Nelson’s pregnancy, which unfolds at the same time as her partner, the artist Harry Dodge, is beginning testosterone injections: “the summer of our changing bodies”. Strikingly honest, originally written, with a galaxy of intellectual reference points, it is essentially a love story; one that seems to make a new way of living possible. In his Olympian history of humanity, Harari documents the numerous revolutions Homo sapiens has undergone over the last 70,000 years: from new leaps in cognitive reasoning to agriculture, science and industry, the era of information and the possibilities of biotechnology. Harari’s scope may be too wide for some, but this engaging work topped the charts and made millions marvel. Martin Amis recalls his ‘velvet-suited, snakeskin-booted’ youth. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Getty Images 36 Experience by Martin Amis (2000) In the old days, I would go to movie theaters. Not so much anymore. Now, I mostly watch movies through some form of streaming or premium or on-demand access. So, I’m a little “late” on my movie comments. In the first book in her dystopian MaddAddam trilogy, the Booker winner speculates about the havoc science can wreak on the world. The big warning here – don’t trust corporations to run the planet – is blaring louder and louder as the century progresses.

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Wells' father is the Chancellor. Wells gets himself purposefully arrested to get sent to Earth with Clarke. Based on Beard’s lectures on women’s voices and how they have been silenced, Women and Power was an enormous publishing success in the “ #MeToo”’ year 2017. An exploration of misogyny, the origins of “gendered speech” in the classical era and the problems the male world has with strong women, this slim manifesto became an instant feminist classic. A thrilling, genre-bending tale of escape from slavery in the American deep south, this Pulitzer prize-winner combines extraordinary prose and uncomfortable truths. Two slaves flee their masters using the underground railroad, the network of abolitionists who helped slaves out of the south, wonderfully reimagined by Whitehead as a steampunk vision of a literal train.

The first instalment of Knausgaard’s relentlessly self-examining six-volume series My Struggle revolves around the life and death of his alcoholic father. Whether or not you regard him as the Proust of memoir, his compulsive honesty created a new benchmark for autofiction. I searched, and it seems this might be the list of 100 books. It at least includes the three books mentioned in the movie: The top 100 books of all time– Take a look at a list of the top 100 books of all time, nominated by writers from around the world, from Things Fall Apart to Mrs Dalloway, and from Pride and Prejudice to Don Quixote. Emerging from Solomon’s own painful experience, this “anatomy” of depression examines its many faces – plus its science, sociology and treatment. The book’s combination of honesty, scholarly rigour and poetry made it a benchmark in literary memoir and understanding of mental health. In this existential eco-thriller, a William Blake-obsessed eccentric investigates the murders of men and animals in a remote Polish village. More accessible and focused than Flights, the novel that won Tokarczuk the Man International Booker prize, it is no less profound in its examination of how atavistic male impulses, emboldened by the new rightwing politics of Europe, are endangering people, communities and nature itself. Read the review 83 Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (2016), translated by Luiselli with Lizzie Davis (2017)This book-length poem is a mesmerising tapestry of “the river’s mutterings”, based on three years of recording conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. From swimmers to sewage workers, boatbuilders to bailiffs, salmon fishers to ferryman, the voices are varied and vividly brought to life. Mantel had been publishing for a quarter century before the project that made her a phenomenon, set to be concluded with the third part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, next March. To read her story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell at the Tudor court, detailing the making of a new England and the self-creation of a new kind of man, is to step into the stream of her irresistibly authoritative present tense and find oneself looking out from behind her hero’s eyes. The surface details are sensuously, vividly immediate, the language as fresh as new paint; but her exploration of power, fate and fortune is also deeply considered and constantly in dialogue with our own era, as we are shaped and created by the past. In this book we have, as she intended, “a sense of history listening and talking to itself”.

Wells eventually realizes that there is something familiar about Bellamy and Octavia; ultimately, he discovers that their mother was Melinda Blake, the woman his father had loved before marrying Wells' mother for the sake of his career. This discovery leads Wells and Bellamy to realize that they are paternal half-brothers. Prior to the publication of the first book, television producer Jason Rothenberg became interested in adapting the story for the screen. The eponymous TV series adaptation premiered on March 19, 2014, on The CW Network, starring Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley as Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake, respectively. [5] Plot [ edit ] A boxed set of the four books of The 100. The 100 [ edit ] Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes in the 2005 film adaptation of The Constant Gardener. Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/AP 68 The Constant Gardener by John le Carré (2001) People who survived on Earth are known as Earthborns. They survived within Mount Weather and moved to the ground 50 years before the start of the series. Approximately a year ago, the Earthborns split into two groups. The people who survived within Mount Weather and the people who live on the ground are two distinct groups. The Mountain Men survived within Mount Weather but die when exposed to outside air. Grounders survived on the ground and are divided into at least 12 clans.Mary Beard, whose slim manifesto Women & Power became an instant feminist classic. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian 54 Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017) There are echoes of DH Lawrence and EM Forster in McEwan’s finely tuned dissection of memory and guilt. The fates of three young people are altered by a young girl’s lie at the close of a sweltering day on a country estate in 1935. Lifelong remorse, the horror of war and devastating twists are to follow in an elegant, deeply felt meditation on the power of love and art.

I recently read a list of summer reading assignments from top prep schools. Yep, The Old Man and the Sea was on one of the lists. A mesmerising tapestry of the River Dart’s mutterings … Alice Oswald. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian 60 Dart by Alice Oswald (2002) Read the review 3 Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (2013), translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)In space, the people of the Colony fight to get into their dropships as the space station's life support begins to fail; Clarke and Wells' friends, Glass and Luke, are among the people desperately trying to get to Earth. However, they find themselves at the mercy of Vice Chancellor Rhodes, who is willing to kill to get into one of the dropships.