A Roman emperor meditates about life, military triumphs, love, poetry, philosophy, music and his spiritual journey to transcendence.

José Saramago’s “The Stone Raft”

Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian”

Richard Ali’s “City of Memories”

Rick Deckard, a police department bounty hunter, is assigned to kill six androids of the highly intelligent and dangerous Nexus-6 model.

Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”

Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural, rents a big old house and invites other people as his guests to experience paranormal activity inside.

William Hope Hodgson’s “The House on the Borderland”

Steven A. LaChance’s “The Uninvited”

Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”

A composer fleeing an empty existence in New York City takes a journey to one of the few remaining areas in the world untouched by civilization: the upper reaches of a South American big river.

Alejo Carpentier’s “The Lost Steps”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World”

H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Quest of Iranon”

A disenchanted Russian housewife of the upper class runs off with her younger lover, amidst a 19th century society full of prejudice.

Fiodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Eternal Husband”

Ivan Turgenev’s “On the Eve”

Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”

The story of the seven generations of the Buendía family in their town Macondo until its destruction along with the family’s last descendant.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s “The War of the End of the World”

Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”

Alejo Carpentier’s “The Kingdom of This World”

A Muslim Indian, Aziz, has a friend, an English profesor, Cyril Fielding. A schoolteacher, Adela Quested, believes that Aziz has assaulted her and tensions arise between the Indian and the British.

E. M. Forster’s “A Passage to India”

George F. Atkinson’s “Curry and Rice”

The main female character rises from being poor and orphaned into a successful and independent woman.

Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”

Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers”

Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”

Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, arrives to a scientific research station in a planet to investigate the strange behavior of the scientists. The planet consists of a vast ocean that seems governed by a higher intelligence.

Ursula Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”

Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris”

In 18th century France, two aristocrats and former lovers embark in a series of plots to seduce virtuous women. The story unfolds in epistolary form.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s “Dangerous Liaisons”

Samuel Richardson’s “Clarissa”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Julie, or the New Heloise”

The story examines racism and rape in America’s Deep South through the eyes of an innocent but clever young girl, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and her father, Atticus Finch.

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”

Wendell Berry’s “The Hidden Wound”

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockinbird”

A soldier rises to power and wealth through corruption and exploitation in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.

Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits”

Miguel Ángel Asturias’s “Men of Maize”

Carlos Fuentes’s “The Death of Artemio Cruz”

The protagonist of this story wants to pursue a hedonistic way of life while keeping his physical beauty the same along time. Only his portrait shows the ravages of vice and evil.

Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

José Saramago’s “Manual of Painting and Calligraphy”

Henry James’s “The Lesson of the Master”

A team of astronauts is sent to investigate an alien starship that enters the Solar System. The huge cylindrical ship seems to be abandoned. The human explorers try to unlock its many misteries.

H. G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds”

Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation”

Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama”

How well read are you? Answer these 15 quiz questions

How well read are you? If you think you are a well read person, better try to pass this test. It may… prove you wrong. Whether you have tons of books or just trust your intuition for the right responses, this quiz is for you. Ready? Take a look at the plot summary and identify the novel’s title and author. Show everybody that universal literature (the good one) is no impossible task for you.