Books by Women That Every Man Should Read

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Guardian, 23 Books

Chosen by Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Richard Curtis and more. The description on the website says:

Studies show men avoid female authors. Ahead of the Women’s prize for fiction, chair of judges Mary Ann Sieghart finds out why – and we ask male authors to redress the balance

This list was originally published in 2022 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
17152 We Had To Remove This Post Hanna Bervoets 2021 Dutch Dutch
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
1354 Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout 2008 American English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
2503 Homegoing Yaa Gyasi 2016 Ghanaian English
849 Regeneration Pat Barker 1991 British English
9073 Autumn Ali Smith 2016 British English
17152 Winter Ali Smith 2017 British English
17152 Spring Ali Smith 2019 British English
14985 Summer Ali Smith 2020 British English
17152 The Terrible Yrsa Daley-Ward 2018 British English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
2170 My Cousin Rachel Daphne du Maurier 1951 British English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
1235 Cheri Colette 1920 French French
3130 Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood 2003 Canadian English
741 The Goldfinch Donna Tartt 2013 American English
17152 The Last Widow Karin Slaughter 2019 American English
454 The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 1978 British English
1741 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 Sue Townsend 1982 British English
17152 My Phantoms Gwendoline Riley 2021 British English
17152 Singin’ Swingin’ And Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas Maya Angelou 1976 American English