Birlinn are delighted to have two novels on the list – 100 Novels that Shaped our World, selected by BBC Radio 4 Front Row presenter and TLS editor Stig Abell, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, authors Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal and Alexander McCall Smith, and Bradford Festival Literary Director Syima Aslam. The two Birlinn novels are on the Polygon imprint – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and Mr Standfast by John Buchan.

Jan Rutherford accompanied Alexander McCall Smith down to London for the launch of the list at the British Library on 8 November. The announcement and discussion of the list – a list made up of personal choices which those involved hope will inspire discussion, reading and the sharing of stories – was streamed live to audiences in libraries right across the UK and on iPlayer. 

Want to know what’s on there? 

Identity

·       Beloved – Toni Morrison

·       Days Without End – Sebastian Barry

·       Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels

·       Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

·       Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

·       Small Island – Andrea Levy

·       The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

·       The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

·       Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

·       White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Love, Sex & Romance 

·       Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

·       Forever – Judy Blume

·       Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

·       Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

·       Riders – Jilly Cooper

·       Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

·       The Far Pavilions – M. M. Kaye

·       The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak

·       The Passion – Jeanette Winterson

·       The Slaves of Solitude – Patrick Hamilton

Adventure 

·       City of Bohane – Kevin Barry

·       Eye of the Needle – Ken Follett

·       For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

·       His Dark Materials Trilogy – Phillip Pullman

·       Ivanhoe – Walter Scott

·       Mr Standfast – John Buchan 

·       The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler

·       The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins 

·       The Jack Aubrey Novels – Patrick O’Brian

·       The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkein

Life, Death & Other Worlds 

·       A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

·       Astonishing the Gods – Ben Okri

·       Dune – Frank Herbert

·       Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

·       Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

·       The Chronicles of Narnia – C. S. Lewis

·       The Discworld Series – Terry Pratchett

·       The Earthsea Trilogy – Ursula K. Le Guin 

·       The Sandman Series – Neil Gaiman 

·       The Road – Cormac McCarthy

Politics, Power & Protest 

·       A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini 

·       Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

·       Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie

·       Lord of the Flies – William Golding

·       Noughts & Crosses – Malorie Blackman

·       Strumpet City – James Plunkett