11 Essential Books Overlooked by the Literary Canon

Over the past century, there have been countless attempts to assemble a definitive list of essential literature. In recent decades, however, the very idea of a literary canon has become a source of sustained debate, shaped by its historical tendency to be racist, sexist and otherwise exclusionary. A glance at many of these roundups still reveals a striking sameness: overwhelmingly white and male.

That is not to suggest that Joyce, Homer and Dostoyevsky are not foundational reads for literary devotees. Rather, a truly committed reader would do well to recognize that many extraordinary books exist as overlooked peers to the greatest works humanity has produced. With that in mind, what follows is a selection of classics, old and new, that deserve a place in any honest literary canon.

The best books the literary canon missed

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin
• In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• Inferno by August Strindberg
• My Work by Olga Ravn
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
• Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
• Hopsotch by Julio Cortázar
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s vision of a hyper-misogynist dystopia became an instant classic upon its release in 1985, but over the past decade, it has only grown more culturally urgent, securing its place in the broader imagination. Today, the cloak and veil worn by the women of Gilead have become potent political symbols far beyond the page. I’m not the first to argue that The Handmaid’s Tale deserves a place in the canon. While it has faced frequent bans, those efforts have only reinforced its relevance and underscored its importance.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Few works of art confront the brutality of slavery with the imaginative force of Colson Whitehead’s 2016 breakout novel, which transforms the metaphor of the Underground Railroad into a literal subterranean train system beneath the southern United States. Its story of a young woman’s flight from enslavement transcends historical specificity, offering a timeless meditation on freedom, memory and the human dignity owed to all.

The Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin

I suspect that in a survey of contemporary authors, a significant percentage would cite Anaïs Nin’s sprawling diary collection as a foundational influence. Begun at the age of 11 and maintained until her death at 73, it remains one of the most sustained and intimate explorations of a single human psyche ever committed to the page. Across nine volumes, Nin charts a life of artistic emergence, erotic experimentation and emotional introspection—helping to precipitate the confessional mode so prevalent in contemporary writing. While the entire series is worth reading, the first volume stands out for its account of Nin’s relationship with kindred spirit Henry Miller and her early evolution as a writer.

In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish

Few writers in history have captured the unspoken pains and quiet joys of being human as precisely as the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his late-life masterpiece In the Presence of Absence. Through a singular fusion of poetry, memoir and essay, Darwish reflects—within just 200 pages—on art, life, death, Palestine, travel, love and the intimate architecture of memory and community. The result is a luminous meditation that feels both timeless and deeply rooted in its political and personal moment. It is unlike any other work of literature, and stands as both a lasting poetic testament and an essential statement of its time.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Last year, South Korean author Han Kang received the Nobel Prize in literature. The novel that first propelled her into the international spotlight, The Vegetarian, was published in English in 2016. Its premise is deceptively simple: a young woman, haunted by dreams of blood and violence, decides to stop eating meat. What unfolds as her husband and family attempt to intervene reveals a cascade of shocking behaviors and long-buried secrets—raising urgent questions about patriarchy, brutality and the boundaries of sanity.

Inferno by August Strindberg

The great, unhinged Swedish playwright August Strindberg may be best known for his play Miss Julie, but his most enduring contribution may well be his autobiographical novel Inferno. During the final decade of the 19th century, Strindberg was in the midst of a psychological collapse, and the book documents his unraveling in unsparing detail. He mistreats his wife and family, grows increasingly hostile toward companions such as Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch, and quite literally burns his hands while attempting to alchemize gold through black magic. This profoundly disagreeable temperament makes for compulsively readable prose, and Inferno went on to become a foundational text for generations of misanthropic novelists who followed.

My Work by Olga Ravn

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Olga Ravn’s My Work is one of the defining texts of the 2020s. A deliberately chaotic amalgam of fictional prose, memoir, newspaper clippings, letters and fragments, it captures with uncanny precision the fraught balancing act of being a new mother, a frustrated spouse and a working professional in our contemporary doomscrolling stressscape. Published in 2023, it’s a book people will look back on as emblematic of this era.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

An untrained reader might question whether the great gonzo writer’s famously drug-fueled novel belongs in the literary canon—but its impact is indisputable. Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 fever dream Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas didn’t just chronicle the unraveling of the American Dream; it invented a new kind of experience-forward journalism that still shapes media today. And on the sentence level, the book delivers prose as electrifying and exacting as anything written by Thompson’s idols Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Shahnameh by Ferdowsi

A thousand years old, Shahnameh—or The Book of Kings—was composed by the Persian poet Ferdowsi and is widely considered the national epic of Iran as well as several other cultures across the region. A sprawling work of over 50,000 couplets, the poem weaves together mythology and historiography rooted in the ancient Persian Samanid Empire. Its cultural and linguistic impact across the Middle East has been profound, preserving Persian language and identity through centuries of upheaval. Its influence extended far beyond the region: Goethe, among others, cited it as a seminal work of world literature.

Hopsotch by Julio Cortázar

I’ve interviewed dozens of writers about their influences, and among the avant-garde, Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar’s 1963 literary labyrinth Hopscotch is almost always the first name mentioned. A stream-of-consciousness chronicle of a bohemian’s unraveling—plot summaries are beside the point, and nearly impossible anyway—Hopscotch invites the reader to approach it in one of three ways: sequentially from chapter 1 to 56, by “hopscotching” through a sequence suggested by the author, or entirely at random. There truly is no novel like it, and its impact on experimental fiction has been enormous.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

Few books announce their brilliance as unmistakably as Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World, a work concerned, fittingly, with genius itself—specifically the minds that split the atom and set in motion the creation of the atomic bomb. Through a remarkable fusion of historical narrative and fictional speculation, Labatut raises unsettling questions about the consequences of our relentless pursuit of scientific discovery, and whether the very impulse to understand might ultimately be our undoing.