The 100 best moderately difficult books about deception and secrets

No. 11 on this list. The Importance of Being Earnest · Oscar Wilde · 1893

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Ranked by literary regard among eligible works in the current catalogue. This position reflects the available catalogue evidence.

No. 12 on this list. The Threepenny Opera · Bertolt Brecht · 1928

Die Dreigroschenoper premiered in Berlin on August 28, 1928, and became one of the most performed plays of the 20th century, with productions on every inhabited continent. It is core curriculum in theatre studies, German literature, European modernism, and political theory courses worldwide. No syllabus data appears in the database, but the play's canonical standing is among the highest in 20th-century drama.

No. 13 on this list. Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family · Thomas Mann

A Nobel-winning author's first novel, taught widely in German and world literature courses as the model family chronicle.

No. 14 on this list. The Wild Duck · Henrik Ibsen · 1884

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

The Wild Duck is a cornerstone of the Western dramatic canon, taught in virtually every university drama program and included in all standard collections of world theater. Though the database returns no syllabus count, Ibsen is the most taught non-English-language playwright in English-speaking universities, and this play—alongside Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House—appears on every major drama syllabus. It is consistently ranked among Ibsen's finest works and among the ten most important plays of the nineteenth century.

No. 15 on this list. The Imaginary Invalid · Molière · 1673

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Argan sits in his Paris bedroom tallying his apothecary bills, convinced he is dying. He is not dying. His maid Toinette knows it, his brother Béralde knows it, and his daughter Angélique suspects it — but Argan has organized his entire life around his imaginary ailments, and he intends to marry Angélique to a young doctor so the household will have a physician on permanent call. Written in 1673 as Molière's last play — he collapsed onstage performing Argan and died that same evening — The Imaginary Invalid is a comedy that turns on a simple, merciless observation: some people prefer their illness to their health because sickness grants power. Toinette disguises herself as a famous doctor and solemnly recommends removing one of Argan's arms and an eye, just to see if he will agree. He almost does. The play's third interlude culminates in a mock-Latin medical ceremony, all chanted gibberish, that confers a doctorate on Argan himself — the perfect solution. Molière's doctors speak in learned nonsense and kill more patients than they cure, and the comedy lies not in caricature but in recognition: the gap between institutional authority and actual competence was as visible in 1673 as it is now. Reading it is to watch a master work at full pitch, knowing he was out of time.

No. 16 on this list. Samson Agonistes · John Milton · 1671

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Samson Agonistes is required reading in virtually every English Renaissance and early modern literature course at the university level, paired with Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained as the triad of Milton's major late works. It appears on countless syllabi and is included in every major anthology of English literature. While less universally taught than Paradise Lost, it holds a firm place in the upper tier of the seventeenth-century canon.

No. 17 on this list. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde · Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), OCR GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

One of the most widely taught Victorian texts in English literature curricula at every level, from secondary school to university. The phrase 'Jekyll and Hyde' has entered common English as a synonym for dual personality. The novella appears on virtually every list of essential 19th-century fiction and is a fixture in Gothic literature, Victorian studies, and psychology-and-literature courses worldwide.

No. 18 on this list. Call to Arms · Lu Xun · 1923

Lu Xun compressed the anguish of a civilization in crisis into stories so concentrated they read like detonations — a madman who discovers that Confucian morality is a euphemism for cannibalism, a revolutionary beheaded while the crowd scrambles for bread dipped in his blood. These stories broke Chinese fiction free from classical convention and became the foundational texts of modern Chinese literature.

No. 19 on this list. Go Down, Moses · William Faulkner · 1942

Go Down, Moses is recognized as central to American modernism and Southern gothic literature. It appears consistently in university curricula and major literary anthologies. While not achieving the absolute canonical singularity of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!, it commands secure canonical standing within American letters.

No. 20 on this list. The Iceman Cometh · Eugene O'Neill · 1946

The Iceman Cometh appears in the Open Syllabus Top 500 Literature list and holds Library of America and NYRB Classics editions — markers of canonical permanence in American letters. It is taught in virtually every American drama survey and appears on most 'great American plays' lists alongside Long Day's Journey into Night. Wikipedia carries the play in only 5 languages, reflecting the global reach of drama (versus fiction) rather than lesser standing; within American literary culture, The Iceman Cometh is firmly canonical.

No. 21 on this list. Philoctetes · Sophocles · c. 409 BCE

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Philoctetes is a fixture in university courses on Greek drama and classical literature worldwide, taught alongside the other surviving Sophoclean tragedies. While it receives less classroom attention than Oedipus Rex or Antigone, it is consistently included in surveys of ancient Greek theater and world literature curricula. Its place in the Western canon is secure, grounded in its 2,400-year history of continuous scholarly attention.

No. 22 on this list. Martin Chuzzlewit · Charles Dickens · 1844

Martin Chuzzlewit holds a secure but second-tier position in the Dickens canon, taught regularly in Victorian literature courses and included on most serious Dickens reading lists, though it receives less classroom attention than Bleak House, Great Expectations, or David Copperfield. Dickens himself considered it his best work up to that point. The novel is available in numerous editions including Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics, and its key characters—Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp—remain cultural reference points.

No. 23 on this list. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories · Ryūnosuke Akutagawa · 1915

Akutagawa is central to the Japanese literary canon and his stories are among the most widely read works of Japanese literature internationally, amplified by Kurosawa's adaptations.

No. 24 on this list. Britannicus · Jean Racine · 1669

Rome, 55 AD. Nero has been emperor for three years, and his mother Agrippine is beginning to suspect she has lost control of the monster she made. At the center of the court's intrigues stands Britannicus — Claudius's son, the throne's legitimate heir, and Nero's stepbrother — in love with Junie, whom Nero has just abducted and wants for himself. Racine compresses an entire education in tyranny into five acts and a single palace room. We watch Nero not as a tyrant already formed, but in the exact hours he chooses to become one: forcing Junie to reject Britannicus to his face while Nero watches from the shadows, reconciling with his mother with a warmth that masks a murder already decided. The verse is Alexandrine — formal, interlocked, each line balanced against the next — and the effect is of a world where every word is weighed because words are the only weapons left. Britannicus is a study in how power corrupts through small surrenders rather than single dramatic breaks. By the final scene, Nero has poisoned his rival at a feast, and Racine's epilogue tells us what history confirms: this was only the beginning.

No. 25 on this list. The Inspector General · Nikolai Gogol · 1836

The Inspector General is a cornerstone of Russian dramatic literature and world theatre, widely taught in university courses on Russian literature, European drama, and satirical fiction globally. Though the database shows no syllabus records, the play's near-200-year presence in academic curricula — alongside its adaptation into opera, film, and stage productions across dozens of countries — confirms its canonical position. It appears in Wikipedia editions across 50+ languages.

No. 26 on this list. Herzog · Saul Bellow · 1965

The great American novel of intellectual crisis. Moses Herzog's unsent letters, his failed marriages, his Jewish learning put to life's test—Bellow captured the American intellectual in extremis.

No. 27 on this list. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold · John le Carré · 1963

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the classic Cold War espionage novel, chosen for TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels list and set in courses on the spy novel and postwar British fiction. It is a fixture of best-crime and best-thriller lists.

No. 28 on this list. Voices from Chernobyl · Svetlana Alexievich · 1997

Widely recognized as the definitive literary account of Chernobyl and a landmark of documentary literature. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature elevated its status, establishing Alexievich's polyphonic method as a major formal innovation. Required reading in post-Soviet studies and increasingly taught in world literature curricula. Its documentary approach has influenced contemporary non-fiction globally.

No. 29 on this list. The Mystery of Edwin Drood · Charles Dickens · 1870

The Mystery of Edwin Drood appears regularly on Victorian literature and Dickens course syllabi at universities worldwide, taught both as a late Dickens text and as a unique object — a canonical novel frozen in its own incompletion. The unfinished mystery has been a pedagogical touchstone for discussions of narrative, authorship, and closure since Dickens's death. Its Wikipedia article exists in over 40 languages and includes dedicated sections on adaptations and reception, indicating significant global cultural reach beyond English-language scholarship.

No. 30 on this list. A Grain of Wheat · Ngugi wa Thiong'o · 1967

Included in: Heinemann African Writers Series

Major postcolonial novel; widely taught in African and world literature.