The 100 best easy books about freedom and justice

No. 11 on this list. Henry VIII · William Shakespeare · 1613

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Henry VIII is part of the Shakespeare First Folio and is taught in Shakespeare survey courses worldwide, though it occupies the lower tier of the canon compared to the major tragedies and histories. The play's disputed authorship — widely attributed to Shakespeare and John Fletcher in collaboration — has generated sustained academic interest. It does not appear on syllabi as consistently as Hamlet, Macbeth, or Richard II, but it remains firmly within the Shakespearean corpus that all serious literary study engages.

No. 12 on this list. The City and the Dogs · Mario Vargas Llosa · 1963

Recognized as one of the founding novels of the Latin American boom and a landmark of Peruvian literature.

No. 13 on this list. Arrowsmith · Sinclair Lewis · 1925

Martin Arrowsmith, an idealistic young doctor, struggles to maintain his scientific integrity as he moves from small-town practice to research laboratories to public health work. At every turn, commercialism, politics, and human weakness threaten to corrupt his quest for truth. Lewis's novel about the conflict between pure science and institutional pressure won the Pulitzer Prize (which he famously declined).

No. 14 on this list. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry · Mildred D. Taylor · 1976

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level Literature in English (2065)

Newbery Medal winner and a cornerstone of Black children's literature. Widely taught and frequently appears on essential reading lists.

No. 15 on this list. The Last Day of a Condemned Man · Victor Hugo · 1829

A staple of French literature and widely read in translation, it is a key text in debates on the death penalty. It is less taught than Hugo's Les Misérables.

No. 16 on this list. Memed, My Hawk · Yasar Kemal · 1955

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

The foundational novel of modern Turkish literature's international reputation. Widely translated and studied as a masterpiece of Turkish fiction.

No. 17 on this list. Deep Rivers · José María Arguedas · 1958

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

The central work of indigenist literature in Latin America and a cornerstone of Peruvian fiction.

No. 18 on this list. Adam Bede · George Eliot · 1859

Adam Bede appears regularly on Victorian literature and 19th-century British fiction syllabi at universities worldwide, and is the standard entry point to George Eliot's work in courses that cannot assign the longer Middlemarch. It is included in most survey courses of the Victorian novel. Its canonical status within the Eliot corpus is secondary only to Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, but within the broader Victorian canon it holds a secure if not dominant position — consistently anthologized, consistently in print, and consistently cited as a foundational work of Victorian realism.

No. 19 on this list. Julie, or the New Heloise · Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1761

The most important French novel before the 19th century and a founding text of Romanticism. Less read today than it deserves, partly due to its length and didactic passages.

No. 20 on this list. The Book of Three · Lloyd Alexander · 1964

Newbery Medal winner (for The High King). The Chronicles of Prydain are a cornerstone of children's fantasy.

No. 21 on this list. Monster · Walter Dean Myers · 1999

Steve Harmon is sixteen years old and on trial for felony murder. He may have acted as a lookout for a Harlem drugstore robbery that left the owner dead — or he may not have. The question hangs over Walter Dean Myers's 1999 novel, which Steve narrates in the only form that makes sense to him: a screenplay. He writes himself as the protagonist, titles the film Monster — the word the prosecutor used to describe him — and cuts between courtroom scenes and flashback journal entries while his mother cries in the gallery and his lawyer calculates the odds. The form is not a gimmick. A screenplay externalizes action and dialogue while burying interiority in stage directions, and that gap is exactly where Myers puts the book's central problem: we watch Steve perform innocence without ever being certain whether we are watching performance or truth. The trial exposes Harlem's carceral machinery — the way young Black men get classified, processed, and destroyed — but Monster refuses to let that machinery fully explain Steve. He asks, on the last page, who he is. Myers doesn't answer. Readers will spend time after the last page deciding whether that's evasion or honesty, and what it says about how they read a defendant's face.

No. 22 on this list. The House of the Seven Gables · Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851

A major work of the American Renaissance, widely taught alongside The Scarlet Letter though less frequently read outside academic settings.

No. 23 on this list. Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon · Jorge Amado · 1958

Gabriela is among the defining works of Brazilian literature and appears regularly on Latin American literature syllabi worldwide. It established Jorge Amado's international reputation and is one of the most-translated Brazilian novels ever published. While not as universally taught as García Márquez, it occupies a secure place in world literature curricula.

No. 24 on this list. The Rape of Lucrece · William Shakespeare · 1594

A significant early Shakespeare poem, increasingly studied for its treatment of sexual violence and consent.

No. 25 on this list. And Then There Were None · Agatha Christie · 1939

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

Christie's most celebrated novel holds a dominant place in the mystery canon and is widely recognized as the best-selling mystery of all time. It appears on virtually every 'greatest mysteries ever written' list — TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels, the BBC's Big Read — and is frequently taught in genre fiction courses. Its canonical standing within popular fiction far exceeds that of typical genre works, though it sits below the academic canonicity of literary fiction anchors like Gatsby or Beloved.

No. 26 on this list. The Flies · Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

A major work of existentialist theater and an important document of intellectual resistance during the occupation. Regularly taught and performed.

No. 27 on this list. The Eye of the World · Robert Jordan · 1990

The Eye of the World launched one of fantasy's most influential series. While not considered literary fiction, it holds canonical status within the epic fantasy genre, frequently cited alongside Tolkien's work as foundational to modern fantasy.

No. 28 on this list. The Black Echo · Michael Connelly · 1992

Launched one of the most acclaimed detective series in modern crime fiction. Edgar Award winner.

No. 29 on this list. The Ox-Bow Incident · Walter Van Tilburg Clark · 1940

A staple of American high school and college curricula and a landmark of the Western as serious literature, though below the very top rank of the canon.

No. 30 on this list. Murder on the Orient Express · Agatha Christie · 1934

A fixture in mystery and detective fiction courses worldwide, and one of the most translated English-language novels of the twentieth century with Wikipedia articles in over 60 languages. Widely included on 'essential reading' and 'best mysteries' lists, though its presence in general literary syllabi is lower than canonical modernist works.