Shannon's "Unreliable Narrators and Anti-heroes: A Reading List"

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An unreliable narrator is a narrator who can’t be trusted. An anti-hero is a protagonist who has qualities that normally belong to villains or non-heroic flaws. Often the unreliable narrator is an anti-hero. These are novels that feature either or both of these literary devices.

Note: With some exceptions, short story collections, young adult fiction and series have been eliminated if so identified. Also, I have striven to include high-quality books only.

  1. 1.
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics)
    by Mark Twain

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  2. 2.
    Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
    by Frank Miller

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  3. 3.
    Blood Meridian (Picador Books)
    by Cormac McCarthy

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  4. 4.
    Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
    by Joseph Heller

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  5. 5.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

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  6. 6.
    A Clockwork Orange
    by Anthony Burgess

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  7. 7.
    Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  8. 8.
    The Debt to Pleasure: A Novel
    by John Lanchester

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  9. 9.
    Despair
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  10. 10.
    Doctor Faustus
    by Christopher Marlowe

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  11. 11.
    The Eyes of the Dragon (Signet)
    by Stephen King

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  12. 13.
    Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

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  13. 14.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  14. 15.
    Grendel
    by John Gardner

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  15. 16.
    The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
    by Stephen King

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  16. 17.
    Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  17. 18.
    Hannibal Rising
    by Thomas Harris

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  18. 19.
    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
    by J. K. Rowling

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  19. 20.
    Interview With The Vampire
    by Anne Rice

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  20. 21.
    The Killer Inside Me
    by Jim Thompson

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  21. 22.
    Life of Pi
    by Yann Martel

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  22. 23.
    The Lord of the Rings
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  23. 24.
    Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  24. 25.
    The Merchant of Venice (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  25. 26.
    ?
    The More Than Complete Hitchhikers Guide
    by Douglas Adams

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  26. 27.
    Mr. Phillips
    by John Lanchester

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  27. 28.
    Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
    by Agatha Christie

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  28. 29.
    Mystic River
    by Dennis Lehane

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  29. 30.
    No Country for Old Men (MTI) (Vintage International)
    by Cormac Mccarthy

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  30. 31.
    No Night Is Too Long
    by Barbara Vine

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  31. 33.
    Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  32. 34.
    Pale Fire (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  33. 35.
    Red Dragon
    by Thomas Harris

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  34. 36.
    Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (An Evergreen Book)
    by Tom Stoppard

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  35. 38.
    Shutter Island
    by Dennis Lehane

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  36. 39.
    The Silence of the Lambs
    by Thomas Harris

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  37. 40.
    Sometimes a Great Notion (Penguin Classics)
    by Ken Kesey

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  38. 41.
    The Stand
    by Stephen King

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  39. 42.
    The Stars My Destination
    by Alfred Bester

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  40. 43.
    The Talented Mr.Ripley
    by Patricia Highsmith

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  41. 44.
    The Tell-Tale Heart (Bantam Classics)
    by Edgar Allan Poe

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  42. 45.
    Trainspotting
    by Irvine Welsh

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  43. 47.
    When We Were Orphans: A Novel
    by Kazuo Ishiguro

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  44. 48.
    Zeno's Conscience: A Novel
    by Italo Svevo

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  45. 49.
    Flowers for Algernon
    by Daniel Keyes

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This is Shannon's list. Only Shannon can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by Shannon on Jul 06, 2008.
 

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