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

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. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics)
by Mark Twain
 
2. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
by Frank Miller
 
3. Blood Meridian (Picador Books)
by Cormac McCarthy
 
5. Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
by Joseph Heller
 
6. The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
 
7. A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
 
8. Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics)
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
 
11. The Debt to Pleasure: A Novel
by John Lanchester
 
12. Despair
by Vladimir Nabokov
 
13. Doctor Faustus
by Christopher Marlowe
 
15. The Eyes of the Dragon (Signet)
by Stephen King
 
16. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
by Hunter S. Thompson
 
17. Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
by Mary Shelley
 
19. The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 
21. Grendel
by John Gardner
 
23. The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1)
by Stephen King
 
24. Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by William Shakespeare
 
25.
?
Hannibal Rising
by Thomas Harris
 
26. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
by J. K. Rowling
 
31. Interview With The Vampire
by Anne Rice
 
32. The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
 
35. Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
 
36. The Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien
 
37. Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by William Shakespeare
 
39. The Merchant of Venice (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by William Shakespeare
 
40.
?
The More Than Complete Hitchhikers Guide
by Douglas Adams
 
41. Mr. Phillips
by John Lanchester
 
42. Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
by Agatha Christie
 
43. Mystic River
by Dennis Lehane
 
44.
?
No Country for Old Men (MTI) (Vintage International)
by Cormac Mccarthy
 
45. No Night Is Too Long
by Barbara Vine
 
47. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: (Great Books edition) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
by Ken Kesey
 
48. Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by William Shakespeare
 
50. Pale Fire (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
by Vladimir Nabokov
 
54. Red Dragon
by Thomas Harris
 
55. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (An Evergreen Book)
by Tom Stoppard
 
57. A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: Or, Orphans! (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
by Lemony Snicket
 
58. Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
 
59. The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris
 
60. Sometimes a Great Notion (Penguin Classics)
by Ken Kesey
 
62.
?
The Stand
by Stephen King
 
63. The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester
 
64. The Talented Mr.Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith
 
65. The Tell-Tale Heart (Bantam Classics)
by Edgar Allan Poe
 
67. Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
 
68. The Turn of the Screw: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)
by Henry James
 
72. When We Were Orphans: A Novel
by Kazuo Ishiguro
 
73. Zeno's Conscience: A Novel
by Italo Svevo
 
74. Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes
 
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.