James Joyce was innovative in his writing on a number of levels, and his early work The Dubliners (1914) was remarkable for showing relatively mundane tales but in innovative, stream of consciousness language. For his next work, Joyce used many of the same techniques to tell the story of one day in the life of Dublin native Leo Bloom, and called it Ulysses (1922). Ulysses was considered a significant break from previous novels, which were generally sweeping epics that traced families, communities, or entire lives.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is by Charles Dickens, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) is by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) is by Victor Hugo, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) is by Thomas Hardy.

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Russia in 1899, but became a famous author after moving to Western Europe and writing in English and French as well as Russian. A master prose stylist in three languages, Nabokov's books had innovative structures or unusual topics, like 1955's Lolita, about a pedophile; 1957's Pnin, about a Russian professor at an American college; and 1962's Pale Fire, about a poem by the same name as the book's title.

Kundera, a native Czech citizen, wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being about the Prague Spring of 1968 while in exile in France in 1982. Banned in his native Czechoslovakia, the text was first published in French, with the original Czech version only being published two years later. Kundera still lives in France, and now considers himself a French writer.

All Quiet on the Western Front, written by the German writer Erich Maria Remarque, shares many similarities with some of Ernest Hemingway's novels, as it is set during World War I and based on the author's experiences. However, Hemingway's distinctive style, modernist narrative structure, terse language, and glorification of machismo are almost polar opposites to Remarque's style.

Although Flannery O'Connor wrote two novels, she was most famous for her short stories, which were first collected in the volume A Good Man is Hard to Find, published in 1955. The stories in the collection featured many of O'Connor's hallmarks, including grotesque characters, allegorical tales, depictions of societal issues, Southern locations, and shocking plot turns. O'Connor's other collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published in 1965 after her death.

Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls after participating in the Spanish Civil War.

Philip Roth is one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. Roth's style is notable for using absurd and outlandish humor in stories that often comment on the Jewish experience in America. Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) is an inversion on the coming of age novel; The Great American Novel (1973) is a story about a baseball league that comments on American politics; and Zuckerman Unbound (1981) is a roman à clef that features an author who is very much like Roth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is primarily known for writing about one character, the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes. First appearing in publication in 1887's A Study in Scarlet, Holmes would appear in four novels and fifty-six short stories. The character is one of the most famous and well-loved in world literature, and has appeared in numerous films.

Siddhartha, originally published in 1922, was a highly influential novel, especially because of its religious themes, simple and lyrical style, and its exploration of self-discovery. The novel shares many of these themes with other novels written by Herman Hesse, such as 1927's Steppenwolfe and 1943's The Glass Bead Game. For his life's work, Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1944.

H.P. Lovecraft was a writer who toiled away in his own life in relative obscurity, writing horror and science fiction pieces for small magazines. After his death in 1937, however, Lovecraft's stories, which featured otherworldly scenarios, horrible creatures, and threats to humanity, gained a larger popularity. In modern times, Lovecraft is seen as one of the foremost science fiction and horror authors.