The 52 Best Debut Literary Novels

First novels that announced a major voice, sometimes with a book the author never topped. Classics and recent breakthroughs share the shelf.

1. 1
   To Kill a Mockingbird

   Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning debut about racial injustice in a small Alabama town.
   1000pts
2. 2
   The Sympathizer

   Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel about a communist double agent.
   727pts
3. 3
   Tinkers

   Paul Harding's 2009 debut, a small-press novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
   722pts
4. 4
   White Teeth

   Zadie Smith's 2000 debut, a sprawling comic portrait of multicultural London.
   693pts
5. 5
   The Catcher in the Rye

   J. D. Salinger's 1951 first novel, narrated by the alienated teenager Holden Caulfield.
   693pts
6. 6
   Homegoing

   Yaa Gyasi's 2016 debut tracing two half-sisters' descendants across Ghana and America.
   656pts
7. 7
   Buddenbrooks

   Thomas Mann's 1901 first novel chronicling the decline of a Lübeck merchant family.
   636pts
8. 8
   Conversations with Friends

   Sally Rooney's 2017 debut about two Dublin students entangled with an older married couple.
   615pts
9. 9
   The Secret History

   Donna Tartt's 1992 debut about a group of classics students and a murder.
   615pts
10. 10
    The Stranger

    Albert Camus's first published novel (1942), the story of the detached Meursault.
    615pts
11. 11
    Lincoln in the Bardo

    George Saunders's 2017 first novel, winner of the Booker Prize.
    614pts
12. 12
    Trainspotting

    Irvine Welsh's 1993 first novel about heroin users in Edinburgh, written in Scots dialect.
    568pts
13. 13
    A Separate Peace

    John Knowles's 1959 first novel about friendship and rivalry at a New England boarding school.
    515pts
14. 14
    Lucky Jim

    Kingsley Amis's 1954 first novel, a comic classic about a hapless university lecturer.
    515pts
15. 15
    Under the Net

    Iris Murdoch's 1954 first novel, a picaresque comedy set in London and Paris.
    515pts
16. 16
    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    Junot Díaz's 2007 first novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
    515pts
17. 17
    The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath's only novel (1963), a semi-autobiographical account of a young woman's breakdown.
    515pts
18. 18
    Nausea

    Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 first novel, a founding work of existentialist fiction.
    515pts
19. 19
    A Confederacy of Dunces

    John Kennedy Toole's posthumously published comic novel (1980) that won the Pulitzer Prize.
    515pts
20. 20
    Go Tell It on the Mountain

    James Baldwin's 1953 semi-autobiographical first novel set in Harlem.
    454pts
21. 21
    Invisible Man

    Ralph Ellison's 1952 National Book Award-winning debut about Black identity in America.
    454pts
22. 22
    Look Homeward, Angel

    Thomas Wolfe's 1929 autobiographical first novel.
    454pts
23. 23
    Lord of the Flies

    William Golding's 1954 first novel about schoolboys descending into savagery on a desert island.
    454pts
24. 24
    The Moviegoer

    Walker Percy's 1961 National Book Award-winning first published novel set in New Orleans.
    454pts
25. 25
    The God of Small Things

    Arundhati Roy's 1997 Booker Prize-winning debut about twins in Kerala.
    384pts
26. 26
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

    Carson McCullers's 1940 debut about isolated misfits in a Georgia mill town.
    384pts
27. 27
    Less Than Zero

    Bret Easton Ellis's 1985 debut about wealthy, jaded youth in Los Angeles.
    384pts
28. 28
    The Wasp Factory

    Iain Banks's 1984 first published novel, a disturbing tale of a teenage boy on a Scottish island.
    384pts
29. 29
    The Bluest Eye

    Toni Morrison's 1970 first novel about a Black girl who longs for blue eyes.
    384pts
30. 30
    Things Fall Apart

    Chinua Achebe's 1958 first novel about the collapse of Igbo society under colonialism.
    384pts
31. 31
    The Bonfire of the Vanities

    Tom Wolfe's 1987 first novel, a satire of greed and class in 1980s New York.
    384pts
32. 32
    Wise Blood

    Flannery O'Connor's 1952 first novel, a Southern Gothic tale of a fanatical preacher.
    384pts
33. 33
    The Kite Runner

    Khaled Hosseini's 2003 debut about friendship and betrayal in Afghanistan.
    384pts
34. 34
    Wuthering Heights

    Emily Brontë's only novel (1847), a turbulent story of passion and revenge on the Yorkshire moors.
    303pts
35. 35
    Everything Is Illuminated

    Jonathan Safran Foer's 2002 debut about a search for family history in Ukraine.
    303pts
36. 36
    Brick Lane

    Monica Ali's 2003 Booker-shortlisted debut about a Bangladeshi woman in London.
    303pts
37. 37
    Native Son

    Richard Wright's 1940 novel about Bigger Thomas, his first published novel.
    303pts
38. 38
    Purple Hibiscus

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2003 first novel about a Nigerian girl and her tyrannical father.
    303pts
39. 39
    Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Brontë's first published novel (1847), following an orphaned governess's fight for independence and love.
    303pts
40. 40
    Bonjour Tristesse

    Françoise Sagan's 1954 debut, written when she was 18.
    303pts
41. 41
    This Side of Paradise

    F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 debut that made him the voice of the Jazz Age.
    206pts
42. 42
    The Joy Luck Club

    Amy Tan's 1989 debut about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American daughters.
    206pts
43. 43
    Cold Mountain

    Charles Frazier's 1997 National Book Award-winning debut about a Confederate deserter's journey home.
    206pts
44. 44
    Everything I Never Told You

    Celeste Ng's 2014 debut about a Chinese American family after a daughter's death.
    206pts
45. 45
    The Sorrows of Young Werther

    Goethe's 1774 first novel, an epistolary tale of doomed love that swept Europe.
    206pts
46. 46
    The House on Mango Street

    Sandra Cisneros's 1984 novel in vignettes about a Latina girl growing up in Chicago.
    206pts
47. 47
    Shuggie Bain

    Douglas Stuart's 2020 Booker Prize-winning debut about a boy and his alcoholic mother in Glasgow.
    206pts
48. 48
    Housekeeping

    Marilynne Robinson's 1980 first novel about two sisters in a remote Idaho town.
    0pts
49. 49
    The Virgin Suicides

    Jeffrey Eugenides's 1993 debut about five doomed sisters in suburban Michigan.
    0pts
50. 50
    Bright Lights, Big City

    Jay McInerney's 1984 second-person debut about 1980s Manhattan nightlife.
    0pts
51. 51
    Catch-22

    Joseph Heller's 1961 debut, a darkly comic satire of war and bureaucracy.
    0pts
52. 52
    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Oscar Wilde's only novel (1890), about a man whose portrait ages in his place.
    0pts

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