A cult book may be hard to define but one thing is for sure: you know a cult book when you see one.
Cult books are somehow, intangibly, different from simple bestsellers – though many of them are that. And people have passionate feelings on both sides:
Our critics present a selection of the most notable cult writing from the past two centuries. Some is classic. Some is catastrophic. All of it had the power to inspire . . .
19th CENTURY . . .
[amazon asin=0316769487&template=*lrc ad (left)]The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824) A Calvinist convinced of his indefectible election to salvation is led to acts of murder by Gil-Martin, his devilish doppelganger. More a myth than a religious satire, it vividly survives James Hogg’s not entirely satisfactory manner of recounting it. Consider this: there may be a Gil-Martin near you. Christopher Howse
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)This is among the best-selling volumes of poetry of all time, and does all that a translation should: it introduces the idea of an exotic, different culture; and it expresses what its readers feel, but lets them blame it on someone else. Here, in an age of doubt, aesthetics and Darwinism, these mysterious verses, drawn from 11th-century Persian, stand as little examples of how to celebrate life even as it slips away. TP
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)Incendiary declamation through a megaphone. If only one knew what he was on about. Put six Nietzscheans in a room and it ought to be a bloodbath; except, since they’re all nancies who fancy themselves as Supermen, there wouldn’t be one. Nietzsche was brave and mad enough to kill God: but look what happened to him. His acolytes are, largely, less brave. Andrew [amazon asin=0679785892&template=*lrc ad (right)]McKie
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)Plotless, morality-free salute to decadence. An individual based on its French author lounges about his luxurious home indulging in pursuits such as embedding gemstones in the shell of a tortoise until, loaded down, it expires. Dripping with Baudelairean ennui (and not a little dull itself), A Rebours was a bible for the Symbolists, Oscar Wilde and alienated creative types everywhere. Serena Davies
TWENTIES . . .
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)Hermann Hesse’s allegorical novel sounds a bit Buddhist but is actually saying that experience (including of wealth), rather than contemplation, is the key to enlightenment. It’s persuasive, especially if you read it, as many do, chillum in hand, in the Himalayas. Although, thinking about it now, profundities such as “the secret of the river is there is no time” don’t make much sense out of context. SD
[amazon asin=0140283293&template=*lrc ad (left)]The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923) Pocket-sized set of aphorisms that sound like they were written by a medieval monk but were actually the product of a Lebanese-American alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1931. The Prophet is a beautifully phrased exercise in pointing out the obvious but Sixties hippy kids loved it. SD
THIRTIES . . .
Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1932)Céline’s vile political views are well documented but his first novel, Journey to the End of Night, was a groundbreaking modernist novel and a fine satire on war and the medical profession. Céline is considered one of the great French prose stylists of the 20th century. Martin Chilton
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933) A record of a lost generation in the shape of the contemporaries Vera Brittain loved and lost in the First World War, this memoir is also a poignant, passionate and perfectly poised study of a woman trying to find her place in a changing world. A bible to the generation who read it on publication, its influence continues thanks to a Virago reprint. Sarah Crompton[amazon asin=0802130208&template=*lrc ad (right)]
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)Modern travel writers such as Colin Thubron and Bruce Chatwin were inspired by Robert Byron. Travelling through the Middle East and Asia in the 1930s, Byron provides detailed descriptions of Islamic architecture, with pungent asides: “The Arabs hate the French more than they hate us. Having more reason to do so, they are more polite; in other words, they have learnt not to try it on, when they meet a European. This makes Damascus a pleasant city from the visitor’s point of view.” Sameer Rahim
FORTIES . . .
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942) “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” The beach, the sun, the Arab, the gunshots, the chaplain: the stuff of millions of adolescents’ fevered imaginings. If you don’t love this when you’re 17, there’s something wrong with you. In the film Talladega Nights, Sacha Baron Cohen’s snooty French racing driver reads it on the starting grid. Strange but true: George W Bush read it on holiday when he [amazon asin=0307387895&template=*lrc ad (left)]was President. Dominic Sandbrook
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943) Bewilderingly popular and extremely silly Nietzschean melodrama, in which Ayn Rand gives her mad arch-capitalist philosophy a run round the block in the person of Howard Roark, a flouncy architect. Loved by the kind of person who tells you selfishness is an evolutionary advantage, before stealing your house/lover/job. Tim Martin
Baby and Child Care by Doctor Benjamin Spock (1946) Childcare experts go in and out of fashion, but Dr Benjamin Spock remains the daddy of them all. From his reassuring first sentence – “You know more than you think you do” – he revolutionised the way parents thought about their children, asserting the right to cuddle, comfort and follow your instincts. He also tells you how to deal with croup. SC
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948) This heady mix of romance and reality opens with its teenage heroine Cassandra Mortmain writing while sitting in the kitchen sink. It ends with the words “I love you” scribbled in the margins of the imaginary journal that forms the substance of the novel. In between a story unfolds that feeds the fantasies of every lovelorn young girl; but its status owes much to the way that, as in life, things don’t end happily ever after. SC
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