Perhaps deliberately, this book has been designed to look as little like a conventional literary history as possible. Rather, it is pretty well the same in appearance as those very nice books Taschen produce, surveys of some surprisingly recherché materials. It borrows, too, in its inaccurate title (it’s not about ‘books’ but about novels, or almost entirely so) from a series of frankly unlovely travel books, listing the world’s ‘greatest hits’. Applying this notion to the history of the novel is not without its problems, and this book, though in practice too ignorant and badly executed to be worth recommending to anyone, could not have been made a success even if it had been written by more intelligent or knowledgeable writers.

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