A literary road trip through classic American novels

Jay Gatsby’s opulent Long Island mansion, his lavish parties and his mysterious wealth are all anyone can talk about. But who is the real Gatsby? F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnificent novel famously captures the decadence of America in the Jazz Age, and the dark heart of the American Dream.

Set around Walden Pond near Concord in mid-nineteenth-century Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau recounts his experience of living in a small house in the woods independent from society. The result is a captivating story, rich with psychological insight and natural history.

Fiercely independent Lily Bart is completely immersed in the scintillating charm of high-society twentieth-century New York. But as her finances dwindle it looks like her only hope of security is marriage in this dark and witty satire from Edith Wharton.

Kate Chopin’s perceptive short stories capture the essence of late-nineteenth-century female experience in the Deep South. These are stories of mothers re-discovering their independence, daughters becoming women, love, hate and everything in between. The Awakening is now accepted as some of the earliest and boldest feminist fiction.

Ralph Ellison’s unnamed narrator migrates from his home in the south to 1930s Harlem, encountering startling hardship along the way. This is the memoir of his life, written from his home underground the streets of New York, hiding from a world that refuses to see him.

Sethe and her daughter Denver have escaped to Cincinnati from a life of slavery in Kentucky. Their new home, however, is haunted by the ghosts of their past and present. Exploring love and pain, beauty and trauma, Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a modern classic masterpiece.