Famed horror fiction novelist Stephen King has revealed his favourite book of all time is a 1954 classic. The Shining writer shared his top 10 favourite books back in 2017 to mark Goodreads’ 10th anniversary.
The iconic writer said at the time it was « ridiculous » to build a list, adding: « On another day, ten different titles might come to mind, like The Exorcist, or All the Pretty Horses in place of Blood Meridian. On another day I’d be sure to include Light in August or Scott Smith’s superb A Simple Plan. The Sea, the Sea, by Iris Murdoch. But what the hell, I stand by these. »
The US author’s list included the epic, The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein, Philip Roth’s 1998 pulitzer-prize winning American Pastoral and George Orwell infamous 1984. King also rated Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy’s brutal and unflinching depiction of violence in the American West and the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
But it is William Golding’s iconic text Lord of the Flies which topped King’s list. The 315-page book tells the story of a group of British boys stranded on a deserted island who try to create their own society only for it to spiral into savagery and chaos.
The novel is widely studied in school and earned William Golding the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. Lord of the Flies was Golding’s most famous and enduring achievement. The book almost did not come to be, according to John Carey’s 2009 biography of Golding called William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies.
In 1953, the manuscript languished as publishers baulked at it, with some even calling it « absurd and uninteresting… rubbish and dull, » according to a Guardian review. When Charles Monteith from Faber came across it, he convinced colleagues to buy it for £60.
The text would go on to sell millions of copies and introduce teens to the perennial idea of original sin and human barbarity. Despite its popularly, Golding despised the text, once describing it as « boring and crude » and its language « O-level stuff ». But the novel evidently had a lingering impact on King.
Other texts to appear on King’s list are The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – a 2013 Pulitzer Prize Fiction winner which takes readers into the deep and secretive world of North Korea. Richard Adams’ fiction Watership Down was King’s third most favourite book followed by Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter.
Set aboard a German-bound passenger ship in the late 1930s, Ship of Fools is a scathing social commentary on the political tensions and prejudices of the time. In the novel, Porter masterfully weaves together the stories of her characters, creating a microcosm of society’s flaws.
While it didn’t win major literary awards, the novel was a commercial success and remains an important work in American literature.
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