5. The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s debut novel The Sun Also Rises follows its main character, Jake, through the Lost Generation’s tours of France and Spain. The idea sounds grand – and Jake and his friends do have a pretty good time – but creeping throughout the novel is a depressing anxiety that book never shakes off. Equally disturbing/ compelling is Jake’s war wound, and why exactly Hemingway chose that for him. Reading The Sun Also Rises sort of makes you want to book a ticket to Paris, spend all day drinking at a cafe, get in a fight, go dancing, drink yourself to sleep, and repeat.