Eight top books set in isolated locations

Julia Phillips is a Fulbright fellow whose writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Moscow Times. She lives in Brooklyn.

Phillips's debut novel is Disappearing Earth.

At Publishers Weekly she tagged "eight novels perfectly limited by geographic barriers. The stories ... are set in places remote to most of their readers, yet the skill of their authors, the bold lines of their containers and the sharp focus on what happens within, make them compelling to us all." One title on the list:

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The island novel against which all others are measured. In this 1954 classic, a group of British schoolboys is marooned after a plane crash in the Pacific. Stranded far from the world they know, the boys establish their own miniature civilization, which soon turns toward violence. Golding’s novel shows exactly why stories in remote settings fascinate us: stripped of outside influence, kept alone together, these characters reveal themselves for the eager, cruel, conflicted creatures they—and we—really are.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Lord of the Flies is on Kerri Jarema's list of fifteen classic novels with a page count mercifully below 200 pages, Brian Conaghan's list of ten favorite teen books about male friendship, Gillian Philip’s top ten list of islands in children's fiction, Janet Davey’s top ten list of schoolchildren in fiction, Frank Rich's ten top books list, Non Pratt's top ten list of toxic friendships in literature, Francesca Haig's top ten list of the greatest twins in children’s books, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick list of thirteen favorite, occasionally-banned, YA novels, Matt Kraus's list of six famous books with extremely faithful film adaptations, Michael Hogan's list of the ten best fictional evil children, Danny Wallace's six best books list, Gemma Malley's top ten list of dystopian novels for teenagers, AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best pigs in literature, ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in literature, Katharine Quarmby's top ten list of disability stories, and William Skidelsky's list of ten of the best accounts of being marooned in literature. It is a book that made a difference to Isla Fisher and is one of Suzi Quatro's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue