Five of the best second novels of all time

At the Guardian James Reith tagged five of the greatest second novels ever written, including:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

The don of magical realism (otherwise known as “fantasy, but not too much fantasy”), Márquez challenges the idea of the first-novel wonder. His debut, Leaf Storm, is good. Very good. But Márquez builds upon it, both in terms of setting (they both take place in the same village) and style.

One Hundred Years of Solitude beats its predecessor by being even more Leaf Storm than Leaf Storm was. It’s a wonderful example of how a second novel can grow, organically, out of an author’s first.

Read about the other entries on the list.

One Hundred Years of Solitude made Amor Towles's six favorite books list, Samantha Mabry's list of five books that carry curses, Sameer Rahim's list of five essential works by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende's list of six favorite books, Sara Jonsson's list of five books to read when you can't go to sleep, Juan Gabriel Vásquez's five best list of novels about South America, Pushpinder Khaneka's list of three of the best books on Colombia, Michael Jacobs's list of the top ten Colombian stories, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families and Rebecca Stott's five best list of historical novels. It is one of Lynda Bellingham's six best books, Walter Mosley's five favorite books, Eric Kraft's five most important books, and James Patterson's five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue