Top 10 buildings in fiction

David Annand has worked as an editor at Condé Nast Traveller and GQ. He has written for the FT, TLS, Telegraph, Literary Review, the New Statesman and Time Out.

Peterdown is his first book.

At the Guardian Annand tagged ten of his favorite buildings in fiction, including:

The Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

You get a better sense of the architecture of the Senate House-inspired Ministry of Truth – “an enormous pyramidical structure of glittering white concrete” – but it is The Ministry of Love, or Miniluv as it’s known in Newspeak, that stays with you longest. “It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-guns nests.” The building has no windows and is home to the most famous room in all literature, located “many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.” It is, of course, Room 101 and “the thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Nineteen Eighty-four is on Jeff Somers's list of thirteen of the unluckiest characters in science fiction & fantasy, Bassem Youssef's six favorite books list, Joel Cunningham's list of twelve science fiction & fantasy books for the post-truth era, Stephen W. Potts's top five list of useful books about surviving surveillance, Linda Grant's top ten list of books about postwar Britain, Ella Cosmo's list of five fictional books-within-a-book too dangerous to read, the list of four books that changed Peter Twohig, the Guardian's list of the five worst book covers ever, the Independent's list of the fifteen best opening lines in literature, W.B. Gooderham's top ten list of books given in books, Katharine Trendacosta and Amanda Yesilbas's list of ten paranoid science fiction stories that could help you survive, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Gabe Habash's list of ten songs inspired by books and a list of the 100 best last lines from novels. The book made Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten science fiction novels we pretend to have read, Juan E. Méndez's list of five books on torture, P. J. O’Rourke's list of the five best political satires, Daniel Johnson's five best list of books about Cold War culture, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers, is one of Norman Tebbit's six best books and one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It made a difference to Isla Fisher, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best Aprils in literature, ten of the best rats in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue