Schecks Kanon

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing"

Can a children's book be part of the canon of world literature? Absolutely, says literary critic Denis Scheck. For example, Astrid Lindgren's "Karlsson-on-the-Roof," which is at the beginning of many readers' biographies. And can the class clown of contemporary literature, Michel Houellebecq, be elevated to the canon? Yes, of course. Because he is to politics what Jules Verne was to technology: a visionary. With his selection of the 100 most important works, Denis Scheck presents a contemporary canon that simply disregards genre or language boundaries. From Ovid to Tolkien, from Simone de Beauvoir to Shakespeare, from W.G. Sebald to J.K. Rowling: he charmingly, eloquently, and intelligently explains what you must read and why.