1929 · Erich Maria Remarque · 296 pages · Literary Fiction
The defining novel of World War I remains the most powerful anti-war statement in literature, stripping away every romantic illusion about combat with unflinching honesty and devastating humanity.
1926 · Ernest Hemingway · 251 pages · Literary Fiction
The Sun Also Rises is the novel that made Hemingway and defined a generation's literary voice. Its influence on American prose is so pervasive that reading it today can make it seem simpler than it actually is, because the style it pioneered became the default. Underneath the drinking and the parties and the bullfights is a novel about people who have been broken by the war and are trying, with limited success, to figure out what's left. Jake's narration is a masterpiece of restraint. Brett is unforgettable and infuriating. The Pamplona chapters are electric. If you can read past the surface, there's more going on here than most novels manage with twice the words.
1929 · Ernest Hemingway · 332 pages · Literary Fiction
A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway's war novel, and it does what war novels at their best should do: strip away the abstraction and show you what's left. The Caporetto retreat sequence is among the finest sustained passages in American fiction. The love story between Henry and Catherine is more polarizing, convincing some readers entirely and leaving others cold. The ending is devastating regardless. Hemingway rewrote it dozens of times, and the version he settled on earns every word of its famous final paragraph. If you've never read Hemingway, this or The Sun Also Rises is where to start.