Start here
White Teeth
Zadie Smith
Novel, 2000
Multicultural north-west London across decades, following immigrant and English families in Willesden and beyond.
Books set in the United Kingdom
Twelve books that put you in the United Kingdom. Ten are by writers from the United Kingdom and set there, starting with White Teeth and Middlemarch. The other two are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
About the literature of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom's literature stretches from Shakespeare to Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. Most of it is written in English, though Scots, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic have writers of their own, and the nineteenth-century novel was a particular strength. George Eliot's Middlemarch portrays a midlands country town on the eve of the 1832 Reform Act, with class, politics and marriage all in play.
Later writing keeps returning to class and to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting is set among Edinburgh's heroin users of the 1980s and written in Scots dialect. Anna Burns's Milkman, set in an unnamed Belfast, shows how rumour and sectarian surveillance rule daily life. Zadie Smith's White Teeth follows immigrant and English families across decades of north-west London.
By writers from the United Kingdom
“Find a copy” goes to Bookshop.org. If you buy, we earn a small commission and independent bookshops get a share too.
Middlemarch
George Eliot
Novel, 1871
Provincial English midlands life on the eve of the 1832 Reform Act, showing class, politics, medicine and marriage in a country town.
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Novel, 1846
Yorkshire moorland isolation and rigid class and inheritance codes shape a fierce, gothic story of two households.
Trainspotting
Irvine Welsh
Novel, 1993
Working-class Edinburgh heroin culture in the 1980s, told in vivid Scots dialect far from the tourist city.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Alan Sillitoe
Novel, 1958
Factory life and working-class Nottingham in the 1950s, with pubs, wages and rebellion against respectability.
Lanark
Alasdair Gray
Novel, 1981
Glasgow's industrial decline and Scottish identity appear in a realist and fantastical tale of a city's soul.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
Novel, 1891
Wessex rural life, agricultural labour and Victorian moral hypocrisy, rooted in the landscape of Dorset and surrounding counties.
A Kestrel for a Knave
Barry Hines
Novel, 1968
A boy's hard life in a South Yorkshire mining community and failing school system in the 1960s.
Milkman
Anna Burns
Novel, 2018
Set in an unnamed Belfast during the Troubles, showing how sectarian surveillance and rumour govern everyday life.
Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart
Novel, 2019
Follows a boy and his alcoholic mother through working-class Glasgow in the 1980s, amid post-industrial decline, poverty and Thatcher-era unemployment.
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for the United Kingdom.
The Lonely Londoners
Sam Selvon
Novel, 1956
Wider pick: By a Trinidadian writer who settled in London
Caribbean newcomers in 1950s London, from Bayswater bedsits to Notting Hill, finding their feet in a cold, grey city.
Harare North
Brian Chikwava
Novel, 2009
Wider pick: By a Zimbabwean writer
An unnamed Zimbabwean migrant in London narrates in distinctive voice, shaped by memories of political violence and youth militia in Harare.
More from Europe
Albania Andorra Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kosovo Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia San Marino Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine Vatican City