The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italy)
This is the march of history, condensed into a sublime novel. The story of the decline of a family of Sicilian aristocrats and the nature of power itself, Lampedusa’s prose offers perfect precision. Every page lights up with the gleam of Sicily’s crumbling palaces and the glare of its scorched hillsides.

Suite Française, Irène Némirovsky (France)
A stunning pair of novellas: the first explores the flight of a group of Parisians as the German army advances in 1940; the second, the billeting of German soldiers in homes in the French countryside. Némirovsky is deeply insightful about the truths of occupation and collaboration, a remarkable achievement, given the novellas were written contemporaneously with the events they describe. Némirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Fireflies, Shiva Naipaul (Trinidad and Tobago)
One of my favourite novels, I would try to shoehorn this book into any list. Baby, the youngest sister in the Khoja family, has to negotiate a complex labyrinth of relationships and aspirations in a wonderfully depicted Port-of-Spain. Hilarious and devastating.

Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
This is a vivid portrait of the interiority of a young woman, delivered in starbursts of extraordinary language. It shimmers, it fractures and it unsettles.

Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
The fictional African dictatorship of Aburiria stands in for Kenya under Moi in this novel – an unfettered, absurdist joy. Sorcery, capitalism, bureaucracy: nothing escapes Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s furious satirical gaze. Long and relentless it may be, but there is immense power in its oscillations.

Jump and Other Stories, Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
Gordimer reaches into different corners of South Africa and crafts stories of great delicacy and compression, which slowly release their truths, echoing for days afterwards.

Xala, Ousmane Sembène (Senegal)
El Hadji Abdou Kader, part of the new Senegalese elite, following the end of French colonial rule, celebrates success in life by marrying a very young third wife. Only, impotence strikes on his wedding night. Sembène’s withering critique of the ruling classes is memorable for its wit and insight, and for the fact that he also directed the excellent film version.

The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki (Japan)
The search for a husband for Yukiko Makioka in 1940s Osaka unfolds against the backdrop of whirling anxieties about Japan’s modernity. A hypnotic, beautifully poised novel, filled with recollection and reticence.

River of Fire, Qurratulain Hyder (India)
Reading this hugely ambitious novel is like being whirled around in a gyroscope. The narrative flows and splits over more than two thousand years of Indian history, and its disregard for modern rules relating to point of view, style and pace, could send some readers into cardiac arrest. But its exuberant accumulation of so many subcontinental story-telling traditions makes it a true wonder.

My Uncle Napoleon, Iraj Pezeshkzad (Iran)
A riotous coming-of-age tale in which an array of characters is caught up in Uncle Napoleon’s daily tyrannies in his huge Tehran house. The novel’s elements of farce and satire, and even its oblique tenderness, all serve to reinforce its fierce attacks on the despots of Iran.

Mahesh Rao is the author of The Smoke is Rising, a novel, and One Point Two Billion, a collection of stories.