Top ten novels of the 1930s

Alec Marsh is the author of the Drabble & Harris books.

Rule Britannia, a light-hearted historical adventure set against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis in 1936, is the first in a series featuring protagonists Ernest Drabble and Percival Harris. The second novel in the series, Enemy of the Raj, is set in British India in 1937. The latest installment, Ghosts of the West, sees Drabble and Harris journey to the United States. Marsh is working on the fourth book in the series which will be set in Turkey.

At the Guardian Marsh tagged ten top novels of the 1930s, including:

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household

Geoffrey Household’s gritty “man on the run” novel, set in 1938 and published in 1939, tells the story of an unnamed man who has just attempted to assassinate a foreign dictator – readers can assume it was Adolf Hitler – and is now on the run in Britain from his agents who are bent on killing him. Despite a nod to Richard Hannay (Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps was published in 1915), this is nonetheless a political thriller of its day like no other and has cast long shadows of its own, being cited as an influence for none other than the Rambo series.

Read about another entry on the list.

Rogue Male is among Toby Litt's top ten escapes in books, Dan Smith's top ten fictional hunts, Philip Webb's top ten pulse-racing adventure books, Teju Cole's top ten novels of solitude, and John Mullan's top ten chases in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue