Amazing Debut Novels

Recently, I completed reading "My Absolute Darling" by Gabriel Tallent. I found it wonderful, and found astounding the fact that this is the author's first novel (though, he has published stories before), and more so at such a young age. The quality of the debut novel set my thoughts on other debut novels which I have read and which have impressed me, and the experiences of which I still remember. I'll jot down here such as comes to me now. Note that the below list is of first "novel"s, and the authors might have had other forms of previous publications like stories, columns, etc..

The list excludes Bengali novels. Only those which I have read in English (meaning, originally English or English translations) were considered.

And initially, I started out writing a few lines against each item of below list, on the book or my experience of it, but since the words kept falling short of doing justice to either (or requiring much more effort to do so), I have removed any additional lines and just kept the names and authors.

• Wuthering Heights - by Emily Bronte.
• The God Of Small Things - by Arundhati Roy.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - by J. K. Rowling.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - by Stieg Larsson.
• The Time Traveler's Wife - by Audrey Niffenegger.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - by Gabriel García Márquez.
• The Time Machine - by H. G. Wells.
• The Catcher in the Rye - by J. D. Salinger.
• My Absolute Darling - by Gabriel Tallent.

Special Mentions:

• The Diary of a Young Girl - by Anne Frank. This is not a novel, but a journal. But it qualifies as literature and more. I already wrote about it earlier in posts About Anne Frank's Diary and "Intelligent" Authors.
• Mein Kampf - by Adolf Hitler. This again is not a novel, but an autobiography. I consider it amazing by the sheer intelligence portrayed in the observations made on human nature, and they way the views are articulated. A must read.

There are many other excellent debut novels I have read and really admired, but since I do not remember right now as vividly the experiences of reading them or the contents themselves, they do not figure in the above list. And this is strictly a personal take on the novels I have read, and should not be taken as a "ranking"or anything of the literatures (of course).