The Five Most Important Books for Eric Kraft

Eric Kraft, author of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy, gives in Newsweek his top of literary preferences:

1. À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust (it makes the banal sublime, the trivial momentous, the meaningless meaningful)
2. Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas (a singular history of the city's growth, a polemic about architecture, a work of art)
3. Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez (it plays elegant games that came to be called magical realism, but may be better called realism in the service of romance)
4. Дар by Vladimir Nabokov (it displays all Nabokov's strengths with a youthful audacity that still exhilarates)
5. Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin (Benjamin never got beyond the research, so the reader makes the book while reading)

(A Life in Books)