Top 10 novels of solitude

Teju Cole was raised in Nigeria and came to the United States in 1992. He is a writer, photographer, and professional historian of early Netherlandish art. Open City is his first novel. He lives in New York City.

For the Guardian, he named his top ten novels of solitude, including:

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Yourcenar's marvellous account of the life and mind of the Emperor Hadrian is a flawless historical fiction. Hadrian, as depicted here, is a lonely and sensual philhellene; an introvert and philosopher who, for the sake of Rome, had to be a public man. It is the story of a philosopher-king's struggle to understand himself, but such is Yourcenar's skill that we absorb, along the way, both the flickering memories in Hadrian's mind as well as a lot of information about ancient Rome.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue