Gone with the WindGone with the Wind
What it's about
It's 1861 in north Georgia, and sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled, scheming belle of the plantation Tara, cares about nothing but the man she can't have, Ashley Wilkes. Then the Civil War comes. Over the next twelve years, through the siege and burning of Atlanta, hunger, ruin and Reconstruction, Scarlett decides she will survive at any cost, and clashes again and again with the one man who sees right through her, the blockade runner Rhett Butler. It's a historical epic and a long, stormy love story.
Why it's worth reading
Few novels are this addictive at this length. Scarlett is one of fiction's great antiheroines, selfish, brave and maddening, and the sweep from Atlanta in flames to the ruins of Tara is pure storytelling.
You'll love it if you liked
Anna Karenina, War and Peace or Lonesome Dove
Good to know
It's over 1,000 pages. It's also a product of 1936: it romanticizes the Confederacy and portrays enslaved and Black characters through racist stereotypes. Many readers find it worth reading with that in mind.
By the numbers
- Critics91 out of 100 · counts 35%+36
- Readers94 out of 100 · counts 50%+53
- Buzz0 out of 100 · counts 15%+0
Buzz rewards prizes and lists from the last few years, so older books start at zero.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1937). On 3 canon lists, including TIME All-TIME 100 Novels. 4.32★ from 1.3M Goodreads ratings.
Where it ranks
- #3 of the 256 historical novels we rank
- #1 of the 296 classics we rank
- #4 of the 1,344 books we rank
Won
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1937)
On the lists
- TIME All-TIME 100 Novels
- BBC's The Big Read
- Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
Reads as
Moving
