Some of the titles on this list by Ria Pandey are actually short story collections, but no matter: here are 34 of the most titillating erotic works of fiction, according to the author. Updike’s Couples made the cut, but many Updike fans might be thinking Rabbit Is Rich worthy of the list as well.
Some of Updike’s plain-brown-wrapper company:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover—D.H. Lawrence
The Tropic of Cancer—Henry Miller
Story of O—Anne Desclos/Pauline Réage
Emmanuelle—Emmanuelle Arsan
Portnoy’s Complaint—Philip Roth
Delta of Venus—Anaïs Nin
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty—Anne Rice
Lust and Other Stories—Susan Minot
Vox—Nicholson Baker
The Thorn Birds—Colleen McCullough
The Sexual Life of Catherine M.—Catherine Millet
Of Couples, Pandey writes, “Couples details the lives of ten married couples living in a New England community who create a sex cult. While it sounds simple on the surface level, Couples embarks on an intense emotional and psychological meditation on the nature of love, sex, and commitment. A review by Time describes the events of the novel as such: “Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”