To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf (1927)

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse reinvented the novel through stream-of-consciousness narration, interior monologue, and the abolition of conventional plot. Centered on two visits to the Ramsay family's Scottish holiday home separated by the trauma of the First World War, it is simultaneously a technical revolution and a tender portrait of family love and time. It outperforms The Handmaid's Tale in stylistic innovation, with a 50% shorter average sentence length that pioneers modern literary technique. The novel sells over 100,000 copies annually.