Ten top first novels

Nicholas Royle's seventh and most recent novel is First Novel.

One of his ten top first novels, as told to the Guardian:The Horned Man by James Lasdun

Wait a minute, here's another amazing first novel set in New York. If you liked director Adrian Lyne's criminally underrated Jacob's Ladder, an alternately terrifying and moving story of a Vietnam vet caught between heaven and hell, you'll love