Frankenstein o el Moderno Prometeo

Every time someone creates something without thinking about consequences, they're repeating Victor's mistake.

The Geneva and Alpine settings are characters themselves. Shelley's descriptions of nature are sublime.

A novel about loneliness at its core. The creature and Victor are mirrors of each other - both isolated, both suffering.

Slow in parts and Victor's self-pity gets tiresome, but the creature's chapters are magnificent.

The DeLacey family subplot is crucial - it shows the creature capable of love and kindness before rejection hardens him.

Shelley wrote this after a dare from Byron. Imagine what she would have written with encouragement.

The most important horror novel ever written. It asks: who is the real monster? The answer is always the creator.

Victor is infuriatingly passive. Every death could have been prevented if he'd taken responsibility.

Nature vs nurture, the ethics of creation, parental responsibility - all in a gothic horror novel from 1818.

The creature reading Paradise Lost, Plutarch, and Goethe is such a beautiful detail. He educates himself into suffering.