Last month the Norwegian Book Club asked 100 well-known authors in 54 countries to choose the 100 greatest works of fiction. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes got 50% more votes than any other title, and Fyodor Dostoevsky had the most books cited - Crime And Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.

Now it’s always nice when the experts agree with you about something you care deeply about. And as an ardent bibliophile whose favourite book and author are Don Quixote and Dostoevsky, I was delighted to hear this is also the consensus of the world’s most respected writers.

Dostoevsky would have agreed completely with the voting Nigerian author Ben Okri that "If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote". In the great Russian’s words “In the whole world there is no deeper, no mightier literary work. This is so far, the last and greatest expression of human thought; this is the bitterest irony man is capable of. And if the world were to come to an end, and people were asked there, somewhere : ‘Did you understand your life on earth, and what conclusion have you drawn from it?’ – man could silently hand over Don Quixote : ‘Such is my inference from life – Can you condemn me for it?’”

I’ve often wondered if being Jamaican has something to do with my penchant for Cervantes and Dostoevsky. Because living in this country certainly makes it easy to identify with passionate, impulsive, and exuberantly talkative characters. And while we don’t know much about Cervantes the man, Dostoevsky had in many ways a very Jamaican like personality. In Ronald Hingley’s words “Humanity in a state of tranquility appears to have held no interest whatever for Dostoevsky. He himself could only tolerate existence provided that no element of serenity was permitted to invade his personal life… [He] was a seeker of strong mental sensations or, to put it differently, he usually preferred to be violently unhappy rather than mildly happy.” Has anyone ever given a better summary of the Jamaican approach to life?

Now one can’t help being struck by how many books on this top 100 list are practically the only thing remembered about the time and place in which they were created. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata and the Tale of Genji for instance, contain nearly all we know of the people that produced them. Even the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome live on mainly in works like the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, and the Aeneid.

“Everything in the world exists to end up in a book” said Stephane Mallarme. And to posterity what doesn’t end up in a book might as well never have existed. The writings a civilization leaves behind are its heart and core, the reasons its inhabitants lived, worked and died. For it’s not the richest or most powerful nations that history remembers but the ones which write lasting books.

Yet in our disposable digital age books often seem irrelevant. Why struggle through difficult 400 year old works when we can effortlessly assuage boredom in 50 channels? Why spend scores of hours on the writings of a distant dead man when the internet makes almost everything we could want to know instantly accessible? Do Don Quixote and its like not really belong to those video deprived ages when long televisionless evenings had to be filled up somehow and books were the only form of home entertainment available?

I ask myself such questions quite often these days. For much as I love books – in my view God’s second greatest gift to mankind after women – I have read practically no new fiction in the past five years. And at times it seems to me that only a severely deprived and misspent youth caused me to ingest such classics as I have. With so many instant pleasures available, surely only a very eccentric 22 year old would today spend his leisure time perusing Cervantes and Dostoevsky. Because while being difficult is not necessarily a mark of excellence, all truly good books require a considerable amount of time, concentration and effort. Which is why Mark Twain defined “classic” as “a book which people praise and don't read”.

To be sure like anyone else who has completed a challenging but satisfying task, I feel proud of having finished about one third of the authors’ top 100. Of course this means I haven’t read the other 67. And my vanity is tempered the realization that I probably will never get to “A Remembrance of Things Past” or “Ulyssess”, and have likely not read anything by 95% of the authors who voted.

Yet if I haven’t read most of the classics and never will, I am grateful for having read some. And though it’s difficult to imagine how I could have done it in the internet and video age, I don’t regret the hours spent on Don Quixote or Raskolnikov in my youth. For while none of my other boredom killing activities left much trace on my brain, in unoccupied moments I still find myself debating Sancho Panza and Ivan Karamazov. Why indeed do all men deep down desire better bread than is made of wheat, and why do we so admire those who go to seek it though they find only misfortune? Is everything truly permitted if there is no God? And if not why not?

“Man is a mystery who must be unraveled and if it takes a whole lifetime don’t say it’s a waste of time. I am pre-occupied with this mystery because I want to be a human being”. Thus declared Dostoevsky when only 18, and he certainly came as close to unraveling man as any writer who ever lived. But many scientists say genetic engineering and neurological manipulation will soon explain and solve all our physical and psychological problems. Some claim they may even redefine that human nature which so many authors have tried so hard to explain. So maybe the uber men of future generations will not be troubled by such matters, although judging from the rich western world’s declining birth rates a totally problem free world might well extinguish mankind’s desire to propagate and make the species extinct.

But some of us present imperfect beings can’t help pondering the riddles of existence. And perhaps even in the broadband and DVD era those who cannot ignore ultimate questions or make a complete leap of faith will find themselves returning to the Dons and Karamazovs. changkob@hotmail.com