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If you say so, good sir, but no order
Les Chants de Maldoror - Comte de Lautréamont
French surrealism before it was a thing, that not even the French are generally aware of as I found out, which I read in high school and became a mental deviant. It's a prose poem, not really with a plot, but a common thread of questioning a bittersweet misanthropy through visions and finding morality therein. Really dense and chaotic, one of a kind, a true puppeteer this man.
The Voice Imitator - Thomas Bernhard
Microfiction of the finest quality I've come across. I'm still stunned how he can have complete stories ranging from two sentences to just one page that are all just devastating, and understated at that. The topics covered are pretty much, uh, everything, so, ya know, fun for the whole family, as long as your family is depressed as ****.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
What a lovely juxtaposition that is, this being the funniest book I've ever read. Absurdities of technology, politic, reducing the big questions to jokes, all while being rather profound I felt; I feel sort of stupid for not having read the rest of them actually. Essentially, this book encapsulates my style of humor, and came at a point in my life where I was already laughing at all the things mocked in the book, so good timing or whatever, but still genius, and a wordsmith in comedy is a rare thing.
Paradise Lost - John Milton
I read the Bible, then I read this, and I read this again. The devil as a sympathetic character, one of the greatest tragic tales in poetry, or anything I suppose. Written in such a way to not be really partisan (or at least enough to not be banned for eternity), it's probably the earliest record of an opposing argument against the era's world power, while also being beautifully worded, on par with William Blake, but Blake had illustrations, I wish more people carried that on. I also love the story that Milton wrote this while blind through divine intervention.
The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare
Structural chaos, emotionally spontaneous, and "exit stage left, chased by a polar bear." I was going to put King Lear here, but this late play by English's all-deserving master is more beautiful, and impressive in that it has a lot of the power of King Lear in just the first half of the play, while the second half is much more bucolic and darkly hilarious, with a touch of sorrow, but never becoming melodramatic. Plays with this sort of structure, and lack of common thread, were less than rare, this is ahead of its time before being able to be ahead of its time.
Rhinoceros - Eugene Ionesco
I saw this performed by a French troupe a couple years back and it reinstilled my love for the most honest play regarding the human condition. Essentially, the main topic, amongst others, is the submission to norms and attacking everything else, especially those who question. Originally written in reaction to World War II and a critique of Sartre who condemned everyone but ignored the Soviet Union's crimes, it is probably even more relevant today, which is terrifying, but at least someone got it back then. His other plays are also fantastic.
The Kalevala - traditional Finnish tales
I could really pick any mythology (still need to read Russian and Japanese), but this is the most interesting for me so far, not for an particular reason either. Unlike Greek and Celtic mythologies however this is written in poetry form, like the Norse, and this is due to the tradition of carrying down folktales through song, and the magic of my translation is it managed to retain the lyricism.
La Religieuse - Denis Diderot
This novel began as a joke, with a friend of Diderot and co. moving away from them, and, in hoping to make him return, Diderot started writing to him under the guise of Suzanne, a nun who barely escaped death from her convent, begging him to come save her. This correspondence lasted a couple months (with each of his sympathetic replies mustering many laughs amongst his eager readers) and he eventually did return for her, but discovered the ruse and laughed along with his friends. However, this became the basis for the novel, written as a confession to this Marquis, explaining the madness that occurs between two different convents, one utterly brutal, and the other more...desirable (Black Narcissus definitely took notes here). While not only being an attack on the way convents were run at the time, it was also a devastating attack against religious intolerance and repression (mentally, physically, spiritually), and is linked to being a key influence on the French Revolution, back when books changed the world.
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Short story that everyone has probably read, but it certainly isn't outdated. It is certainly an obvious choice though.
Candide - Voltaire
This might be more obvious, but this is a book I think is possibly the most understood, because either people I've spoken with think it's literal, or they think it's 100% sarcastic. It's both, and knowing which is which changes the entire story.
PS: Sedai, Gilgamesh precedes The Odyssey.
Les Chants de Maldoror - Comte de Lautréamont
French surrealism before it was a thing, that not even the French are generally aware of as I found out, which I read in high school and became a mental deviant. It's a prose poem, not really with a plot, but a common thread of questioning a bittersweet misanthropy through visions and finding morality therein. Really dense and chaotic, one of a kind, a true puppeteer this man.
The Voice Imitator - Thomas Bernhard
Microfiction of the finest quality I've come across. I'm still stunned how he can have complete stories ranging from two sentences to just one page that are all just devastating, and understated at that. The topics covered are pretty much, uh, everything, so, ya know, fun for the whole family, as long as your family is depressed as ****.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
What a lovely juxtaposition that is, this being the funniest book I've ever read. Absurdities of technology, politic, reducing the big questions to jokes, all while being rather profound I felt; I feel sort of stupid for not having read the rest of them actually. Essentially, this book encapsulates my style of humor, and came at a point in my life where I was already laughing at all the things mocked in the book, so good timing or whatever, but still genius, and a wordsmith in comedy is a rare thing.
Paradise Lost - John Milton
I read the Bible, then I read this, and I read this again. The devil as a sympathetic character, one of the greatest tragic tales in poetry, or anything I suppose. Written in such a way to not be really partisan (or at least enough to not be banned for eternity), it's probably the earliest record of an opposing argument against the era's world power, while also being beautifully worded, on par with William Blake, but Blake had illustrations, I wish more people carried that on. I also love the story that Milton wrote this while blind through divine intervention.
The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare
Structural chaos, emotionally spontaneous, and "exit stage left, chased by a polar bear." I was going to put King Lear here, but this late play by English's all-deserving master is more beautiful, and impressive in that it has a lot of the power of King Lear in just the first half of the play, while the second half is much more bucolic and darkly hilarious, with a touch of sorrow, but never becoming melodramatic. Plays with this sort of structure, and lack of common thread, were less than rare, this is ahead of its time before being able to be ahead of its time.
Rhinoceros - Eugene Ionesco
I saw this performed by a French troupe a couple years back and it reinstilled my love for the most honest play regarding the human condition. Essentially, the main topic, amongst others, is the submission to norms and attacking everything else, especially those who question. Originally written in reaction to World War II and a critique of Sartre who condemned everyone but ignored the Soviet Union's crimes, it is probably even more relevant today, which is terrifying, but at least someone got it back then. His other plays are also fantastic.
The Kalevala - traditional Finnish tales
I could really pick any mythology (still need to read Russian and Japanese), but this is the most interesting for me so far, not for an particular reason either. Unlike Greek and Celtic mythologies however this is written in poetry form, like the Norse, and this is due to the tradition of carrying down folktales through song, and the magic of my translation is it managed to retain the lyricism.
La Religieuse - Denis Diderot
This novel began as a joke, with a friend of Diderot and co. moving away from them, and, in hoping to make him return, Diderot started writing to him under the guise of Suzanne, a nun who barely escaped death from her convent, begging him to come save her. This correspondence lasted a couple months (with each of his sympathetic replies mustering many laughs amongst his eager readers) and he eventually did return for her, but discovered the ruse and laughed along with his friends. However, this became the basis for the novel, written as a confession to this Marquis, explaining the madness that occurs between two different convents, one utterly brutal, and the other more...desirable (Black Narcissus definitely took notes here). While not only being an attack on the way convents were run at the time, it was also a devastating attack against religious intolerance and repression (mentally, physically, spiritually), and is linked to being a key influence on the French Revolution, back when books changed the world.
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Short story that everyone has probably read, but it certainly isn't outdated. It is certainly an obvious choice though.
Candide - Voltaire
This might be more obvious, but this is a book I think is possibly the most understood, because either people I've spoken with think it's literal, or they think it's 100% sarcastic. It's both, and knowing which is which changes the entire story.
PS: Sedai, Gilgamesh precedes The Odyssey.
, specially Maria Gabriela Llansol and Edmundo Bettencourt (very unknown, but among the best portuguese writers IMO). There's an immense body of portuguese language literature, it's a major generalisation to say it's mostly conventional... there's styles and forms for every sensibility.
and don't get me started on Tess of the D'Urbervilles 
)