Moby-Dick, if only for the jumble of styles and the international cast of characters on the Pequod.
I’d go with “To Kill a Mockingbird” actually.
That’s a slice of Americana right there. Tinges of Racism, and learning about the world around us while coming of age, yet still having archetypal figures striving to show us what we can and what we should strive to be even in the face of our own problems and checkered past.
The Grapes of Wrath is probably up there. Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby all have my seal of approval, too. They are all amazing novels that say something important about their time and place, refining our definitions and expectations of what America and its culture is all about.
As far as the “Great British Novel”, it would have to be Dickens, right? Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations?
Some guesses:
French: Madame Bovary
Russian: Anna Karenina
British: Bleak House
Irish: Ulysses
German: The Devil’s Elixirs (I’m actually serious)
Italian: The Betrothed
No love for East of Eden?
We studied To Kill A Mockingbird in school. I loved it. I must reread it. Ulysses is perhaps the greatest novel by an Irish person but I wonder if there are other novels that are more evocative of an Irish sensibility (if such a thing exists!). Amongst Women by John McGahern would be one I’d suggest.
I really like Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March as the mythical Great American Novel. Its a classic work written by a real master, and set squarely in the American Dream / way of life tradition during the Great Depression. It’s probably not widely-read enough to be a popular choice, but it is pretty accessible IIRC.