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In 1972 the BBC broadcast four half-hour programmes that opened with a man taking a scalpel to a reproduction of a Botticelli and asking viewers what copying does to a painting. The man was John Berger, a London-born painter turned critic, and the series was Ways of Seeing. The same year his novel G. won the Booker Prize, and he used his acceptance speech to attack the sponsor and give half the money to the British Black Panthers. By then he had already left Britain for France, where he spent more than fifty years writing about peasants, migrants, painters and photographs. This guide covers his 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1958–2011 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
John Berger wrote several dozen books of essays, fiction, art criticism and poetry. The best known are Ways of Seeing (1972), G. (1972), which won the Booker Prize, A Fortunate Man (1967) and Pig Earth (1979). Start with Ways of Seeing: it is short, it is where the phrase “ways of seeing” comes from, and everything else he wrote builds on how it teaches you to look.
Where to Start with John Berger
If you want his most famous book
→ Ways of Seeing (1972) — the 1972 companion to the BBC series.
If you want the Booker-winning novel
→ G. (1972).
If you want non-fiction that reads like a novel
→ A Fortunate Man (1967) — a year with a country doctor.
If you want his fiction of peasant life
→ Pig Earth (1979) — the first part of Into Their Labours.
14 John Berger Books, in Order
A Painter of Our Time
His first novel, about Janos Lavin, a Hungarian painter living in exile in London, told largely through the diary he leaves behind. Its sympathy for a communist artist made it a Cold War target: the publisher withdrew it about a month after publication, under pressure from the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Permanent Red
His first collection of essays, drawn from the art criticism he wrote in London in the 1950s. It sets out the questions that run through all his later work: who art is for, and what it shows about the society that makes it.
The Success and Failure of Picasso
A survey of Picasso’s career that refuses the usual celebration. Berger argues that the painter’s enormous fame cut him off from the subjects that had fed his best work, and the book questions the value of much of what he made later.
A Fortunate Man
A portrait of a general practitioner, called Sassall in the book, working in a poor rural community in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, with photographs by the Swiss photographer Jean Mohr. The real doctor, John Eskell, practised there for about 35 years. Berger asks what a doctor gives a community and what it costs him.
G.
A picaresque novel about a Don Juan figure moving through Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, set against real events: the 1898 massacre of protesters in Milan, the Boer War, the first flight across the Alps and the run-up to the First World War. It also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Berger gave half the Booker money to the British Black Panthers and used the rest to fund A Seventh Man.
Ways of Seeing
The book made with the BBC series of the same name: seven essays, three of them told only in pictures. Partly drawing on Walter Benjamin, it argues that reproduction changes what a painting means, that European oil painting celebrated property, and that the female nude was made for a male spectator, and it ends with advertising. Its line on how men look and women are looked at fed directly into feminist film theory.
A Seventh Man
A study of migrant workers in Europe in the early 1970s, made again with Jean Mohr’s photographs and partly paid for with his Booker money. It follows a composite migrant from his village to the factories of the north: recruitment, medical checks, the work, the barracks and the return.
Pig Earth
Stories, poems and an essay about the peasant life of the Alpine region in France where Berger lived, written from inside the village rather than about it. It is the first volume of Into Their Labours, a trilogy that follows the peasants from the land into the cities, completed by Once in Europa (1987) and Lilac and Flag (1990).
About Looking
Essays on photographs, painters and animals, opening with “Why Look at Animals?”, on what was lost when animals disappeared from daily life and turned up instead in zoos and pictures. Other pieces deal with the uses of photography and with painters from Courbet to Giacometti.
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
A short book that mixes prose and poems on time, distance, love and absence, written partly as a love letter. It is among the most personal things he wrote.
To the Wedding
Ninon, a young French woman, learns she is HIV-positive and tries to end her relationship with Gino, a market trader from Lombardy, who marries her anyway. Her father and mother travel separately across Europe to the wedding by the mouth of the Po, and the story is gathered by a blind Greek peddler who hears it.
King
A novel narrated by a dog called King, who lives with a group of homeless people in a makeshift settlement beside a motorway on the edge of a European city.
From A to X
Letters from A’ida, a pharmacist in the town of Suse in an unnamed occupied country, to her lover Xavier, a political prisoner serving two life sentences. His own notes, which she never receives, fill the backs and margins of the pages. It was longlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize.
Bento’s Sketchbook
Built around the philosopher Spinoza, known as Bento to his friends, who was also said to have kept a sketchbook that never survived. Berger mixes passages from Spinoza with his own drawings and short memories and stories about the act of drawing.
In What Order to Read John Berger
Berger’s books stand alone, apart from the Into Their Labours trilogy, which should be read in order: Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag. Publication order shows him moving from the London art critic of the 1950s to the writer of peasants and migrants he became in France after the 1970s.
A sensible route is to start with Ways of Seeing, read the essays in About Looking, then pick between the fiction (G. and the trilogy) and the books he made with Jean Mohr (A Fortunate Man and A Seventh Man).
A reading path
1. Ways of Seeing (1972)
2. About Looking (1980)
3. A Fortunate Man (1967)
4. G. (1972)
5. Pig Earth (1979)
Everything Else John Berger Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Novels
4
4 books · 1962–1990
- 1962The Foot of Clivehis second novel
- 1964Corker’s Freedomhis third novel
- 1987Once in Europathe second part of Into Their Labours
- 1990Lilac and Flagthe last part of Into Their Labours, set in the city
Essays and collaborations
5
5 books · 1982–2016
- 1982Another Way of Tellingwith Jean Mohr, on photography and how it tells stories
- 2001The Shape of a Pocketessays, including letters with Subcomandante Marcos
- 2007Hold Everything Deardispatches on survival and resistance
- 2016Confabulationslate essays on language and drawing
- 2016Landscapesessays on art, edited by Tom Overton
The years · 1926–2017
Quick facts about John Berger
- Known for
- John Berger is known for changing how people look at art and images, above all through the 1972 BBC series and book Ways of Seeing.
- 1926
- Born in Stoke Newington, London
- 1972
- Ways of Seeing and the Booker for G.
- 1979
- Pig Earth
- 2008
- From A to X longlisted for the Booker
- 2017
- Dies at Antony, near Paris, aged 90
- Born
- 5 November 1926, Stoke Newington, London
- Trained
- As a painter, at the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art in London
- Lived
- In France from 1962, for many years in the Alpine village of Quincy, Haute-Savoie
- Prizes
- Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize for G. (1972)
- Collaborator
- The Swiss photographer Jean Mohr, on A Fortunate Man, A Seventh Man and Another Way of Telling
- Died
- 2 January 2017, Antony, Hauts-de-Seine, France
The red mark is 1972: the BBC series and book Ways of Seeing, the same year G. won the Booker Prize.
How John Berger Writes: Looking First
Berger trained as a painter, and his writing starts from looking at something specific: a painting, a photograph, a doctor at work, a village. Ways of Seeing opens with “Seeing comes before words”, and the books that follow keep testing what words can add to what the eye has already taken in.
He was a Marxist all his life, and the politics are never far from the surface: who owns a painting, who works the land, who crosses a border for a job. What keeps the books from reading as tracts is his attention to particular people. A Fortunate Man and A Seventh Man set his prose next to Jean Mohr’s photographs so that neither explains the other.
In form he rarely stayed still. G. breaks off into essays and drawings, Pig Earth mixes stories with poems, From A to X is a bundle of letters with notes in the margins, and Bento’s Sketchbook moves between philosophy, drawing and memory. His essay “Uses of Photography” in About Looking is dedicated to Susan Sontag and answers her On Photography.
Watch
John Berger on Ways of Seeing
Gavin Esler interviews John Berger for BBC Newsnight in 2011 about Ways of Seeing, being an artist and Marxism; the clip was reposted after his death in January 2017. From the official BBC Politics channel.
Frequently asked questions about John Berger’s books
How many books has John Berger written?
Several dozen, across novels, essays, art criticism, photography books, plays and one volume of poetry. This page covers his 14 key books, from A Painter of Our Time (1958) to Bento’s Sketchbook (2011), and lists nine more in the bibliography.
What are John Berger’s books in order?
A Painter of Our Time (1958), Permanent Red (1960), The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), A Fortunate Man (1967), G. (1972), Ways of Seeing (1972), A Seventh Man (1975), Pig Earth (1979), About Looking (1980), And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (1984), To the Wedding (1995), King (1999), From A to X (2008) and Bento’s Sketchbook (2011).
Where should I start with John Berger?
With Ways of Seeing (1972). It is short, much of it is pictures, and it sets out the way of looking that runs through everything else he wrote. If you would rather start with fiction, read G.; for reportage, A Fortunate Man.
What is John Berger’s most famous book?
Ways of Seeing (1972), the book made with his four-part BBC television series of the same year. It is still widely taught in art schools and universities.
Did John Berger win the Booker Prize?
Yes. G. won the Booker Prize in 1972, ahead of a shortlist that included Thomas Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Susan Hill’s The Bird of Night. The same novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2008 From A to X was longlisted.
Why did John Berger give his Booker Prize money to the Black Panthers?
In his acceptance speech in 1972 he attacked the sponsor, Booker McConnell, for its history of sugar plantations and exploitation in the Caribbean, and said he would turn the prize against itself. He gave half the money to the British Black Panther movement in London and kept the other half to fund his research on migrant workers, which became A Seventh Man (1975). The speech caused a scandal at the time.
Can you watch Ways of Seeing?
The series was made by the BBC and first broadcast in 1972, in four episodes directed by Mike Dibb. They cover reproduction, the female nude, oil painting and property, and advertising. The book follows the same order.
Why was A Painter of Our Time withdrawn?
His first novel, published in 1958, was about an exiled Hungarian communist painter. About a month after it came out the publisher withdrew it, under pressure from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist organisation later revealed to have been funded by the CIA.
Is John Berger still alive?
No. He died on 2 January 2017 at his home in Antony, near Paris, aged 90. He was born in Stoke Newington, London, on 5 November 1926.
Is there a film about John Berger?
The Seasons in Quincy (2016) is a documentary in four parts about him, made by Tilda Swinton, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth and Bartek Dziadosz. Berger also co-wrote three films with the Swiss director Alain Tanner, including Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976).
Footnotes
- John Berger — Wikipedia
- Seeing G.: John Berger, the Black Panthers and the Booker, 50 years on — The Booker Prizes
- The Booker Prize 1972 — The Booker Prizes
- John Berger dies aged 90 — Artlyst
- John Berger and A Fortunate Man — Reading the Forest
- From A to X — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Seeing comes before words.”
— John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)
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