I think it’s fair to say that even great books allegedly “known” in the US aren’t widely known in the sense of having actually been read. With that in mind, I

I think it’s fair to say that even great books allegedly “known” in the US aren’t widely known in the sense of having actually been read. With that in mind, I would just go through the list of Nobel Prize winners (or Penn or another major award). If the popular winners are too well known for your tastes (Ishiguro, Morrison) I am sure the less famous ones will be sufficiently unknown (Pamuk, Mahfouz).