There are quite a lot of books about cycling.
There are books about the Tour de France. Books about famous cyclists. Books about training, racing, hills, mountains, Lycra and the correct way to spend £8,000 on something made almost entirely from carbon fibre.
But there is another, slightly stranger category: fictional books in which the bicycle becomes part of the story.
And when you start looking, there are some surprisingly good ones.
The bicycle has appeared in fiction for more than 120 years, and writers have used it for all sorts of purposes. It can represent freedom, escape, independence, obsession, ambition, romance, adventure, comedy or just a very good way of getting into trouble.
So here are ten fictional books where the bicycle gets a starring role — plus a few bonus titles at the end for anyone who wants to disappear down the literary cycling rabbit hole.
1. The Wheels of Chance — H. G. Wells, 1896
Let’s start with what might be the original cycling novel.
H. G. Wells’ The Wheels of Chance follows Mr Hoopdriver, a bored draper’s assistant from Putney who escapes his monotonous working life by setting off on a cycling holiday through the English countryside.
It is part comedy, part adventure and part social observation. But what makes it particularly interesting now is what the bicycle represents.
In the 1890s, the bicycle was still a relatively new technology and was radically changing what ordinary people could do. You could suddenly leave home under your own steam and travel considerable distances without needing a horse, a train or a wealthy relative.
For Hoopdriver, the bicycle is essentially an escape hatch.
And perhaps the first literary example of the increasingly familiar feeling of looking at your bike and thinking: I could just leave.
2. Three Men on the Bummel — Jerome K. Jerome, 1900
If you’ve read Three Men in a Boat, you might be pleased to know that the three men eventually get back on the road.
This time, however, they are on bicycles.
Jerome K. Jerome’s sequel follows George, Harris and J. as they embark on a cycling tour through Germany. Predictably, things don’t go entirely to plan.
There are hills. There is weather. There are mechanical problems. There are arguments.
In other words, it is recognisable cycling holiday territory more than 120 years later.
The book is also a wonderful snapshot of the moment when cycling was becoming a major leisure activity. The bicycle wasn’t just a machine for getting from A to B. It was a ticket to go exploring.
3. The Supermale — Alfred Jarry, 1902
Things get considerably weirder here.
Alfred Jarry’s The Supermale is an early surrealist novella involving a race between cyclists and a train.
Yes, cyclists and a train.
The competitors are fuelled by an extraordinary concoction called “perpetual motion food”, and the race becomes an increasingly ridiculous exploration of endurance, speed and the idea of turning human beings into machines.
Jarry himself was a famously eccentric cyclist who rode around Paris on a fixed-gear bicycle and apparently had a habit of carrying a pistol to discourage dogs from chasing him.
So perhaps this book was inevitable.
It is less “pleasant Sunday cycle ride” and more “what if cycling became an extreme experiment in human engineering?”
Which is, admittedly, quite a good premise.
4. The Third Policeman — Flann O’Brien, 1967
This may be the strangest bicycle book ever written.
Actually, calling it a bicycle book is slightly misleading because The Third Policeman is a surreal, darkly comic Irish novel involving murder, strange policemen, philosophical arguments and an increasingly confusing universe.
But bicycles are absolutely central to its bizarre logic.
One of the book’s great inventions is the “Atomic Theory”, which proposes that prolonged contact between humans and bicycles causes an exchange of atoms.
In other words, spend enough time riding your bike and eventually you may become part bicycle.
The bicycles themselves also start behaving rather suspiciously.
It is completely bonkers.
And yet the bicycle obsession is so memorable that the novel has become one of the classics of cycling literature.
For anyone who has ever spent slightly too much time thinking about their bike, this one might feel uncomfortably relevant.
5. The Yellow Jersey — Ralph Hurne, 1973
Moving forward to the world of professional cycling, The Yellow Jersey follows Terry Davenport, a washed-up professional cyclist attempting one last comeback in the Tour de France.
It is a very different kind of cycling novel from the charming Victorian adventures of H. G. Wells.
This is cycling as professional obsession: ambition, rivalry, sex, drugs and the brutal physical demands of racing.
Published in 1973, it also makes for an interesting time capsule of how professional cycling was portrayed before the sport became the polished, global spectacle we know today.
It is not necessarily the most politically correct book on this list — but it is a fascinating piece of cycling history disguised as a novel.
6. The Rider — Tim Krabbé, 1978
If you only read one cycling novel from this list, make it this one.
The Rider is a short Dutch novel about a bicycle race, written by Tim Krabbé, who was himself a cyclist as well as a writer and chess player.
The entire story takes place during a single race.
And that is pretty much it.
Except it doesn’t feel like it.
Krabbé takes you inside the rider’s head: the tactics, the calculations, the fear, the pain, the sudden bursts of confidence and the strange psychological games taking place between riders.
You don’t just read about someone cycling.
You feel like you’re sitting on the saddle with them.
It has become something of a cult classic and is widely regarded as one of the finest fictional accounts of bicycle racing ever written.
It is also a useful reminder that a bike race, when you are actually in it, is probably considerably more complicated than it looks from the pavement.
7. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar — Suzanne Joinson, 2012
This one takes the bicycle somewhere rather more adventurous.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar moves between contemporary London and the 1920s, following Eva English, a young woman travelling through Central Asia.
Eva is a cyclist and traveller, and her bicycle becomes part of her independence and ability to explore a world that was still extremely unusual for a Western woman to travel through alone.
The book is not simply a cycling adventure. It is about identity, women, travel, belonging and the stories we tell about ourselves.
But the bicycle is important because it gives Eva mobility.
And there is something particularly appealing about the image of a woman in the 1920s setting off across the world with a bicycle and a very good reason not to turn back.
8. Gold — Chris Cleave, 2012
From the open road to the Olympic velodrome.
Chris Cleave’s Gold follows Kate Meadows and Zoe Castle, two elite track cyclists who have been friends and rivals since childhood.
Both are chasing Olympic success at the 2012 London Games.
But the story isn’t really just about winning medals. It is about friendship, rivalry, motherhood, ambition and the sacrifices involved in trying to become the best at something.
The bicycle is the thing that brought the two women together — and the thing that threatens to pull them apart.
It is also a nice reminder that cycling fiction doesn’t have to mean middle-aged men suffering up mountains in France.
There are velodromes too.
9. The Night Stages — Jane Urquhart, 2015
Jane Urquhart’s The Night Stages is a more atmospheric and literary take on cycling.
The story is set partly in post-war Ireland and involves memories, relationships and a mysterious disappearance connected with a bicycle race.
The novel draws on the history of the Irish Rás cycle race, using cycling as part of a much larger story about memory, family and the past.
Here the bicycle isn’t simply a form of transport or a sporting object.
A race becomes part of the mythology of a group of people.
Which is something cycling does particularly well. Ask someone about the best bike ride they’ve ever done and there is a reasonable chance you’ll get a 25-minute story involving weather, a puncture, a completely unnecessary hill and a cafe at the end.
10. We Begin Our Ascent — Joe Mungo Reed, 2018
Finally, we arrive at modern professional cycling.
We Begin Our Ascent follows Sol, a professional cyclist competing in the Tour de France, while his wife Liz is a geneticist and they have a young baby.
As Sol becomes increasingly desperate to succeed, the darker side of professional cycling begins to emerge.
Doping, ambition, pressure and the compromises people make to achieve success all become part of the story.
The Tour provides the structure, but underneath it is a novel about relationships and what happens when ambition starts demanding more than people are prepared to give.
It is a much more contemporary cycling story than The Yellow Jersey, but there is a common thread between them.
The bicycle can be a wonderful machine.
The professional cycling world built around it can be considerably less simple.
Bonus: A Few More Cycling Books Worth Hunting Down
If ten isn’t enough — and frankly, once you’ve started looking at this subject it probably won’t be — here are a few more.
Cat — Freya North, 2000
A journalist heads off to cover the Tour de France and finds herself rather more involved in the world of professional cycling than expected.
Part romance, part cycling adventure and very much a product of its era.
Bad to the Bone — James Waddington, 1998
A cycling thriller involving Tour de France professionals, a sinister sports doctor and a rather unpleasant bargain.
Think professional cycling meets Faust.
Molloy — Samuel Beckett, 1951
Not exactly a cycling novel, but Beckett was a keen cyclist and the bicycle is woven deeply into the strange world of Molloy.
The protagonist is so dependent on his bicycle that being separated from it becomes a genuine problem.
For Beckett, the bike becomes almost an extension of the body.
The Invisible Mile — David Coventry, 2015
A historical novel inspired by four New Zealand cyclists competing in the 1928 Tour de France.
A good choice if you like your cycling with a generous helping of history, suffering and early-20th-century European roads.
The Big Loop — Claire Huchet Bishop
A cycling story for younger readers, set around the world of French cycling and the Tour de France.
Why Are Bicycles So Good in Fiction?
Perhaps the more interesting question is why bicycles keep appearing in stories at all.
A car can get you somewhere quickly.
A train can get you somewhere dramatically.
A plane can get you somewhere very far away.
But a bicycle sits somewhere in between.
You are moving, but you’re still part of the landscape.
You can leave whenever you want, but you can’t go particularly far without making an effort.
You can have an adventure without actually having to plan one.
And, crucially, you are exposed to everything.
The weather. The hills. The people. The smells. The dodgy road surfaces. The pub you weren’t expecting to find. The completely unnecessary shortcut.
That makes the bicycle a surprisingly good storytelling device.
In these books, the bicycle represents escape, freedom, obsession, independence, ambition, friendship, competition and sometimes complete madness.
Which seems about right.
Because perhaps the best thing about a bicycle is that it is never just a way of getting from A to B.
Sometimes it is the reason you went in the first place.🚲📚
#happy cycling from #Goodordering ❤️
