'What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

“The Citadel,” by A.J. Cronin, isn’t as well known in America as in Britain and the Commonwealth. The oppressive conditions described in the fictional Welsh mining town so captivated the public’s imagination that it ostensibly shares responsibility for the creation of the National Health Service. A generation of physicians outside of America name “The Citadel” as the book that called them to medicine.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/books/review/abraham-verghese-by-the-book-interview.html