10 Best Book Antiheroes of All Time

Image via LSU Press Published Aug 8, 2026, 4:29 PM EDT Jeremy has more than 2700 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows. His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings). When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account. He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas. Sign in to your Collider account If you hear the term antihero nowadays, your mind might jump to TV shows before anything else, since the likes of The Sopranos, Dexter, and (maybe) Breaking Bad have all played around with having antihero protagonists, to some extent. They're usually people with some good traits, but then also any number of not-so-good or undesirable traits that are in tension with the good qualities they might have. Sometimes, antiheroes lean a little more toward the heroic side of things, while in other stories, they're generally bad people who might be bad or flawed in an ultimately sympathetic way. Some antiheroes also feel heroic because they're placed in opposition to characters who do considerably worse things. To show how the kind of character is in no way relegated to just the TV or movie screen, here are some of the best book antiheroes of all time, with most of them (but not all) being from older works of literature. 10 'The Catcher in the Rye' (1951) Holden Caulfield Image via Little, Brown and Company To start things off with something a bit controversial, here’s The Catcher in the Rye, which is not a traditionally disturbing book or anything, but it does have a disturbed (and controversial) main character. Holden Caulfield is that character, and he’s a teenage boy who feels very disconnected from life and all the people around him. He complains, generally looks at things cynically, and then that’s about it. The Catcher in the Rye does not have much of a narrative, which adds to the divisiveness, to some extent, particularly when it’s a book lots of people are made to read in high school (and it can be hard to get excited about things you might've had to over-analyze). But it’s definitely about an antihero, or a very untraditional protagonist, and Holden’s narration is what keeps things interesting. 9 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (1844–1846) Edmond Dantès Image via Penguin There are books written in the centuries since The Count of Monte Cristo that don’t even come close to being as good, with its age making it seriously impressive to contemplate just how ahead of its time it was. It’s a big old epic of a book, originally published in a serialized form between 1844 and 1846, telling the drawn-out (though always compelling) story of a man named Edmond Dantès, who also goes by the name of the titular character, plus some other aliases. Essentially, The Count of Monte Cristo is about him enacting a very elaborate revenge plot after he was framed and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Edmond’s ruthless in his pursuit, and is motivated by desires that could be described as selfish, yet you do understand where he’s coming from, and there is an undeniable thrill in seeing just how far he’ll go in making those who wronged him sorry. 8 'The Hobbit' (1937) Thorin Oakenshield Image via HarperCollins Publishers It can be tempting to look at The Hobbit as something that stands in the shadow of The Lord of the Rings, which is the much larger and more ambitious J.R.R. Tolkien epic set in Middle-earth, but The Hobbit does boast a surprisingly compelling tragic hero. Not necessarily Bilbo Baggins, who’s an unconventional protagonist of sorts, but Thorin Oakenshield, who’s the leader of the Company of Dwarves with whom Bilbo goes on the whole adventure. Thorin cares about his allies, and is certainly physically powerful the way you might expect a heroic fantasy character to be, but he becomes tempted by greed in ways that eventually prove destructive, both to him and his fellow dwarves. It’s a dark place for the supposedly “lighter” The Hobbit to go, but it helps give the book a strong message, all the while working as foreshadowing for the heroic characters who get tempted or corrupted in one way or another in The Lord of the Rings. 7 'Conan the Barbarian' (1932–1936) Conan Image via Gnome Press There is one novel-length entry in the Conan the Barbarian series, called The Hour of the Dragon (or sometimes called Conan the Conqueror), and then there are also plenty of short stories within the same series, written by Robert E. Howard. That one novel makes him worth ranking among other antihero characters from novels, but there is a lot more to the titular character, and so you have to consider them, to some extent. Conan is a very classic sort of antihero, since he is the protagonist and tends to fight antagonists who are genuinely evil, but he’s a brutal hero and definitely flawed in some regards. He does have allies and is loyal to those who don’t get on his bad side, but then he treats enemies with a greater level of violence than most other heroes… but he is a barbarian, after all. It’s in the title and stuff. 6 'Crime and Punishment' (1866) Rodion Raskolnikov Image via Penguin The main narrative of Crime and Punishment involves the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, committing one murder he sees as justified, and another that’s accidental. He grapples with what he’s done while trying to avoid letting the truth about his crimes be revealed, and that really does get stretched out in a way that proves rather agonizing (Crime and Punishment is not a short book, by any means). It feels worth mentioning, though, because of the book’s age, thereby playing a role in defining the whole antihero archetype going forward, in the decades (and centuries, really) to come. Crime and Punishment is a classic for other reasons, but the morally complex main character going through a tremendous ordeal is a big reason why it holds up and endures to such a great extent. 5 'Mistborn: The Final Empire' (2006) Kelsier Image via Tor Books Without talking too much about the whole trilogy, Mistborn: The Final Empire is the book that begins said trilogy, and it’s the one where Kelsier plays the biggest part. He’s the leader of a group of revolutionaries, essentially, and he spends much of The Final Empire plotting an ambitious heist against The Lord Ruler, who is a more complicated villain than he might've initially seemed, a little like how Kelsier is a more complicated sort of “heroic” character. Vin is the main hero of The Final Empire, and the other two books in the original Mistborn trilogy, but she doesn’t have as many morally questionable traits, making Kelsier feel like a more traditional antihero. He is one of the best parts of the series, and is an all-timer as far as forceful/passionate – and even somewhat destructive/dangerous – heroic characters are concerned. 4 'A Song of Ice and Fire' (1996–2011) Jaime Lannister Image via Bantam Spectra Only picking one character from this series is hard, since A Song of Ice and Fire is noteworthy for having complex characters, with some wholly heroic or villainous, sure, but really not that many. Most of them are somewhere in between such extremes, and it’s possibly Jaime Lannister who – at least in the books, so far – lines up most of all with what makes a character an antihero. Whatever arc he has in A Song of Ice and Fire admittedly isn't finished yet... but for now, he is definitely one of the most morally complex and interesting characters. He’s more villainous in the first book, but then is revealed to be deeper than he might've seemed initially, and then there’s also more to his backstory (and why he earned the name “Kingslayer”) than you might've thought, at first. Whatever arc he has in A Song of Ice and Fire admittedly isn't finished yet, so he might end up with few heroic qualities by the end (which did, controversially, kind of happen right at the end of Game of Thrones), but for now, he is definitely one of the most morally complex and interesting characters in the book series. 3 'A Confederacy of Dunces' (1980) Ignatius J. Reilly Image via Grove Press There aren’t as many comedic books out there as there are TV shows or movies, but A Confederacy of Dunces is thankfully there to show it can be done, because it is very (and uniquely) funny. The main character is a man named Ignatius J. Reilly, and much of the book involves him trying to find a job, but not wanting a job, and then just generally struggling through life and being an annoyance to plenty of people he comes into contact with. It’s rambling and doesn’t have much of a plot in the traditional sense, honestly, but the sense of humor – and the character of Ignatius – makes it worthwhile. He’s frustrating and not really likable, but he does remain compelling and not so annoying that you want to abandon A Confederacy of Dunces, so the fine line walked there tonally is quite impressive, on the part of author John Kennedy Toole. 2 'The Maltese Falcon​​​​​​​' (1930) Sam Spade Image via Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. While Philip Marlowe is the more well-known private eye/detective character of this era, he’s harder to pin down as an antihero, especially because he’s in a bunch of different books, and so Sam Spade is a little easier to define as an antihero. Spade did admittedly appear in some other stories by Dashiell Hammett, but The Maltese Falcon was the main one, and so it’s the one being considered here. The Maltese Falcon, the novel, did so much for crime/mystery literature, much as its 1941 movie adaptation did a lot for the development of the film noir genre overall. Sam Spade gets wrapped up in the search for the famed titular statuette, and he’s ruthless against a bunch of characters who are ultimately shadier than him, so it really is the perfect kind of story to have an antihero sort of character at the center of. The Maltese Falcon Release Date October 18, 1941 Runtime 100 minutes Cast Humphrey Bogart Samuel Spade Mary Astor Brigid O'Shaughnessy 1 'The Dark Tower' (1982–2004) Roland Deschain When it comes to the works of Stephen King, it’s the villains who tend to stand out more than the heroes, with some being memorably monstrous, and a few others being more complex… and then he’s written characters who aren’t really villainous, but they are a threat in one way or another (like the title character in Carrie). Of his heroes, though, it’s Roland, from The Dark Tower books, who stands out as the most notable antihero. Like, Roland does some terrible things, especially in the first one or two books in the series, but then his backstory goes a long way toward explaining why he’s become that way, and then as the journey nears its end, he’s forced once more to do some morally questionable things. He’s not a fascinating character initially, but certainly becomes one, and you end up feeling pity for – and frustration with – him at different points throughout, alongside all sorts of other complicated emotions you can have about (or with) a fictional character.