This a book which sees raging debates in review pages and discussion groups. It seems people like to love it or hate it, and if there was a list for 'most fascinating book of the 20th century', Rand's classic would have to be in the top ten.

Atlas Shrugged is a mystery, raunchy romance and work of philosophy all in one. Its protagonist is Dagny Taggart, a driven young railroad executive who tries to run Taggart Transcontinental while fighting off corruption on a national scale. She is joined in the cast by the ruthless industrialist Hank Rearden and the flamboyant and aristocratic mining baron Francisco D'Anconia. But the key character does not reveal himself until late in the book, when we get answers to some intriguing questions: why is the greatest living philosopher working as a short-order cook in a diner in the Rocky Mountains? How did the most important inventor of our time come to be an underground ganger on the railways? What happens when the people who might save the world choose not to save it? Who is John Galt?

Rand was a philosopher who used fiction to influence the masses. Atlas Shrugged may get you thinking for the first time about the capitalist system and the ethic of individual freedom which underpins it. Rand is a patron saint of the 21st century entrepreneur because she provides a morality of powerful creation. The book addresses one of basic issues of existence: the degree to which one should be selfish. At a higher level, the work is a treatise on the heights that human beings can and should reach for.

Atlas Shrugged was driven by the author's fury that people wasted the one capacity which distinguished them from other animals: reason. Those who no longer asked 'Why am I alive?' or 'What am I going to do or create that can justify my existence?' were for Rand as good as dead. Society amounted to a protection racket for all sorts of mediocrities, with people agreeing not to point out others' lack of effort if theirs was not likewise exposed. But this willingness to accept less, in order to accommodate 'human nature', was for Rand actually anti-human. One of her characters says something to the effect of "...most people don't really want to live, but 'to get away with' living".

Atlas Shrugged runs for 1080 pages, and like the greatest novels, it is a world you enter rather than a book you read. Rand may have been a ranting, chain-smoking, homophobic, commie-hater, yet her star continues to rise. Whether she influenced its emergence or not, her philosophy of maximum self-expression teamed with a lust for technological progress has been the perfect backdrop for the new economy.

The book might not be the most brilliant prose: there are many lines that will have the discerning reader shaking their head or chuckling, and there is a fair amount of repetition - like many books of this length, it could be a lot shorter and better edited - but there is a spirit behind the words that makes you certain you are reading something important.