The Greatest Books of All Time on Identity

Click to learn how this list is calculated.

This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

Follow on:

What should I read next?

Get personalized book recommendations based on your reading history and preferences. Our algorithm analyzes your favorite books and reading patterns to suggest your next great read.

Get Recommendations

Genres

Identity

Add additional genre filters

Countries

Date Range

Filter books by their publication year. Enter the earliest year (Start) and latest year (End) to find books published within that period. Leave either field empty to search from the beginning of time or up to the present day.

Filter

Reading Statistics

Click the button below to see how many of these books you've read!

Download

If you're interested in downloading this list as a CSV file for use in a spreadsheet application, you can easily do so by clicking the button below. Please note that to ensure a manageable file size and faster download, the CSV will include details for only the first 500 books.

Download

To download this list as a CSV file, please log in to your account. Once logged in, you'll be able to download the data for use in spreadsheet applications.

Login to Download
View: List Grid Table
Filter by: Genres Dates Countries
  1. 3401. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris

    Set in 1960s Chicago, this vividly illustrated coming-of-age tale is narrated by a ten-year-old who documents her life in a monster-filled sketchbook as she investigates the suspicious death of an elderly Jewish neighbor, unraveling hidden family histories, neighborhood violence, and questions of identity, grief, and otherness through a mix of childlike noir forensics, graphic imagery, and intimate memoir.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  2. 3402. Palmares by Gayl Jones

    A spare, lyrical novel that reimagines the history and afterlives of a maroon community in colonial Brazil, blending myth, memory, and imagination as its voice excavates the violent, erotic, and resistant legacies of slavery; time collapses into a haunting meditation on desire, language, collective memory, and the precarious cost of freedom.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  3. 3403. Daring And The Duke by Sarah MacLean

    The Bareknuckle Bastards Book III

    Grace Condry has spent a lifetime running from her past. Betrayed as a child by her only love and raised on the streets, she now hides in plain sight as queen of London's darkest corners. Ewan, Duke of Marwick, returns after a decade of searching, determined to win her back and make her his duchess. Grace vows revenge and keeps him close, but their reunion threatens the life she has claimed and the heart she swore he would never steal.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  4. 3404. A Hand Full Of Stars by Rafik Schami

    A teenager in Damascus wants to be a journalist in a suppressed society. He writes in his diary, describing his daily life and the rhythms of his hometown. The diary entries provide a personal account of everyday routines, small moments, and the limits placed on expression. Set in Damascus, Syria, the narrative shows his aspirations and ordinary experiences within a constraining social environment.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  5. 3405. The Magnetist's Fifth Winter by Per Olov Enquist

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  6. 3406. Syrian Brides by Anna Halabi

    Syrian Brides is a collection of stories about women in Syria who use wit and humor to navigate a patriarchal society. The tales range from a wife who outsmarts her husband with a pinch of salt and theatrics to a beauty who turns a misunderstanding into a triumph. Another story follows a young bride who finds unexpected peace amid a feud. Each piece highlights resilience and resourcefulness, showing small victories achieved through cunning and laughter.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  7. 3407. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

    An aging country gentleman, driven mad by chivalric romances, reinvents himself as a knight-errant and sets out with his loyal, shrewd squire on comic and poignant exploits—tilting at windmills, rescuing imagined ladies, and getting entangled in schemes—that contrast his lofty ideals with a prosaic, skeptical world, yielding a rich satire of romanticism and a profound meditation on imagination, identity, and friendship.

    The 17141st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  8. 3408. Todos Os Contos by Clarice Lispector

    A compendium of compact, luminous short pieces that probe the interior lives of their characters, blending acute psychological observation with poetic, often enigmatic language; everyday situations unfold into moments of revelation about identity, solitude, desire, and the limits of expression, as spare, experimental prose captures the strangeness and tenderness of human consciousness.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  9. 3409. Петербургские повести by Nikolai Gogol

    A loosely connected set of tales set in St. Petersburg that mixes dark comedy, grotesque absurdity and poignant social realism to expose the city’s hypocrisies and the crushing effects of bureaucracy, ambition and vanity. Through vivid street scenes and bizarre incidents—from a surreal loss of personal identity to the tragic fate of a lowly clerk whose only treasure is his coat—the collection skewers social pretensions, examines the corrosive pursuit of status and money, and combines biting satire with deep sympathy for the marginalized, producing a haunting portrait of urban life under an indifferent society.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  10. 3410. Secrets To The Grave by Tami Hoag

    Marissa Fordham is dead. Her daughter is found at the crime scene, injured but alive. Sheriff’s detective Tony Mendez and child advocate Anne Leone begin to peel back layers of Marissa’s life, and the shocking truth they uncover puts them directly in the sights of a killer desperate to protect a stunning secret. Marissa Fordham never existed.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  11. 3411. Almost Dead by Lisa Jackson

    Three people have been killed: one pushed to her death, one who suffered a fatal overdose, and one shot in the heart. The victims are people labeled as obstacles and deserving of death. Cissy Cahill's family is unraveling as members die and she begins to feel watched. She hears footsteps, smells a woman's perfume, notices small personal items missing, and must uncover a shocking family secret rooted in the past before more blood is shed.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  12. 3412. Giant Bones by Peter S. Beagle

    This collection of stories is set in the same universe as The Innkeeper's Song. It includes a fish who helps a maiden escape from an arranged marriage to the king, a boy with unusually tall family members, and a magician who must teach a wicked queen all he knows. The tales range from adventurous to introspective and from humorous to suspenseful.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  13. 3413. Rebellion by Joseph Roth

    After World War I, Andreas Pum returns home having lost a leg and received a medal. He keeps an unswerving faith in God, government and authority, but a dispute leads to his imprisonment as a rebel. The novel charts his crisis of faith and the wider cynicism and upheaval of postwar society through a mix of social commentary and brisk, jazz-like cadences.

    The 17081st Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  14. 3414. Bodies And Souls by Nancy Thayer

    In a placid New England town, complex relationships and secret lives simmer beneath the surface. Tragedy forces those private matters into daylight and exposes the town's underlying tensions. Business conflicts and sexual scandals compound the community's upheaval. The revelations reshape the social order and lay bare how closely intertwined personal and public lives have become.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  15. 3415. Coming Home by Sue Gee

    Spring 1947. Indian independence is imminent and the British flag will soon be lowered across India. Thousands who made their lives there as planters, civil servants, or in the Indian army prepare to return to England, including Will and Flo Sutherland, who fell in love at the end of the war. India has been the defining experience of their lives and they must find how to make a new life now.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  16. 3416. Keeping Secrets by Sue Gee

    Keeping Secrets is a book by Sue Gee. The brief description identifies the author as Gee, Sue and gives the title as Keeping Secrets. The supplied entry consists solely of that author credit and title, with no further bibliographic or contextual information. There are no additional details about plot, characters, setting, or publication in the description.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  17. 3417. Cousins by Sally Vickers

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  18. 3418. Grandmothers by Sally Vickers

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  19. 3419. Foggage by Patrick McGinley

    Kevin and Maureen Hurley are middle aged twins who live in remote Irish farming country with their bedridden father. Maureen believes she is carrying a child, and the siblings set out to find a plausible sire for that child. Their search takes place on the remote farm where they live. The book traces their efforts to identify a father while they remain with their bedridden father in the rural setting.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  20. 3420. Tolk by Maja Lee Langvad

    A Korean adoptee from Denmark travels repeatedly to South Korea over several years to meet her Korean family. She cannot speak Korean and the family cannot speak English, so she relies on a Danish-Korean interpreter who accompanies her. When the family discovers that the interpreter is also her girlfriend, tensions arise as she confronts questions of language, love, queerness, and belonging while seeking to recover family, culture, and her own voice.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
  21. 3421. The World Of Null A by A. E. Van Vogt

    Gilbert Gosseyn, a man with baffling gaps in memory and an uncanny knack for surviving assassination attempts, discovers that his mastery of non-Aristotelian logic is his only tool for untangling a vast conspiracy that reaches across planets and secret societies. As he probes attempts to control, duplicate, and manipulate human identity and power, he is forced to reevaluate what is real, who he truly is, and what kind of future human reasoning can create or destroy, leading to a tense clash between cold formal logic and raw, primal forces shaping society's destiny.

    The 16879th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  22. 3422. Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer

    A lonely eighth-grade half-vampire struggles to keep his true nature secret while navigating bullies, a loyal friend, and the humiliations of middle school; as mysterious threats and his own violent urges intrude on everyday life, he must confront painful secrets from his past and make difficult moral choices about who he will become.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org
  23. 3423. 'Til The Real Thing Comes Along by Iris Rainer Dart

    R.J. Misner is a cynical Jewish woman and one of Hollywood's best female comedy writers. She reluctantly falls in love with a younger man, David Malcolm, a handsome and charismatic man born to wealth and power. The story follows their unlikely relationship and the tensions between her guarded cynicism and his privileged background. Their romance is reluctant.

    The 17169th Greatest Book of All Time
    Purchase from Bookshop.org

Reading Statistics

Click the button below to see how many of these books you've read!

Download

If you're interested in downloading this list as a CSV file for use in a spreadsheet application, you can easily do so by clicking the button below. Please note that to ensure a manageable file size and faster download, the CSV will include details for only the first 500 books.

Download

To download this list as a CSV file, please log in to your account. Once logged in, you'll be able to download the data for use in spreadsheet applications.

Login to Download