The Greatest Books of All Time

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 423 '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.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
2 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
3 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
4 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
5 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
6 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
7 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
8 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
10 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
11 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
12 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
13 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
14 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
15 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
16 The Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1954 British English
17 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
18 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
20 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
21 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
22 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
23 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
24 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
25 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
26 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
27 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
28 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
29 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
30 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
31 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
32 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
33 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
34 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
35 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
37 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
38 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
39 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
40 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
41 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 British, Indian English
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
43 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
44 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
45 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
46 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
47 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
48 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
49 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
51 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
52 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
53 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
54 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
55 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
56 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
57 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
58 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
59 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
60 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
61 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
62 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
63 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
64 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
65 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
66 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
67 The Aeneid Virgil 19 Roman Latin
68 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
69 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
70 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
71 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
72 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
73 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
74 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
75 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
76 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
77 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
78 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
79 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
80 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
81 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
82 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
83 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
84 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
85 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
86 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
87 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
88 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
89 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
90 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
91 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
92 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
93 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
94 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
95 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 British English
96 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
97 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
98 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
99 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
100 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
101 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
102 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
103 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
104 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
105 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
106 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
107 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
108 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
109 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
110 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
111 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
112 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
113 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
114 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
115 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
116 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
117 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
118 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
119 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
120 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English