20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Larry McCaffery, 116 Books

The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a popular "best of" list compiled by Larry McCaffery largely in response to Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery saw as being out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery writes that he sees his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now".

This list was originally published in 1999 and was added to this site about 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
14984 The Public Burning Robert Coover 1977 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
270 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
912 The Making of Americans Gertrude Stein 1925 American English
14978 The Soft Machine William S. Burroughs 1961 American English
14984 Nova Express William S. Burroughs 1964 American English
17150 The Ticket That Exploded William S. Burroughs 1962 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
17150 Take It Or Leave It Raymond Federman 1976 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
14984 Going Native Stephen Wright 1994 American English
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
5420 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country William H. Gass 1968 American English
3851 JR William Gaddis 1975 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
411 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
227 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
2057 Sixty Stories Donald Barthelme 1981 American English
14984 The Rifles William T. Vollmann 1994 American English
561 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
3145 Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany 1975 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
17150 The Stain Rikki Ducornet 1984 American English
17150 Entering Fire Rikki Ducornet 1986 American English
17150 The Fountains of Neptune Rikki Ducornet 1992 American English
17150 The Jade Cabinet Rikki Ducornet 1993 American English
893 Neuromancer William Gibson 1984 American, Canadian English
14984 Count Zero William Gibson 1986 American English
17150 Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson 1988 American English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
17150 Lookout cartridge Joseph McElroy 1974 American English
841 Crash J. G. Ballard 1973 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
1422 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth 1960 American English
17150 Genoa Paul C. Metcalf 1965 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
14945 Double Or Nothing Raymond Federman 1971 American English
357 At Swim Two-Birds Flann O'Brien 1939 Irish English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
6234 The Cannibal John Hawkes 1949 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
347 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West 1939 American English
269 Nightwood Djuna Barnes 1936 American English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
2336 Libra Don DeLillo 1988 American English
362 Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor 1952 American English
17150 Always Coming Home Ursula K. Le Guin 1985 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
536 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 1929 American English
1473 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English
330 Dubliners James Joyce 1914 Irish English
854 Cane Jean Toomer 1923 American English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
2017 Riddley Walker Russell Hoban 1980 British English
17150 Go in Beauty William Eastlake 1956 American English
17150 The Bronc People William Eastlake 1958 American English
17150 Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses William Eastlake 1963 American English
17150 The Franchiser Stanley Elkin 1976 American English
910 The New York Trilogy Paul Auster 1985 American English
14984 Skinny Legs and All Tom Robbins 1990 American English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
17150 The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus 1995 American English
17150 Tlooth Harry Mathews 1966 American English
2266 Pricksongs and Descants Robert Coover 1969 American English
2132 The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick 1962 American English
570 American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis 1991 American English
567 The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles 1969 British English
4221 The Shadow of the Torturer Gene Wolfe 1980 American English
3491 The Claw Of The Conciliator Gene Wolfe 1981 American English
4720 The Sword of the Lictor Gene Wolfe 1982 American English
17150 The Citadel of the Autarch Gene Wolfe 1983 American English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
17150 Legs William Kennedy 1975 American English
17150 Billy Phelan's Greatest Game William Kennedy 1978 American English
2302 Ironweed William Kennedy 1983 American English
4056 The Tunnel William H. Gass 1995 American English
6256 Omensetter's Luck William H. Gass 1966 American English
619 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949 American English
13742 Darconville's Cat Alexander Theroux 1981 American English
17150 Up Ronald Sukenick 1968 American English
14984 Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down Ishmael Reed 1969 American English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
17150 You Bright and Risen Angels William T. Vollmann 1987 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
3482 The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover 1968 American English
17150 Creamy and Delicious Steve Katz 1970 American Unknown
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
12922 More Than Human Theodore Sturgeon 1953 American English
17150 Mulligan Stew Gilbert Sorrentino 1979 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
17150 Easy Travel to Other Planets Ted Mooney 1981 American English
17150 Tours of the Black Clock Steve Erickson 1989 American English
17150 In Memoriam to Identity Kathy Acker 1990 American English
17150 Hogg Samuel R. Delany 1995 American English