ZEIT-Bibliothek der 100 Bücher

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

About this list

Die Zeit, 100 Books

The Time Library of 100 Books was an educationally ambitious series of articles by the features editorial team of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit . Starting in 1978, over the next two years a review of a work of world literature was published week after week.

The works were selected by a six-member jury ( Rudolf Walter Leonhardt , Hans Mayer , Rolf Michaelis , Fritz J. Raddatz , Peter Wapnewski and Dieter E. Zimmer ), who also invited the reviewers. Some of the works were presented by the jury members themselves, but most of the reviewers were not professional literary critics , but rather well-known writers themselves. Their subjective perspective on the works based on their own reading experience and enthusiasm is part of the appeal of the collection for many readers.

This list was originally published in 2009 and was added to this site almost 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
1156 Apology Plato -389 Greek Ancient greek
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
1590 Germania Cornelius Tacitus 98 Roman Latin
3545 Daphnis and Chloe Longus -200 Greek Ancient greek
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
1291 Parzival Wolfram Eschenbach 1200 German Middle high german
1186 Tristan Gottfried von Strassburg 1210 German Middle high german
699 The Nibelungenlied Unknown 1200 German Middle high german
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
881 Utopia Thomas More 1516 British Latin
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
781 Simplicius Simplicissimus Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen 1668 German German
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
412 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master Denis Diderot 1796 French French
2116 Siebenkäs Jean Paul 1796 German German
907 Hyperion Friedrich Holderlin 1797 German German
1660 The Waste Books Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1770 German German
622 Elective Affinities Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1809 German German
2548 Stories Heinrich von Kleist 1810 German German
2116 The Treasure Chest Johann Peter Hebel 1811 German German
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
1534 The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr E. T. A. Hoffmann 1819 German German
371 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
908 The Life of a Good-For-Nothing Joseph von Eichendorff 1826 German German
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
1132 Lenz Georg Buchner 1836 German German
432 Lost Illusions Honoré de Balzac 1837 French French
339 The Adventures of Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 1837 British English
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
4122 Either Or Soren Kierkegaard 1843 Danish Danish
1118 Germany, a Winter Tale Heinrich Heine 1844 German German
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
5318 The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Karl Marx 1852 German German
225 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
612 Green Henry Gottfried Keller 1855 Swiss German
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
5314 Abu Telfan, Return from the Mountains of the Moon Wilhelm Karl Raabe 1867 German German
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
6717 Stories of Adalbert Stifter Adalbert Stifter 1801 Austrian German
6717 Human, All Too Human Friedrich Nietzsche 1878 German German
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
6717 The Son of a Servant August Strindberg 1886 Swedish Swedish
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
651 Manhattan Transfer John Dos Passos 1925 American English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
785 The Stechlin Theodor Fontane 1898 German German
305 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
398 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
1653 The Loyal Subject Heinrich Mann 1918 German German
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
6717 Track Ernst Bloch 1949 German Unknown
844 Civilization and Its Discontents Sigmund Freud 1930 Austrian German
6717 My Life Leon Trotsky 1930 Russian Russian
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
295 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
2020 Journals André Gide 1948 French French
1303 The Seventh Cross Anna Seghers 1942 German German
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
7762 The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll Heinrich Böll 1972 German German
2116 Querelle of Brest Jean Genet 1947 French French
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
445 I'm Not Stiller Max Frisch 1954 Swiss German
485 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
4144 Krapp's Last Tape Samuel Beckett 1958 Irish English
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
403 The Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
2116 Stories of Mr. Keuner Bertolt Brecht 1926 German German
577 Anniversaries Uwe Johnson 1970 German German
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
94 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
1657 Essays and Aphorisms Arthur Schopenhauer 1851 German German
2643 Perpetual Peace Immanuel Kant 1795 German German
6717 Anti Goeze Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1778 German German
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
689 Anton Reiser Karl Philipp Moritz 1785 German German
2116 The Life Story And Real Adventures Of The Poor Man Of Toggenburg Ulrich Bräker 1789 Swiss German
6717 On The Aesthetic Education Of Man Friedrich Schiller 1794 German German