Readers’ Top 100 Novels Of All Time

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

About this list

Guardian, 100 Books

After critics and authors picked their top 100 novels we asked for your favourites. From Uruguay to the Isle of Skye, more than 3,000 readers cast their votes.

This list was originally published in 2026 and was added to this site 9 days ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
192 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
878 The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver 1998 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
524 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
899 Stoner John Williams 1965 American English
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English
735 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth 1993 Indian English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
1070 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 1993 British English
83 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
623 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry 1985 American English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
2229 A Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles 2016 American English
718 Possession A. S. Byatt 1990 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2107 Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver 2022 American English
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
3849 Piranesi Susanna Clarke 2020 British English
553 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
633 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carré 1974 British English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
1585 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke 2004 British English
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
274 The Stand Stephen King 1978 American English
1765 A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara 2015 American English
1413 All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr 2014 American English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
442 The Magus John Fowles 1965 British English
325 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 1951 British English