The 16 Greatest Books of All Time

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

About this list

NYU Local, 46 Books

Two book editors for the nyulocal.com present their list of the 16 greatest books of all time, with a list of runner-ups as well.

This list was originally published in 2008 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
855 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
600 Nine Stories J. D. Salinger 1953 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
620 The Elements of Style E. B. White, William Strunk Jr. 1918 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
753 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
6152 Hell's Angels Hunter S. Thompson 1966 American English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
1443 Mason & Dixon Thomas Pynchon 1997 American English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
1256 Prometheus Bound Aeschylus -455 Greek Ancient greek
285 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
1350 Seven Against Thebes Aeschylus -467 Greek Ancient greek
613 The Persians Aeschylus -471 Greek Ancient greek
1351 The Suppliants Aeschylus -463 Greek Ancient greek
307 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
943 The Bacchae Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
2199 Trojan Women Euripides -415 Greek Ancient greek
2517 Hippolytus Euripides -428 Greek Ancient greek
383 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
1124 Ajax Sophocles -440 Greek Ancient greek
986 Electra Sophocles -409 Greek Ancient greek
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
1125 Philoctetes Sophocles -409 Greek Ancient greek
1126 Women of Trachis Sophocles -450 Greek Ancient greek
125 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English