The Bigger Read List

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

About this list

English PEN, 160 Books

The English PEN staff compiled a list of the best works not written in the English language. This list combines their list with the suggestions made by Fred Armentrout, President of Hong Kong (English-Speaking) PEN.

who voted and how many people voted?
Best estimate:
Core curators: ~7 English PEN staff
Member contributors: on the order of 30–50 people (call-out responders)
Named external contributor: 1 (Fred Armentrout)
Total individuals who actually affected the list: ≈ 40–60

For this list Let's assume 40 people voted

This list was originally published in 2003 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
562 Aesop's Fables Aesop -560 Greek Ancient greek
302 The Lost Estate Henri Alain-Fournier 1913 French French
291 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
225 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
632 Dom Casmurro Machado de Assis 1899 Brazilian Portuguese
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
533 Cousin Bette Honoré de Balzac 1846 French French
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
312 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
555 The Lady with the Dog Anton Chekhov 1899 Russian Russian
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
389 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 Brazilian Portuguese
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
57 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
119 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
970 The Maias Eça de Queirós 1888 Portuguese Portuguese
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
491 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
1098 Seven Years in Tibet Heinrich Harrer 1952 Austrian German
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
207 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
736 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald 1859 British English
505 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
210 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
585 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu -300 Chinese Classical chinese
288 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
593 Complete Poems of Giacomo Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi 1831 Italian Italian
873 Call to Arms Lu Xun 1922 Chinese Chinese
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
240 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
2248 Forbidden Colors Yukio Mishima 1951 Japanese Japanese
305 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
1299 My Name is Red Orhan Pamuk 1998 Turkish Turkish
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
276 Life, a User's Manual Georges Perec 1978 French French
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
538 Zazie in the Metro Raymond Queneau 1959 French French
186 Bonjour Tristesse Francoise Sagan 1954 French French
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
403 The Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
1344 The Emigrants W. G. Sebald 1992 German German
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
138 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 1839 French French
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
1360 The Makioka Sisters Junichiro Tanizaki 1948 Japanese Japanese
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
1081 The War of the End of the World Mario Vargas Llosa 1981 Peruvian Spanish
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
1102 I Ching China -1000 Chinese Chinese
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
481 The Lusiad Luís Vaz Camões 1572 Portuguese Portuguese
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
2353 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Dai Sijie 2000 Chinese French
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
3479 The Bookseller of Kabul Asne Seierstad 2002 Norwegian Norwegian
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
163 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
1024 Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki 1929 Japanese Japanese
6450 The Half Brother Lars Saabye Christensen 2001 Norwegian Norwegian
449 Les Enfants Terribles Jean Cocteau 1929 French French
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
4461 The Royal Physician's Visit Per Olov Enquist 1999 Swedish Swedish
2660 The Years with Laura Diaz Carlos Fuentes 1999 Mexican Spanish
1835 Sophie's World Jostein Gaarder 1991 Norwegian Norwegian
3428 Count Julian Juan Goytisolo 1970 Spanish Spanish
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
594 Growth of the Soil Knut Hamsun 1917 Norwegian Norwegian
1075 The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl 1948 Norwegian Norwegian
862 Smilla's Sense of Snow Peter Høeg 1992 Danish Danish
4130 The Three-Arched Bridge Ismail Kadare 1978 Albanian Albanian
745 Memed, My Hawk Yashar Kemal 1955 Turkish Turkish
477 Fateless or Fatelessness Imre Kertész 1975 Hungarian Hungarian
959 A Tomb for Boris Davidovich Danilo Kiš 1976 Serbian Serbo-croatian
2133 I Will Bear Witness Victor Klemperer 1995 German German
1439 Édes Anna Dezső Kosztolányi 1926 Hungarian Hungarian
8444 Identity Milan Kundera 1998 Czech French
2746 The Romance of the Rose Guillaume (de Lorris) 1230 French Old french
474 Embers Sandor Marai 1942 Hungarian Hungarian
1160 Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami 1987 Japanese Japanese
960 The Gift Vladimir Nabokov 1938 Russian Russian
2771 The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist Friedrich Nietzsche 1888 German German