The 100 Best Books in the World

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

About this list

AbeBooks.de (in German), 101 Books

German bookseller website AbeBooks.de makes their selection for the "100 greatest books ever written".

This list was originally published in 2021 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
337 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare 1597 British English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
339 The Adventures of Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 1837 British English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
1118 Germany, a Winter Tale Heinrich Heine 1844 German German
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
1247 The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1894 British English
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
170 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
445 I'm Not Stiller Max Frisch 1954 Swiss German
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
245 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
732 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
644 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 1992 Canadian English
910 The New York Trilogy Paul Auster 1985 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
570 American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis 1991 American English
2207 Waiting Ha Jin 1999 Chinese English
1395 The Mists of Avalon Marion Zimmer Bradley 1983 American English
5119 Baudolino Umberto Eco 2000 Italian Italian
1122 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
1835 Sophie's World Jostein Gaarder 1991 Norwegian Norwegian
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
1515 The World as Will and Idea Arthur Schopenhauer 1818 German German
1018 Principia Mathematica Isaac Newton 1687 British Latin
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
806 The Story of Art Ernest H. Gombrich 1950 British English
721 Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1795 German German
1178 Nathan the Wise Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1779 German German
4731 Don Carlos Friedrich Schiller 1787 German German
724 Michael Kohlhaas Heinrich von Kleist 1810 German German
1725 A Harlot High And Low Honoré de Balzac 1839 French French
338 Effi Briest Theodor Fontane 1895 German German
5861 The Last Days of Mankind Karl Kraus 1919 Austrian German
15899 The Maurizius Case Jakob Wassermann 1928 German German
1008 Professor Unrat Heinrich Mann 1905 German German
595 Farewell, My Lovely Raymond Chandler 1940 American English
794 The Royal Game Stefan Zweig 1941 Austrian German
1040 The German Lesson Siegfried Lenz 1968 German German
1717 The Clown Heinrich Böll 1963 German German
4795 The Good Person of Szechwan Bertolt Brecht 1943 German German
2429 The Physicists Friedrich Dürrenmatt 1962 Swiss German
1494 Eye Of The Needle Ken Follett 1978 British English
415 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth 1971 British English
2514 The New Sorrows of Young W. Ulrich Plenzdorf 1972 German German
885 A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz 2002 Israeli Hebrew
2666 The Songlines Bruce Chatwin 1987 British English
971 The Discovery of Heaven Harry Mulisch 1992 Dutch Dutch
1649 Cat's Eye Margaret Atwood 1988 Canadian English
15899 The Hunting Gun Yasushi Inoue 1949 Japanese Japanese
14984 Shadows on the Hudson Isaac Bashevis Singer 1997 American Yiddish
3212 Betty Blue Philippe Djian 1985 French French
14984 South of the Border, West of the Sun Haruki Murakami 1992 Japanese Japanese
701 The Feast of the Goat Mario Vargas Llosa 2000 Peruvian Spanish
9026 Desert Flower Waris Dirie, Cathleen Miller 1998 American English
1809 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon 2001 Spanish Spanish
3897 The Meaning of Hitler Sebastian Haffner 1978 German German
14232 The Clash of Civilizations Samuel P. Huntington 1996 American English
17120 An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore 2006 American English
14884 The Theory of Economic Development Joseph A. Schumpeter 1911 Austrian German
493 Auto Da Fé Elias Canetti 1935 Bulgarian German
15899 Success Lion Feuchtwanger 1930 German German
17120 Die andere Bildung. Was man von den Naturwissenschaften wissen sollte Ernst Peter Fischer 2001 German German
15899 The Animals' Conference Erich Kästner 1949 German German
17120 The Statement Brian Moore 1995 Irish English
17120 German History 1800–1918 Thomas Nipperdey 1983 German German
17120 Crusade and Jihad Bassam Tibi 2017 German English
2750 Castle Gripsholm Kurt Tucholsky 1931 German German
8182 Alberta empfängt einen Liebhaber Birgit Vanderbeke 2023 German German
367 Journey to the West Wu Cheng'en 1592 Chinese Chinese