50 Books to Read Before You Die

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

About this list

Complex, 50 Books

Complex Magazine's selection of 50 must-read books.

Who voted?
Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone) and Ross Scarano (@RossScarano)

This list was originally published in 2012 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
12613 I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere Anna Gavalda 1999 French French
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
10012 Wonder Boys Michael Chabon 1995 American English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
648 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
904 Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut 1973 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
6283 Earth Abides George Rippey Stewart 1949 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
607 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski 2000 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
683 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
3061 The Fortress of Solitude Jonathan Lethem 2003 American English
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
545 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
1757 Books of Blood Clive Barker 1984 British English
777 I Am Legend Richard Matheson 1954 American English
2428 The Intuitionist Colson Whitehead 1999 American English
9718 Tales of H. P. Lovecraft H. P. Lovecraft 1997 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
3184 Flicker Theodore Roszak 1991 American English
1473 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English
12376 Haunted Chuck Palahniuk 2005 American English
3432 The Stories of Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury 1980 American English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
12172 The Electric Michelangelo Sarah Hall 2004 British English
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
11569 Ghostwritten David Mitchell 1999 British English
968 Jesus' Son Denis Johnson 1992 American English
355 The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño 1998 Chilean Spanish
13730 Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick Philip K. Dick 2002 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
6348 A Wild Sheep Chase Haruki Murakami 1982 Japanese Japanese
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
2188 No Country for Old Men Cormac McCarthy 2005 American English