Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century
This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
Wikipedia, 10 Books
The Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century is a list of books compiled in 1999 by Literaturhaus München and Bertelsmann, in which 99 prominent German authors, literary critics, and scholars of German ranked the most significant German-language novels of the twentieth century.
The group brought together 33 experts from each of the three categories. Each was allowed to name three books as having been the most important of the century.
This list was originally published in 1999 and was added to this site over 9 years ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 82 | The Man Without Qualities | Robert Musil | 1930 | Austrian | German | |
| 21 | The Trial | Franz Kafka | 1925 | Czech | German | |
| 25 | The Magic Mountain | Thomas Mann | 1924 | German | German | |
| 201 | Berlin Alexanderplatz | Alfred Döblin | 1929 | German | German | |
| 91 | The Tin Drum | Günter Grass | 1959 | German | German | |
| 577 | Anniversaries | Uwe Johnson | 1970 | German | German | |
| 90 | Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann | 1901 | German | German | |
| 199 | The Radetzky March | Joseph Roth | 1932 | Austrian | German | |
| 135 | Doctor Faustus | Thomas Mann | 1947 | German | German | |
| 81 | The Castle | Franz Kafka | 1926 | Czech | German |