Top 100 Works in World Literature

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

About this list

Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 102 Books

The editors of the Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, polled a panel of 100 authors from 54 countries on what they considered the “best and most central works in world literature.” Among the authors polled were Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer, and Carlos Fuentes. The list of 100 works appears alphabetically by author. Although the books were not ranked, the editors revealed that Don Quixote received 50% more votes than any other book.

This list was originally published in 2002 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
225 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
1302 Poems Paul Celan 1952 German German
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
412 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master Denis Diderot 1796 French French
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
57 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
94 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
307 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
116 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
447 Gypsy Ballads Federico García Lorca 1928 Spanish Spanish
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
272 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Joao Guimaraes Rosa 1956 Brazilian Portuguese
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
424 A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen 1879 Norwegian Norwegian
667 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
295 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
1869 The Recognition of Sakuntala Kālidāsa -400 Indian Sanskrit
1986 The Sound of the Mountain Yasunari Kawabata 1954 Japanese Japanese
207 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
144 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
288 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
593 Complete Poems of Giacomo Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi 1831 Italian Italian
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
267 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
1232 Children of Gebelawi Naguib Mahfouz 1959 Egyptian Arabic
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1550 Njal's Saga Iceland 1280 Icelandic Old norse
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
200 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
1438 Masnavi Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi 1258 Persian Persian
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2448 Bostan Saadi 1257 Persian Persian
516 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
994 Blindness José Saramago 1995 Portuguese Portuguese
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
131 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
1109 Othello William Shakespeare 1603 British English
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
349 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
270 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
873 Call to Arms Lu Xun 1922 Chinese Chinese
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish