The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time

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

About this list

The Novel 100, 127 Books

The list below is from the book The Novel 100: A Ranking of Greatest Novels All Time (Checkmark Books/Facts On File, Inc.: New York, 2004), written by Daniel S. Burt.

This list was originally published in 2004 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
83 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
104 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
227 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
270 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
484 Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin 1754 Chinese Chinese
332 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 1748 British English
192 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
730 Petersburg Andrei Bely 1913 Russian Russian
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
284 The Princess of Cleves Madame de La Fayette 1678 French French
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
552 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895 American English
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
144 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
468 Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1876 British English
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
210 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
138 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 1839 French French
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
9248 Cities Of Salt Abd al-Rahman Munif 1984 Arabic Arabic
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
1280 The Death of Artemio Cruz Carlos Fuentes 1962 Mexican Spanish
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
592 The Sleepwalkers Hermann Broch 1932 Austrian German
852 The Last Chronicle of Barset Anthony Trollope 1867 British English
271 The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899 American English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
519 Call It Sleep Henry Roth 1934 American English
2902 Waverley Sir Walter Scott 1814 British English
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
1092 Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata 1937 Japanese Japanese
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
277 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
273 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni 1827 Italian Italian
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
632 Dom Casmurro Machado de Assis 1899 Brazilian Portuguese
249 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
351 Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe 1722 British English
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
489 Manon Lescaut Abbe Prevost 1731 French French
139 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1860 British English
1024 Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki 1929 Japanese Japanese
732 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English