50 Classics You Must Read Before You Die

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Gyldendal (Denmark Publisher), 50 Books

This list is from Gyldendal, the largest publisher in Denmark. This is what the translated description says:

We asked Gyldendal's fiction editors about their greatest reading experiences. Here are their picks for 50 classics you should read before you die. Find out which ones you have already read, which ones you should re-read and, not least, which ones you should read for the first time. Happy reading!

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
2740 Ved Vejen Herman Bang 1886 Danish Danish
15607 The Diary Of A Parish Clerk Steen Steensen Blicher 1824 Danish Danish
15620 Deliver Us From Love Suzanne Brogger 1976 Danish Danish
17008 Butterfly Valley Inger Christensen 1991 Danish Danish
77 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
2686 Dependency Tove Ditlevsen 1971 Danish Danish
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
2687 Childhood Tove Ditlevsen 1967 Danish Danish
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
369 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
105 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
21 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
280 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
1588 Niels Lyhne Jens Peter Jacobson 1880 Danish Danish
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
16445 The Fall Of The King Johannes V. Jensen 1900 Danish Danish
544 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
16476 Salka Valka Halldor Laxness 1931 Icelandic Icelandic
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
881 The Hour of the Star Clarice Lispector 1977 Brazilian Portuguese
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
17008 Winter’s Child Dea Trier Morch 1976 Danish Danish
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
512 The Golden Ass Apuleius 158 Roman Latin
14875 Lucky Per Henrik Pontoppidan 1898 Danish Danish
1121 The Symposium Plato -385 Greek Ancient greek
396 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
72 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
110 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
16808 Jammers Minde Leonora Christina 1869 Danish Danish
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
1982 Seven Gothic Tales Isak Dinesen 1934 Danish English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
922 The World Of Yesterday Stefan Zweig 1942 Austrian German
102 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
16951 Terminal Innocence Klaus Rifbjerg 1958 Danish Unknown
263 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English