100 Books of Classical and Modern Foreign Literature

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

About this list

The Union of Russian Writers, 100 Books

"100 books of classical and modern foreign literature" according to the Union of Writers of Russia, published on January 23, 2013.

The creators of the list are confident that Russian literature is a universal cultural heritage, but its significance can only be understood in unity with world literature, and that this list, presented to the public within the framework of the presidential project, will help strengthen spirituality and morality among Russian youth, and will also help revive traditions family reading and will become a notable event in the cultural life of modern Russia.

The Union of Russian Writers is a non-governmental organization uniting Russian and writers (novelists, poets, essayists, etc.). It was established in 1991, when on the basis of the Union of Soviet Writers three independent associations were formed: the Writers' Union of Russia (the "patriotic" orientation), the Writers' Union of Moscow, and the Union of Russian Writers ("democratic" union). The Union of Russian Writers includes more than 3,500 writers from Russia and former USSR, in 58 regional organizations.

Who voted and how many people voted?
At that moment the Union’s affairs were run by its elected Правление (Board/Presidium), ca. 40-45 writers (roster published after the XIV Congress in Oct 2013). In the Union’s statute this Board takes such decisions by simple majority. There is no indication that a wider membership vote (≈ 3500 writers) or an external public poll was held. I am going to go with 40 writers helped make the list

This list was originally published in 2013 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
29 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
983 Tartuffe Molière 1664 French French
2884 The Traveller Oliver Goldsmith 1764 Irish English
1779 The Wild Ass's Skin Honoré de Balzac 1831 French French
376 Melmoth the Wanderer Charles Robert Maturin 1820 British English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
119 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
275 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
41 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
300 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
72 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
10395 Internal Ecology Morals For Xxi Century Dario Salas Sommer 2007 Chilean Spanish
3436 In Search Of The Castaways Jules Verne 1867 French French
241 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
6214 Boule De Suif Guy de Maupassant 1880 French French
88 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
385 Quo Vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz 1895 Polish Polish
1498 Three Comrades Erich Maria Remarque 1936 German German
6576 The Works Of Johannes Bobrowski Johannes Bobrowski 1969 German German
2188 Death Of A Hero Richard Aldington 1929 British English
6297 Hatter's Castle A. J. Cronin 1931 British English
4617 Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck 1908 Belgian French
934 Martin Eden Jack London 1909 American English
262 The Tartar Steppe Dino Buzzati 1940 Italian Italian
6324 Spartacus Raffaello Giovagnoli 1874 Italian Italian
245 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
6356 Cabbage And Kings O. Henry 1904 American English
158 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
6390 The Last Inch James Aldridge 1958 British English
1469 Wind, Sand and Stars Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1939 French French
498 The Immoralist André Gide 1902 French French
50 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
375 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
2486 The Moon And Sixpence W. Somerset Maugham 1919 British English
6421 La Jeune Parque Paul Valéry 1917 French French
695 King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard 1885 British English
1262 Jonathan Livingston Seagull Richard Bach 1970 American English
1122 Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata 1937 Japanese Japanese
1715 The Clown Heinrich Böll 1963 German German
166 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
1782 The Murders in the Rue Morgue Edgar Allan Poe 1841 American English
359 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
1672 Penguin Island Anatole France 1908 French French
953 Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw 1913 British English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
347 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
6468 The Stoic Theodore Dreiser 1947 American English
4385 Crabwalk Günter Grass 2002 German German
1185 Jean Christophe Romain Rolland 1904 French French
6476 This Is The Hour Lion Feuchtwanger 1951 German German
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
214 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
5020 Lust For Life Irving Stone 1934 American English
77 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
244 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
101 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
1309 Our Man In Havana Graham Greene 1958 British English
234 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
6512 Le Coq Et L'arlequin Jean Cocteau 1918 French French
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
10271 April Fool's Day Josip Novakovich 2004 Croatian English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
5086 Sartoris William Faulkner 1929 American English
890 Golem Gustav Meyrink 1915 Austrian German
656 The Elementary Particles Michel Houellebecq 1998 French French
822 I, Robot Isaac Asimov 1950 American English
259 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
286 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
3851 The Silent World Jacques Cousteau 1953 French French
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
678 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
859 The Palm-Wine Drinkard Amos Tutola 1952 Nigerian English
153 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
6839 A Little Sun In Cold Water Francoise Sagan 1969 French French
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
6534 The Boarded Window Ambrose Bierce 1891 American English
1689 Cat Country Lao She 1932 Chinese Chinese
1503 The Famished Road Ben Okri 1991 Nigerian English
5102 The Winter Of Our Discontent John Steinbeck 1961 American English
5291 The Museum Of Innocence Orhan Pamuk 2008 Turkish Turkish
5518 Not After Midnight Daphne du Maurier 1971 British English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
6542 Alchemy Of The Word Jan Parandowski 1951 Polish Polish
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
134 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
6544 King Matt The First Janusz Korczak 1923 Polish Polish
5095 Abel Sánchez Miguel de Unamuno 1917 Spanish Spanish
6583 Flood Robert Penn Warren 1964 American Unknown
2627 The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Bertolt Brecht 1941 German German