1000 Novels Everyone Must Read

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

About this list

The Guardian, 997 Books

Selected by the Guardian’s Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time in a single list.

Who Voted?
There's not a lot of concrete information about the exact number of critics who voted. If we go by the critics mentioned on many of the summaries of the books, and how many editors at the guardian at the time, I think a safe assumption would be 40 people worked on this list. If anyone has any additional information please let me know.

This list was originally published in 2009 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
3115 Affinity Sarah Waters 1999 British English
294 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
372 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
1380 The Sword in the Stone T. H. White 1938 British English
3017 The Old Men At The Zoo Angus Wilson 1961 British English
1079 The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe 1980 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
917 The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham 1951 British English
1071 The Midwich Cuckoos John Wyndham 1957 British English
321 We Yevgeny Zamyatin 1924 Russian Russian
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
6471 Anthills Of The Savannah Chinua Achebe 1987 Nigerian English
1674 London Fields Martin Amis 1989 British English
1225 Untouchable Mulk Raj Anand 1935 Indian English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
341 The Human Comedy Honoré de Balzac 1830 French French
3036 They Were Counted Miklos Banffy 1934 Hungarian Hungarian
4402 A Kind Of Loving Stan Barstow 1960 British English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
705 Oroonoko Aphra Behn 1688 British English
2993 Clayhanger Arnold Bennett 1910 British English
4308 The Last September Elizabeth Bowen 1929 Irish English
2312 Room At The Top John Braine 1957 British English
1003 A Dry White Season Andre Brink 1979 South African Afrikaans
2458 Shirley Charlotte Brontë 1849 British English
1374 Earthly Powers Anthony Burgess 1980 British English
2269 The Virgin in the Garden A. S. Byatt 1978 British English
928 Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell 1932 American English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
725 The Kingdom of This World Alejo Carpentier 1949 Cuban Spanish
2325 What a Carve Up! Jonathan Coe 1994 British English
255 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
5958 Microserfs Douglas Coupland 1995 Canadian English
351 Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe 1722 British English
411 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
995 Dombey and Son Charles Dickens 1846 British English
1772 Hard Times Charles Dickens 1854 British English
1464 Little Dorrit Charles Dickens 1855 British English
339 The Adventures of Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 1837 British English
433 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 1970 American English
2362 Sybil Benjamin Disraeli 1845 British English
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
838 The Book of Daniel E. L. Doctorow 1971 American English
342 Notes from the Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky 1864 Russian Russian
57 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
821 Castle Rackrent Maria Edgeworth 1800 British English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
643 Silas Marner George Eliot 1861 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
116 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
338 Effi Briest Theodor Fontane 1895 German German
1484 Independence Day Richard Ford 1995 American English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
561 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
813 Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell 1851 British English
439 North and South Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 British English
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
4308 The Odd Women George Gissing 1893 British English
606 New Grub Street George Gissing 1891 British English
1852 July's People Nadine Gordimer 1981 South African English
764 Mother Maxim Gorky 1906 Russian Russian
1166 Lanark Alasdair Gray 1981 Scottish English
4308 Love On The Dole Walter Greenwood 1933 British English
358 The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy 1886 British English
792 A Kestrel for a Knave Barry Hines 1968 British English
723 The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst 2004 British English
3041 South Riding Winifred Holtby 1936 British English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
761 Goodbye to Berlin Christopher Isherwood 1939 British English
3262 Chronicle In Stone Ismail Kadare 1971 Albanian Albanian
2067 How Late It Was, How Late James Kelman 1994 Scottish English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
4308 A Girl In Winter Philip Larkin 1947 British English
437 Passing Nella Larsen 1929 American English
989 The Grass Is Singing Doris May Lessing 1950 British English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
1865 Elmer Gantry Sinclair Lewis 1927 American English
564 Main Street Sinclair Lewis 1920 American English
1253 Absolute Beginners Colin MacInnes 1959 British English
772 The Group Mary McCarthy 1963 American English
1408 Amongst Women John McGahern 1990 Irish English
301 The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Machado de Assis 1881 Brazilian Portuguese
4308 Of Love & Hunger Julian Maclaren-Ross 1947 British English
2399 Remembering Babylon David Malouf 1993 Australian English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
273 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni 1827 Italian Italian
589 Bel Ami Guy de Maupassant 1885 French French
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English
1219 The Time of Indifference Alberto Moravia 1929 Italian Italian
732 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
853 Mc Teague Frank Norris 1899 American English
7048 Personality Andrew O'Hagan 2003 Scottish English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
695 Boys Alive Pier Paolo Pasolini 1955 Italian Italian
265 Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton 1948 South African English
426 The Moon and the Bonfires Cesare Pavese 1950 Italian Italian
7202 Gb84 David Peace 2004 British English
1992 Headlong Hall Thomas Love Peacock 1816 British English
4308 Afternoon Men Anthony Powell 1931 British English
4145 Vineland Thomas Pynchon 1990 American English
199 The Radetzky March Joseph Roth 1932 Austrian German
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
1947 Shame Salman Rushdie 1983 British English
1317 To Each His Own Leonardo Sciascia 1966 Italian Italian
2997 Staying On Paul Scott 1977 British English
901 Last Exit to Brooklyn Hubert Selby 1964 American English
989 The Lonely Londoners Sam Selvon 1956 Trinidadian English
771 God's Bits of Wood Ousmane Sembène 1960 Senegalese French
763 The Case of Comrade Tulayev Victor Serge 1949 French French
817 Rickshaw Boy Lao She 1936 Chinese Chinese
1006 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Alan Sillitoe 1958 British English