The 100 Novels You Must Read in Your Lifetime

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

About this list

Esquire, 103 Books

This list focuses on what are deemed "classic" novels that one must read in a lifetime, as defined by Italo Calvino: a classic always has something to say. This collection strictly includes novels—excluding essays, biographies, short stories, and autofiction, which, despite being popular today, are not considered for this compilation. Emphasizing "modern classics," the criteria restrict entries to the best books from the last 100 years, thus excluding older foundational texts commonly studied in schools like those by Cervantes or Dickens. The list features a mix of Nobel and Strega prize winners among others, spanning a diverse range from Italian literature to global works without discrimination by genre. Acknowledging the subjective nature of such compilations, the curator invites debate and views the list not as an exhaustive decree but as a personal selection open for discussion, highlighting the playful and proposal-driven nature of this endeavor.

This list was originally published in 2023 and was added to this site almost 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
6295 Dream Story Arthur Schnitzler 1926 Austrian German
1332 One, No One and One Hundred Thousand Luigi Pirandello 1926 Italian Italian
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
245 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
5971 The Man Who Watched The Trains Go By Georges Simenon 1938 Belgian French
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
1286 The Invention Of Morel Adolfo Bioy Casares 1940 Argentinian Spanish
263 The Tartar Steppe Dino Buzzati 1940 Italian Italian
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
496 Froth on the daydream Boris Vian 1947 French French
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
997 The Judge and His Hangman Friedrich Dürrenmatt 1950 Swiss German
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
361 Foundation Isaac Asimov 1951 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
1699 That Awful Mess On Via Merulana Carlo Emilio Gadda 1957 Italian Italian
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
5662 The Evolution Man Or How I Ate My Father Roy Lewis 1960 British English
1042 Franny and Zooey J. D. Salinger 1961 American English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
2900 A Private Affair Beppe Fenoglio 1963 Italian Italian
1457 Deliver Us Luigi Meneghello 1963 Italian Italian
1191 Blow Up And Other Stories Julio Cortazar 1968 Argentinian Spanish
7831 The Blue Flowers Raymond Queneau 1965 French French
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
6405 L'iguana Anna Maria Ortese 1965 Italian Italian
441 The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon 1966 American English
10733 What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too? Luigi Malerba 1989 Italian Italian
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
1317 To Each His Own Leonardo Sciascia 1966 Italian Italian
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
1421 Ubik Philip K. Dick 1969 American English
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
9719 The Sunday Woman Carlo Fruttero, Franco Lucentini 1972 Italian Italian
2371 Happiness, as Such Natalia Ginzburg 1973 Italian Italian
841 Crash J. G. Ballard 1973 British English
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
553 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 American English
4170 Dissipatio H.G. Guido Morselli 1977 Italian Italian
276 Life, a User's Manual Georges Perec 1978 French French
3005 The Monkey's Wrench Primo Levi 1978 Italian Italian
8816 Shikasta Doris May Lessing 1979 British English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
3384 The Plague-Sower Gesualdo Bufalino 1981 Italian Italian
1694 Cassandra Christa Wolf 1983 German German
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
893 Neuromancer William Gibson 1984 American, Canadian English
3489 Seminario Sulla Gioventù Aldo Busi 1984 Italian Italian
5717 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami 1985 Japanese Japanese
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
910 The New York Trilogy Paul Auster 1985 American English
2385 Less Than Zero Bret Easton Ellis 1985 American English
545 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
11826 Lilith's Brood Octavia E. Butler 1987 American English
1217 Foucault's Pendulum Umberto Eco 1988 Italian Italian
12010 Mr. Mani A. B. Yehoshua 1990 Israeli Hebrew
9641 Time's Arrow Martin Amis 1991 British English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
10884 Black Water Joyce Carol Oates 1992 American English
4654 Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me Javier Marias 1994 Spanish Spanish
1882 Pereira Maintains Antonio Tabucchi 1994 Italian Italian
994 Blindness José Saramago 1995 Portuguese Portuguese
9957 Asylum Patrick McGrath 1996 British English
2688 Blinding Mircea Cărtărescu 1996 Romanian Romanian
9831 Barney's Version Mordecai Richler 1997 Canadian English
3858 Enduring Love Ian McEwan 1997 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
355 The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño 1998 Chilean Spanish
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
1693 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold 2002 American English
2887 Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer 2002 American English
3102 Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafisi 2003 Iranian English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
10221 Quiet Chaos Sandro Veronesi 2005 Italian Italian
1456 Flights Olga Tokarczuk 2007 Polish Polish
8074 Chronic City Jonathan Lethem 2009 American English
5029 The City & the City China Miéville 2009 British English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
2498 Room Emma Donoghue 2010 Irish English
443 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2013 Nigerian English
2843 10:04 Ben Lerner 2014 American English
4534 Annihilation Jeff VanderMeer 2014 American English
9332 Authority Jeff VanderMeer 2014 American English
9332 Acceptance Jeff VanderMeer 2014 American English
7563 Compass Mathias Enard 2015 French French
770 The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead 2016 American English
1117 The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin 2015 American English