Everything You Should Read without Being a Library Rat

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

About this list

Book by Luiz Carlos Lisboa, 98 Books

This list is from a Brazilian book about the greatest books of all time. Unfortunately I have been unable to find the entire book. If anyone has any leads let me know! This list is ONLY the more "modern" books on the list and is from our friends at The Modern Novel. Here is their description:

"This comes from a book by Luiz Carlos Lisboa, published by Editora Papagalo. There are actually two books. This one is a guide to the best of world literature. (The other one is a guide to Brazilian literature).

This list will only give the authors and titles of twentieth century novels but, in fact, the book goes back to Homer and covers short stories, poetry, drama and non-fiction, with a brief (one-page) description of each work and its author.
"

This list was originally published in 1972 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
1187 Jean Christophe Romain Rolland 1904 French French
390 The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett 1908 British English
444 The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
935 Martin Eden Jack London 1909 American English
581 The Innocence of Father Brown G. K. Chesterton 1911 British English
490 Ethan Frome Edith Wharton 1911 American English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
13362 The Changeling Selma Lagerlöf 1915 Swedish Swedish
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
13362 The Naked Year Boris Pilnyak 1922 Russian Russian
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
1185 The Inimitable Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1923 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
651 Manhattan Transfer John Dos Passos 1925 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
631 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder 1927 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
1629 Point Counter Point Aldous Huxley 1928 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
12027 Gog Giovanni Papini 1931 Italian Italian
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
1222 Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell 1932 American English
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
15685 Terras Do Demo Aquilino Ribeiro 1974 Portuguese Portuguese
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
2055 Satan In Goray Isaac Bashevis Singer 1935 Polish Yiddish
1092 Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata 1937 Japanese Japanese
2168 Bread And Wine Ignazio Silone 1936 Italian Italian
347 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West 1939 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
348 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
1756 Strange Fruit Lillian Smith 1944 American English
231 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
1107 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene 1948 British English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
619 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949 American English
176 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 1951 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
692 The Hive Camilo José Cela 1951 Spanish Spanish
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 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
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1031 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Yukio Mishima 1956 Japanese Japanese
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
836 Second Thoughts Michel Butor 1957 French French
226 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
753 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
1323 A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller 1960 American English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
668 Rabbit Redux John Updike 1971 American English
686 Rabbit Is Rich John Updike 1981 American English
784 Rabbit at Rest John Updike 1990 American English
1584 A Severed Head Iris Murdoch 1961 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
2169 Terra Nostra Carlos Fuentes 1975 Mexican Spanish
1374 Earthly Powers Anthony Burgess 1980 British English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
3844 The Stone Raft José Saramago 1986 Portuguese Portuguese
15685 Utz Bruce Chatwin 1988 British English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
15685 Medea Christa Wolf 1996 German German