The Greatest Books of All Time

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
245 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
246 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
247 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
249 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
250 Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery 1908 Canadian English
251 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 1926 British English
252 The Waves Virginia Woolf 1931 British English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
255 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
258 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner James Hogg 1824 Scottish English
259 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 1959 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
261 Wings of the Dove Henry James 1902 American English
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
263 The Tartar Steppe Dino Buzzati 1940 Italian Italian
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
265 Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton 1948 South African English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
267 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
269 Nightwood Djuna Barnes 1936 American English
270 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
271 The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899 American English
272 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Joao Guimaraes Rosa 1956 Brazilian Portuguese
273 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni 1827 Italian Italian
274 The Stand Stephen King 1978 American English
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
276 Life, a User's Manual Georges Perec 1978 French French
277 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
278 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
281 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck 1931 American English
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
284 The Princess of Cleves Madame de La Fayette 1678 French French
285 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
286 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
287 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 1895 British English
288 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
289 A Room With a View E. M. Forster 1908 British English
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
291 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
293 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
294 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
295 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
297 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
299 Kristin Lavransdatter Sigrid Undset 1920 Norwegian Norwegian
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
301 The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas Machado de Assis 1881 Brazilian Portuguese
302 The Lost Estate Henri Alain-Fournier 1913 French French
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
305 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
307 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
308 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 1970 American English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
311 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
312 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
316 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
320 Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak 1963 American English
321 We Yevgeny Zamyatin 1924 Russian Russian
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
325 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 1951 British English
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
327 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
330 Dubliners James Joyce 1914 Irish English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
332 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 1748 British English
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
335 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Giorgio Bassani 1962 Italian Italian
336 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 American English
337 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare 1597 British English
338 Effi Briest Theodor Fontane 1895 German German
339 The Adventures of Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 1837 British English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
341 The Human Comedy Honoré de Balzac 1830 French French
342 Notes from the Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky 1864 Russian Russian
343 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
344 The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan 1915 British English
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
346 The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole 1764 British English
347 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West 1939 American English
348 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
349 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
351 Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe 1722 British English
352 The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith 1766 British English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
354 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
355 The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño 1998 Chilean Spanish
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
357 At Swim Two-Birds Flann O'Brien 1939 Irish English
358 The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy 1886 British English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English