The Greatest Philosophical 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
3 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
6 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
13 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
14 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
15 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
24 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
27 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
28 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
30 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
31 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
33 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
35 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
38 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
41 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
42 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
43 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
48 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
53 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
54 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
58 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
62 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
63 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
67 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
70 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
76 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
81 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
84 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
85 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
86 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
87 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
89 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
90 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
98 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
100 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
106 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
109 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
112 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
117 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
118 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
121 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
122 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
128 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
132 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
133 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
134 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
137 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
138 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
139 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
141 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
142 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
143 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
147 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
148 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
149 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
167 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
170 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
171 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
181 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
190 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
191 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
192 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
196 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
197 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
202 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
204 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
205 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
223 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
233 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
237 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
243 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
249 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
251 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
252 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
259 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
272 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
273 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
274 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
275 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
277 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
280 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
283 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
285 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
287 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
288 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
299 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
301 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
303 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
307 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 Brazilian Portuguese
321 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
324 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
328 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
335 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
345 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
351 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
352 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
365 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
368 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
369 2001 Arthur C. Clarke 1968 British English
371 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
375 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
389 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
398 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
406 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
410 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
414 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
415 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
416 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
418 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
421 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
425 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
430 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
433 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
434 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
435 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
438 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
441 The Magus John Fowles 1965 British English
448 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
450 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English