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
122 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
123 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
124 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
125 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
126 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
127 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
128 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
129 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
130 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
131 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
132 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
133 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
134 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
135 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
136 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
137 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
138 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
139 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
140 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
141 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
142 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American English
143 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
144 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
145 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
146 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
147 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
148 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
149 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
150 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
151 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
152 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
153 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
154 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
155 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
156 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
157 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1860 British English
158 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
159 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
160 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
161 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
162 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
163 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
164 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
165 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
166 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
167 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
168 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
169 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961 British, Scottish English
170 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
171 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
172 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
173 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
174 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
175 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
176 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
177 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
178 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
179 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
180 The Awakening Kate Chopin 1899 American English
181 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
182 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
183 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
184 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
185 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
186 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
187 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
188 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
189 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 1954 British English
190 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 1839 French French
191 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
192 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
193 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
194 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
195 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson 1971 American English
196 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
197 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
198 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
199 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
200 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
201 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
202 Macbeth William Shakespeare 1606 British English
203 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
204 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
205 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
206 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
207 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
208 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
209 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
210 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
211 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
212 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
213 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
214 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 British English
215 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
216 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
217 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
218 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
219 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
220 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
221 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 1932 British English
222 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
223 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 1895 British English
224 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
225 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
226 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
227 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
228 Foundation Isaac Asimov 1951 American English
229 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
230 War of the Worlds H. G. Wells 1898 British English
231 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
232 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
233 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
234 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
235 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
236 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
237 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
238 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
239 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
240 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
241 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English