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
2 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
5 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
8 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
13 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
14 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
16 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
17 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
20 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
26 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
28 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
29 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
30 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
31 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
34 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
37 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
39 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
40 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
43 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
45 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
51 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
52 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
59 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
61 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
68 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
73 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
74 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
75 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
77 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
79 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
86 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
87 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
90 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
93 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
94 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
95 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
96 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
105 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
108 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
110 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
113 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
119 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
128 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
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
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
139 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
144 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
145 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
147 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
160 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
163 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
164 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
167 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
171 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
177 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
188 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
194 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 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
218 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American 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
233 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
238 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
242 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
243 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
244 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
245 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
260 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
261 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
264 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
265 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
269 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
274 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
278 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
279 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
280 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
287 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
291 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
292 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
304 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
307 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
308 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
309 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
312 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
325 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
327 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
328 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
331 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
334 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
339 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
348 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
351 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
353 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
359 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
366 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
369 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
370 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
373 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
376 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
378 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
379 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
381 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
384 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
390 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
413 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
421 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
428 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
436 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
438 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
444 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
449 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
450 Prometheus Bound Aeschylus -455 Greek Ancient greek
451 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English