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
25 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
26 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
27 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
29 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
30 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
31 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
34 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
35 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
39 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
42 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
44 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
48 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
52 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
59 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
64 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
70 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
71 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
72 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
73 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
74 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
78 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
82 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
85 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
87 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
88 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
94 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
96 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
97 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
100 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
103 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
104 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
107 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
118 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
121 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
122 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
123 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
132 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
135 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
138 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
140 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
141 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
143 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
147 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
148 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
149 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
151 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
153 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
162 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
163 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
169 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
176 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
192 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
197 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
199 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
211 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
214 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
215 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
216 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
217 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
224 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
225 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
232 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
233 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
234 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
240 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
250 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
251 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
252 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
267 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
268 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
271 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
276 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
282 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
283 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
287 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
288 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
289 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
294 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
299 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
300 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
312 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
315 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
317 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
318 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
321 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
324 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
328 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
332 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
335 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
337 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
339 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
342 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
346 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
350 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
361 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
363 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
370 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
376 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
377 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
379 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
382 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
383 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
386 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
388 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
391 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
396 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
418 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
427 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
434 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
436 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
442 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
443 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German