Top 100 Works in World Literature

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 102 Books

The editors of the Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, polled a panel of 100 authors from 54 countries on what they considered the “best and most central works in world literature.” Among the authors polled were Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer, and Carlos Fuentes. The list of 100 works appears alphabetically by author. Although the books were not ranked, the editors revealed that Don Quixote received 50% more votes than any other book.

This list was originally published in 2002 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
10 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
151 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
262 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
125 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
46 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
11 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
16 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
1231 Poems Paul Celan 1952 German German
189 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
209 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
24 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
28 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
430 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master Denis Diderot 1796 French French
244 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
12 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
64 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
79 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
20 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
25 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
329 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
41 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
17 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
133 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
380 Gypsy Ballads Federico García Lorca 1928 Spanish Spanish
4 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
269 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
72 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
99 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
95 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
378 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Joao Guimaraes Rosa 1956 Brazilian Portuguese
201 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
56 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
22 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
434 A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen 1879 Norwegian Norwegian
499 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
3 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
186 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
30 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
87 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
1219 The Recognition of Sakuntala Kālidāsa -400 Indian Sanskrit
1262 The Sound of the Mountain Yasunari Kawabata 1954 Japanese Japanese
203 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
136 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
233 Independent People Halldor Laxness 1934 Icelandic Icelandic
475 Complete Poems of Giacomo Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi 1831 Italian Italian
94 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
258 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
366 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
1159 Children of Gebelawi Naguib Mahfouz 1959 Egyptian Arabic
91 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
32 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
69 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
624 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
51 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
128 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
111 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
6 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
1234 Njal's Saga Iceland 1280 Icelandic Old norse
8 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
218 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
325 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
101 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
208 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
140 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
1235 Masnavi Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi 1258 Persian Persian
42 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
1237 Bostan Saadi 1257 Persian Persian
356 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
1747 Blindness José Saramago 1995 Portuguese Portuguese
67 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
155 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
736 Othello William Shakespeare 1603 British English
75 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
38 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
165 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
55 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
15 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
7 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
241 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
31 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
557 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
58 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
61 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
35 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
29 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
126 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
45 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
195 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
282 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
420 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
68 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
44 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
53 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
448 Call to Arms Lu Xun 1922 Chinese Chinese
141 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish