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
3 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
8 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
13 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
16 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
17 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
20 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
25 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
29 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
32 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
34 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
35 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
37 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
39 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
41 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
51 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
52 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
53 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
56 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
57 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
58 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
60 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
65 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
71 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
74 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
76 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
78 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
79 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
85 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
86 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
93 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
98 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
104 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
105 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
113 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
115 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
117 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
119 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
120 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
123 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
125 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
128 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
133 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
140 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
141 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
142 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
144 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
146 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
151 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
154 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
158 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
161 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
169 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
170 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
172 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
175 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
181 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
186 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
198 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
201 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
203 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
208 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
212 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
215 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
217 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
220 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
223 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
231 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
232 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
239 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
242 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
249 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
250 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
256 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
261 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
262 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
271 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
273 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
278 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
283 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
287 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
290 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
291 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
292 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
293 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
297 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
302 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
327 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
330 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
331 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
333 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
335 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
339 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
341 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
342 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
348 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
351 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
354 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
355 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
363 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
365 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
367 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
375 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
379 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
380 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
382 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
386 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
387 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
396 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
399 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English
402 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
414 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
415 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
426 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
432 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
436 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English