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
9 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
11 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
13 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
16 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
19 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
20 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
22 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
23 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
28 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
29 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
30 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
36 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
37 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
41 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
49 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
50 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
53 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
55 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
56 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
59 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
65 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
67 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
71 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
77 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
79 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
80 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
84 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
89 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
90 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
95 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
98 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
101 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
103 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
109 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
113 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
115 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
116 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
123 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
127 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
130 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
133 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
135 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
137 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
138 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
142 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
144 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
146 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
151 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
157 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
158 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
161 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
163 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
172 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
174 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
180 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
183 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
195 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
199 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
204 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
210 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
222 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
226 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
227 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
228 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
230 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
237 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
240 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
246 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
248 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
249 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
250 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
253 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
256 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
258 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
272 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
274 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
277 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
278 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
279 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
283 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
285 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
290 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
298 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
301 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
302 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
313 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
314 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
319 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
321 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
329 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
331 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
336 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
354 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
357 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
359 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
375 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
378 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
379 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
391 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
392 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
393 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
399 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
398 The Human Comedy Honoré de Balzac 1830 French French
400 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
406 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
409 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
410 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
413 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
414 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
415 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
416 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
417 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
418 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
421 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
422 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English