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
3 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
4 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
8 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
12 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
14 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
15 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
22 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
25 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
28 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
29 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
30 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
31 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
36 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
37 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
38 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
41 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
42 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
46 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
50 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
51 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
52 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
56 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
61 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
71 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
72 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
73 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
75 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
77 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
78 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
79 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
83 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
85 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
89 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
90 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
91 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
97 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
106 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
110 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
111 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
113 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
116 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
118 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
126 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
127 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
130 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
136 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
138 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
139 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
141 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
148 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
151 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
152 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
155 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
157 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
158 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
168 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
176 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
177 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
181 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
189 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
192 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
193 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
202 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
204 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
213 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 Brazilian Portuguese
217 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
223 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
224 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
225 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
227 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
238 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
241 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
242 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
260 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
261 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
269 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
272 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
273 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
277 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
305 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
309 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
313 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
320 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
321 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
329 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
330 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
339 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
342 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
343 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
345 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
355 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
364 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
366 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
385 2001 Arthur C. Clarke 1968 British English
388 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
389 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
396 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
401 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
409 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
410 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
411 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
414 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
419 Joseph and His Brothers Thomas Mann 1933 German German
421 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
425 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
426 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
429 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
433 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
434 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
442 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English
443 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
446 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
451 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
453 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
458 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
461 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
465 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
469 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English