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
6 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
8 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
13 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
14 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
17 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
23 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
26 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
28 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
29 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
30 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
32 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
34 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
38 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
39 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
41 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
42 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
43 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
51 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
53 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
59 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
62 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
63 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
71 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
73 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
74 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
75 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
77 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
78 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
81 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
85 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
86 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
88 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
91 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
93 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
109 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
111 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
115 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
121 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
124 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
126 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
127 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
132 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
133 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
134 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
135 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
137 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
146 Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol 1842 Russian Russian
148 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
149 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
150 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
152 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
155 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
157 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
158 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
159 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
163 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
174 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
175 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
180 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
188 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
193 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
195 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
206 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
210 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
215 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
218 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 Brazilian Portuguese
224 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
230 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
239 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
241 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
246 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
247 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
251 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
260 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
268 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
281 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
293 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
294 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
296 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
299 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
303 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
308 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
314 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
335 2001 Arthur C. Clarke 1968 British English
340 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
343 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
344 Pensées Blaise Pascal 1670 French French
345 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
351 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
352 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
354 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
357 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
360 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
366 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
369 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
370 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
374 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
382 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
395 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
410 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
413 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
421 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
422 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
424 The Death of Ivan Ilyich Leo Tolstoy 1886 Russian Russian
434 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
435 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
439 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
440 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
441 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
447 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
449 Joseph and His Brothers Thomas Mann 1933 German German
450 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
452 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
457 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
461 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
462 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
464 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
469 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English
472 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German