The Greatest Books Since 1900

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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
369 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
373 The Duino Elegies Rainer Maria Rilke 1923 German German
375 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
382 Parade's End Ford Madox Ford 1924 British English
384 Ferdydurke Witold Gombrowicz 1937 Polish Polish
389 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 Brazilian Portuguese
390 The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett 1908 British English
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
392 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 1954 British English
394 Nadja André Breton 1928 French French
395 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
398 The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910 German German
399 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman 1995 British English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
403 The Words Jean Paul Sartre 1963 French French
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
407 The World According to Garp John Irving 1978 American English
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
410 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
411 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
415 The Day of the Jackal Frederick Forsyth 1971 British English
416 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
418 Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 American English
419 The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey 1951 British English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
423 Murder on the Orient Express Agatha Christie 1934 British English
426 The Moon and the Bonfires Cesare Pavese 1950 Italian Italian
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
429 The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino 1957 Italian Italian
430 The Bridge on the Drina Ivo Andrić 1945 Bosnian Serbo-croatian
433 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 1970 American English
434 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
435 Scoop Evelyn Waugh 1938 British English
436 El Aleph Jorge Luis Borges 1949 Argentinian Spanish
437 Passing Nella Larsen 1929 American English
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
441 The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon 1966 American English
442 The Magus John Fowles 1965 British English
443 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2013 Nigerian English
444 The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
445 I'm Not Stiller Max Frisch 1954 Swiss German
446 Joseph and His Brothers Thomas Mann 1933 German German
447 Gypsy Ballads Federico García Lorca 1928 Spanish Spanish
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
449 Les Enfants Terribles Jean Cocteau 1929 French French
450 Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1903 British English
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
452 A Heart So White Javier Marias 1992 Spanish Spanish
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
454 The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 1978 British English
455 V Thomas Pynchon 1963 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
457 The Hollow Man John Dickson Carr 1935 British English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
462 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
467 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh 1934 British English
469 The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain 1934 American English
470 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad 1907 British English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
472 The Man Who Loved Children Christina Stead 1940 Australian English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
474 Embers Sandor Marai 1942 Hungarian Hungarian
475 Gilead Marilynne Robinson 2004 American English
477 Fateless or Fatelessness Imre Kertész 1975 Hungarian Hungarian
478 Alcools Guillaume Apollinaire 1913 French French
479 Four Quartets T. S. Eliot 1943 British English
480 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 1932 British English
482 Jakob Von Gunten Robert Walser 1909 Swiss German
483 The Civil War Shelby Foote 1958 American English
486 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
487 Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 1915 British English
488 The Shipping News Annie Proulx 1993 Canadian English
490 Ethan Frome Edith Wharton 1911 American English
492 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell, Peter Miles 1914 British English
493 Auto Da Fé Elias Canetti 1935 Bulgarian German
494 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English
495 Casino Royale Ian Fleming 1953 British English
496 Froth on the daydream Boris Vian 1947 French French
497 Murder Must Advertise Dorothy L. Sayers 1933 British English
498 The Immoralist André Gide 1902 French French
499 Platero Juan Ramón Jiménez 1914 Spanish Spanish
500 Everything That Rises Must Converge Flannery O'Connor 1965 American English
501 W, or the Memory of Childhood Georges Perec 1975 French French
502 Another Country James Baldwin 1962 American English
504 Her Lover Albert Cohen 1968 Swiss French
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
509 Sanctuary William Faulkner 1931 American English
511 Perfume Patrick Suskind 1985 German German
513 Kindred Octavia E. Butler 1979 American English
514 Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov 1951 American English
516 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
517 Being and Time Martin Heidegger 1927 German German
519 Call It Sleep Henry Roth 1934 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
524 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
525 Gormenghast Mervyn Peake 1950 British English
526 Family Sayings Natalia Ginzburg 1963 Italian Italian
528 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
532 The Passion According to G.H. Clarice Lispector 1964 Brazilian Portuguese
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
535 Red Cavalry Isaac Babel 1926 Russian Russian
536 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett 1929 American English
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch