The Greatest Books Since 1927

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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
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
76 The Plague Albert Camus 1947 French French
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
101 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
103 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
126 If This Is a Man Primo Levi 1947 Italian Italian
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
142 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 1930 American English
143 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
158 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
168 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
169 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961 British, Scottish English
170 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
171 Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse 1927 German German
172 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
176 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 1951 British English
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
186 Bonjour Tristesse Francoise Sagan 1954 French French
187 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene 1940 British English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
197 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
199 The Radetzky March Joseph Roth 1932 Austrian German
200 The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa 1982 Portuguese Portuguese
201 Berlin Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin 1929 German German
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
207 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
208 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
219 Brighton Rock Graham Greene 1938 British English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
223 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
226 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
231 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
233 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
234 The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English