The Greatest Fiction 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
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
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
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 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
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
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
63 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
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
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
91 The Tin Drum Günter Grass 1959 German German
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 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
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
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
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
137 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
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
144 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
147 Confessions of Zeno Italo Svevo 1923 Italian Italian
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
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
163 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
164 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British 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
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
183 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 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
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
197 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
198 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