The Greatest Books of All Time Set in Fictional Location

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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
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
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
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
131 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
137 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
151 Molloy Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
155 Macbeth William Shakespeare 1606 British English
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
163 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
223 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 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
251 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 1926 British English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
259 Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs 1959 American English
263 The Tartar Steppe Dino Buzzati 1940 Italian Italian
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
267 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
270 Malone Dies Samuel Beckett 1951 Irish French
272 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Joao Guimaraes Rosa 1956 Brazilian Portuguese
278 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
283 Nostromo Joseph Conrad 1904 British English
286 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
293 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
294 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
295 Franz Kafka Franz Kafka 1971 Czech Unknown
302 The Lost Estate Henri Alain-Fournier 1913 French French
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
309 Tarzan of the Apes Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912 American English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
320 Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak 1963 American English
321 We Yevgeny Zamyatin 1924 Russian Russian
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
326 The Unnamable Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
327 Solaris Stanislaw Lem 1961 Polish Polish
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
346 The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole 1764 British English
348 The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse 1943 German German
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
352 The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith 1766 British English
360 Ada or Ardor Vladimir Nabokov 1969 American English
361 Foundation Isaac Asimov 1951 American English
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
367 Journey to the West Wu Cheng'en 1592 Chinese Chinese
368 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein 1961 American English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
399 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman 1995 British English
400 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
407 The World According to Garp John Irving 1978 American English
414 The Mill on the Floss George Eliot 1860 British English
420 The Human Stain Philip Roth 2000 American English
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
429 The Baron in the Trees Italo Calvino 1957 Italian Italian
435 Scoop Evelyn Waugh 1938 British English
436 El Aleph Jorge Luis Borges 1949 Argentinian Spanish
459 The Island of Doctor Moreau H. G. Wells 1896 British English
463 The Songs of Maldoror Comte de Lautréamont 1868 French French
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
480 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 1932 British English
487 Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 1915 British English
494 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English
496 Froth on the daydream Boris Vian 1947 French French
520 Mansfield Park Jane Austen 1814 British English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
526 Gormenghast Mervyn Peake 1950 British English
528 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
545 The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie Agota Kristof 1986 Hungarian French
546 Jealousy Alain Robbe-Grillet 1957 French French
547 Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll 1871 British English
548 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English