The Greatest Books of All Time on Friendship

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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
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
83 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
94 Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872 Russian Russian
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
116 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
119 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
123 Memoirs of Hadrian Marguerite Yourcenar 1951 French French
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
143 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American 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
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
163 Siddhartha Hermann Hesse 1922 German German
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British 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
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
207 Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis 1946 Greek Greek
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
225 Fairy Tales and Stories Hans Christian Andersen 1835 Danish Danish
226 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell 1957 British English
227 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
247 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
249 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
250 Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery 1908 Canadian English
256 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
261 Wings of the Dove Henry James 1902 American English
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
267 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
272 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Joao Guimaraes Rosa 1956 Brazilian Portuguese
275 The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1782 French French
277 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
282 The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 German German
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
302 The Lost Estate Henri Alain-Fournier 1913 French French
303 Peter And Wendy J. M. Barrie 1911 Scottish English
305 The Confusions of Young Törless Robert Musil 1906 Austrian German
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
325 A Dance to the Music of Time Anthony Powell 1951 British English
329 History Elsa Morante 1974 Italian Italian
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
332 Clarissa Samuel Richardson 1748 British English
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
335 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Giorgio Bassani 1962 Italian Italian
340 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum 1900 American English
341 The Human Comedy Honoré de Balzac 1830 French French
343 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
354 Hopscotch Julio Cortazar 1963 Argentinian Spanish
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
365 Eugene Onegin Alexander Pushkin 1833 Russian Russian
367 Journey to the West Wu Cheng'en 1592 Chinese Chinese
371 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
375 Kolyma Stories Varlam Shalamov 1954 Russian Russian
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
388 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
391 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather 1927 American English
395 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
410 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
416 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
426 The Moon and the Bonfires Cesare Pavese 1950 Italian Italian
432 Lost Illusions Honoré de Balzac 1837 French French
437 Passing Nella Larsen 1929 American English
443 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2013 Nigerian English
462 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English
467 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh 1934 British English
474 Embers Sandor Marai 1942 Hungarian Hungarian
475 Gilead Marilynne Robinson 2004 American English
484 Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin 1754 Chinese Chinese
491 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
499 Platero Juan Ramón Jiménez 1914 Spanish Spanish
502 Another Country James Baldwin 1962 American English
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
508 Black Beauty Anna Sewell 1877 British English
518 The Odes Horace 23 Roman Latin