The Greatest Psychological Books Since 1990
Click to learn how this list is calculated.
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.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 232 | 2666 | Roberto Bolaño | 2004 | Chilean | Spanish | |
| 237 | The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | 2001 | American | English | |
| 248 | Atonement | Ian McEwan | 2001 | British | English | |
| 279 | The Secret History | Donna Tartt | 1992 | American | English | |
| 333 | Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 1996 | American | English | |
| 370 | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | 2005 | American | English | |
| 452 | A Heart So White | Javier Marias | 1992 | Spanish | Spanish | |
| 473 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami | 1994 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 570 | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | 1991 | American | English | |
| 574 | The Known World | Edward P. Jones | 2003 | American | English | |
| 607 | House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | 2000 | American | English | |
| 644 | The English Patient | Michael Ondaatje | 1992 | Canadian | English | |
| 701 | The Feast of the Goat | Mario Vargas Llosa | 2000 | Peruvian | Spanish | |
| 741 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | 2013 | American | English | |
| 747 | Blonde | Joyce Carol Oates | 2000 | American | English | |
| 784 | Rabbit at Rest | John Updike | 1990 | American | English | |
| 791 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | 2012 | American | English | |
| 804 | The Vegetarian | Han Kang | 2007 | Korean | Korean | |
| 849 | Regeneration | Pat Barker | 1991 | British | English | |
| 862 | Smilla's Sense of Snow | Peter Høeg | 1992 | Danish | Danish | |
| 922 | The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen | 2015 | American | English | |
| 975 | The Reader | Bernhard Schlink | 1995 | German | German | |
| 994 | Blindness | José Saramago | 1995 | Portuguese | Portuguese | |
| 1010 | Fingersmith | Sarah Waters | 2002 | British | English | |
| 1070 | Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks | 1993 | British | English | |
| 1200 | Mating | Norman Rush | 1991 | American | English | |
| 1201 | Kafka On The Shore | Haruki Murakami | 2002 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 1261 | The Blind Assassin | Margaret Atwood | 2000 | Canadian | English | |
| 1366 | The Adversary | Emmanuel Carrère | 2000 | French | French | |
| 1369 | Veronica | Mary Gaitskill | 2005 | American | English | |
| 1435 | Life After Life | Kate Atkinson | 2013 | British | English | |
| 1460 | Never Mind | Edward St Aubyn | 1992 | British | English | |
| 1484 | Independence Day | Richard Ford | 1995 | American | English | |
| 1538 | Snow | Orhan Pamuk | 2002 | Turkish | Turkish | |
| 1554 | The Unconsoled | Kazuo Ishiguro | 1995 | British | English | |
| 1563 | Runaway | Alice Munro | 2004 | Canadian | English | |
| 1693 | The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold | 2002 | American | English | |
| 1700 | The Hunger Angel | Herta Müller | 2009 | German | German | |
| 1723 | 1Q84 | Haruki Murakami | 2009 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 1765 | A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara | 2015 | American | English | |
| 1790 | The Master | Colm Toibin | 2004 | Irish | English | |
| 1882 | Pereira Maintains | Antonio Tabucchi | 1994 | Italian | Italian | |
| 1972 | The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides | 1993 | American | English | |
| 1989 | Your Face Tomorrow | Javier Marias | 2002 | Spanish | Spanish | |
| 1995 | Say Nothing | Patrick Radden Keefe | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2002 | Freedom | Jonathan Franzen | 2010 | American | English | |
| 2076 | Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 2011 | Israeli | English | |
| 2084 | Fight Club | Chuck Palahniuk | 1996 | American | English | |
| 2101 | Tree of Smoke | Denis Johnson | 2007 | American | English | |
| 2167 | Morvern Callar | Alan Warner | 1995 | Scottish | English | |
| 2189 | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | Stieg Larsson | 2005 | Swedish | Swedish | |
| 2197 | Veronika Decides to Die | Paulo Coelho | 1998 | Brazilian | Portuguese | |
| 2218 | The Sense of an Ending | Julian Barnes | 2011 | British | English | |
| 2224 | My Year of Rest and Relaxation | Ottessa Moshfegh | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2226 | Operation Shylock | Philip Roth | 1993 | American | English | |
| 2242 | Milkman | Anna Burns | 2018 | Irish | English | |
| 2244 | The Gathering | Anne Enright | 2007 | Irish | English | |
| 2297 | Out | Natsuo Kirino | 1997 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 2357 | The Butcher Boy | Patrick McCabe | 1992 | Irish | English | |
| 2498 | Room | Emma Donoghue | 2010 | Irish | English | |
| 2597 | Possessing the Secret of Joy | Alice Walker | 1992 | American | English | |
| 2602 | Darkness Visible | William Styron | 1990 | American | English | |
| 2608 | Heavy | Kiese Laymon | 2018 | American | English | |
| 2647 | Hurricane Season | Fernanda Melchor | 2017 | Mexican | Spanish | |
| 2706 | Lost Children Archive | Valeria Luiselli | 2019 | Mexican | English | |
| 2805 | Fates and Furies | Lauren Groff | 2015 | American | English | |
| 2850 | Bad News | Edward St Aubyn | 1992 | British | English | |
| 2902 | Cremation | Rafael Chirbes | 2007 | Spanish | Spanish | |
| 2904 | What I Loved | Siri Hustvedt | 2003 | American | English | |
| 2908 | Love Life | Zeruya Shalev | 2000 | Israeli | Hebrew | |
| 2919 | Bring Up the Bodies | Hilary Mantel | 2012 | British | English | |
| 2951 | Some Hope | Edward St Aubyn | 1994 | British | English | |
| 2967 | The Sea | John Banville | 2005 | Irish | English | |
| 2973 | The White Tiger | Aravind Adiga | 2008 | Indian | English | |
| 3049 | Fever Dream | Samanta Schweblin | 2014 | Argentinian | Spanish | |
| 3060 | Trust | Hernan Díaz | 2022 | Argentinian | English | |
| 3083 | Under the Skin | Michel Faber | 2000 | British | English | |
| 3112 | Leviathan | Paul Auster | 1992 | American | English | |
| 3115 | Affinity | Sarah Waters | 1999 | British | English | |
| 3132 | The Man Who Loved Dogs | Leonardo Padura | 2009 | Cuban | Spanish | |
| 3136 | Mother's Milk | Edward St Aubyn | 2005 | British | English | |
| 3146 | A Simple Plan | Scott Smith | 1993 | American | English | |
| 3164 | Dept. of Speculation | Jenny Offill | 2014 | American | English | |
| 3172 | The Bee Sting | Paul Murray | 2023 | Irish | English | |
| 3183 | Minor Detail | Adania Shibli | 2017 | Palestinian | Arabic | |
| 3199 | Mao II | Don DeLillo | 1991 | American | English | |
| 3227 | Millennium Trilogy | Stieg Larsson | 2005 | Swedish | Swedish | |
| 3265 | The Days Of Abandonment | Elena Ferrante | 2002 | Italian | Italian | |
| 3270 | The Twins | Tessa De Loo | 1993 | Dutch | Dutch | |
| 3271 | Postmortem | Patricia Daniels Cornwell | 1990 | American | English | |
| 3443 | Transit | Rachel Cusk | 2016 | British | English | |
| 3473 | Native Speaker | Chang-rae Lee | 1995 | American | English | |
| 3505 | Speak | Laurie Halse Anderson | 1999 | American | English | |
| 3508 | Joe Cinque's Consolation | Helen Garner | 2004 | Australian | English | |
| 3568 | Little Fires Everywhere | Celeste Ng | 2017 | American | English | |
| 3580 | Call Me By Your Name | André Aciman | 2007 | Italian | English | |
| 3590 | Do Everything in the Dark | Gary Indiana | 2003 | American | English | |
| 3845 | Written on the Body | Jeanette Winterson | 1992 | British | English | |
| 3845 | Troubling Love | Elena Ferrante | 1992 | Italian | Italian | |
| 3858 | Enduring Love | Ian McEwan | 1997 | British | English | |
| 3873 | The Alienist | Caleb Carr | 1994 | American | English | |
| 3875 | We Need To Talk About Kevin | Lionel Shriver | 2003 | American | English | |
| 3926 | In The Woods | Tana French | 2007 | Irish | English | |
| 4068 | The Story Of Lucy Gault | William Trevor | 2002 | Irish | English | |
| 4077 | Birthday Letters | Ted Hughes | 1998 | British | English | |
| 4089 | Silk | Alessandro Baricco | 1996 | Italian | Italian | |
| 4102 | Purge | Sofi Oksanen | 2008 | Finnish | Finnish | |
| 4150 | The Devotion Of Suspect X | Keigo Higashino | 2005 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 4172 | The Bone Collector | Jeffery Deaver | 1997 | American | English | |
| 4190 | Flowers From The Storm | Laura Kinsale | 1992 | American | English | |
| 4307 | It Ends With Us | Colleen Hoover | 2016 | American | English | |
| 4393 | The Friend | Sigrid Nunez | 2018 | American | English | |
| 4473 | Alias Grace | Margaret Atwood | 1996 | Canadian | English | |
| 4534 | Annihilation | Jeff VanderMeer | 2014 | American | English | |
| 4559 | Star Of The Sea | Joseph O'Connor | 2003 | Irish | English | |
| 4588 | Columbine | Dave Cullen | 2009 | American | English | |
| 4592 | Conversations With Friends | Sally Rooney | 2017 | Irish | English | |
| 4654 | Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me | Javier Marias | 1994 | Spanish | Spanish | |
| 4827 | The Prestige | Christopher Priest | 1995 | British | English | |
| 4887 | The Secret Scripture | Sebastian Barry | 2008 | Irish | English |