The Greatest Western Books of All Time

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.

View: List Grid Table
Filter by: Genres Dates

Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
131 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British 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
138 The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal 1839 French French
139 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1860 British English
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
144 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 British English
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
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
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
153 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess 1962 British English
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
155 Macbeth William Shakespeare 1606 British English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 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
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 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
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
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
176 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 1951 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
178 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 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
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 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
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
189 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 American 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
192 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
194 Oblomov Ivan Goncharov 1859 Russian Russian
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
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
209 Hunger Knut Hamsun 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
210 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
212 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler 1940 British German
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
215 The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson 1959 American English
216 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843 British English
217 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton 1905 American English
218 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 British English
219 Brighton Rock Graham Greene 1938 British English
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
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
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
231 Death of Virgil Hermann Broch 1945 Austrian German
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
235 The Ambassadors Henry James 1903 American English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
238 A Season in Hell Arthur Rimbaud 1873 French French
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
240 Death in Venice Thomas Mann 1912 German German
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
243 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
244 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
245 Nausea Jean Paul Sartre 1938 French French
246 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
247 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
249 A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov 1840 Russian Russian
250 Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery 1908 Canadian English
251 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 1926 British English