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.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10819 | Montauk | Max Frisch | 1975 | Swiss | German | |
| 10820 | An Untamed State | Roxane Gay | 2014 | American | English | |
| 10821 | Skeleton Key | Anthony Horowitz | 2002 | British | English | |
| 10822 | Pym | Mat Johnson | 2011 | American | English | |
| 10824 | Salt To The Sea | Ruta Sepetys | 2016 | American | English | |
| 10824 | Scythe | Neal Shusterman | 2016 | American | English | |
| 10826 | Touching Feeling | Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick | 2003 | American | English | |
| 10823 | The Ox Bow Incident | Walter Van Tilburg Clark | 1940 | American | English | |
| 10830 | The Lime Twig | John Hawkes | 1961 | American | English | |
| 10828 | Double Act | Jacqueline Wilson | 1995 | British | English | |
| 10831 | Praxis | Fay Weldon | 1978 | British | English | |
| 10831 | Six Of One | Rita Mae Brown | 1978 | American | English | |
| 10831 | A Weave Of Women | E. M. Broner | 1978 | American | English | |
| 10835 | The Silent Wife | Kerry Fisher | 2017 | British | English | |
| 10836 | Ants Among Elephants | Sujatha Gidla | 2017 | American | English | |
| 10839 | Bleeding Edge | Thomas Pynchon | 2013 | American | English | |
| 10841 | I, Alex Cross | James Patterson | 2009 | American | English | |
| 10842 | The Film Explainer | Gert Hofmann | 1990 | German | German | |
| 10844 | Who Controls The Internet? | Tim Wu, Jack Goldsmith | 2006 | American | English | |
| 10842 | The End Of Days | Jenny Erpenbeck | 2012 | German | German | |
| 10840 | The Story Of The Night | Colm Toibin | 1996 | Irish | English | |
| 10845 | The World Of Economics | John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, Peter Newman | 1991 | British | English | |
| 10846 | Shadowshaper | Daniel José Older | 2015 | American | English | |
| 10846 | The Wrath & The Dawn | Renée Ahdieh | 2015 | American | English | |
| 10848 | Orson Welles | André Bazin | 1972 | French | French | |
| 10848 | Homo Necans | Walter Burkert | 1972 | German | German | |
| 10848 | Gardens Of Adonis | Marcel Detienne | 1972 | Greek | French | |
| 10851 | The Second Ghost Book | Cynthia Asquith | 1952 | British | English | |
| 10851 | Out Of The Storm | Sam Moskowitz | 1952 | American | English | |
| 10851 | The Supernatural In Fiction | Peter Penzoldt | 1952 | Swiss | English | |
| 10854 | The Stories | Bernard Malamud | 1983 | American | English | |
| 10854 | The Central Motion | James Dickey | 1983 | American | English | |
| 10854 | The Albany Cycle | William Kennedy | 1983 | American | English | |
| 10854 | Modern Baptists | James Wilcox | 1983 | American | English | |
| 10854 | The Lie Tree | Frances Hardinge | 2015 | British | English | |
| 10854 | Berlin Noir | Philip Kerr | 1989 | British | English | |
| 10854 | American Appetites | Joyce Carol Oates | 1989 | American | English | |
| 10864 | A Century Of Ghost Stories | Richard Sugg | 2017 | British | English | |
| 10866 | Ancillary Sword | Ann Leckie | 2014 | American | English | |
| 10866 | City Of Stairs | Robert Jackson Bennett | 2014 | American | English | |
| 10868 | Mr. Splitfoot | Samantha Hunt | 2016 | American | English | |
| 10873 | Invisible Women | Caroline Criado Perez | 2019 | British | English | |
| 10869 | Copper Sun | Sharon M. Draper | 2006 | American | English | |
| 10869 | Tyrell | Coe Booth | 2006 | American | English | |
| 10869 | Down The Nile | Rosemary Mahoney | 2007 | American | English | |
| 10869 | Tokyo Fiancée | Amélie Nothomb | 2007 | Belgian | French | |
| 10875 | The Floating World | Cynthia Kadohata | 1989 | American | English | |
| 10875 | Lost In Translation | Eva Hoffman | 1989 | Canadian | English | |
| 10875 | Women, Culture & Politics | Angela Davis | 1989 | American | English | |
| 10874 | Darkly Dreaming Dexter | Jeff Lindsay | 2004 | American | English | |
| 10884 | Black Water | Joyce Carol Oates | 1992 | American | English | |
| 10885 | A Man In Full (A Novel) | Tom Wolfe | 1998 | American | English | |
| 10888 | Sabbatai Sevi | Gershom Scholem | 1973 | German | German | |
| 10886 | Things We Never Got Over | Lucy Score | 2022 | American | English | |
| 10891 | Brand New Ancients | Kae Tempest | 2013 | British | English | |
| 10892 | Looking For Alibrandi | Melina Marchetta | 1992 | Australian | English | |
| 10893 | The Odd Woman And The City | Vivian Gornick | 2015 | American | English | |
| 10894 | You Could Make This Place Beautiful | Maggie Smith | 2023 | American | English | |
| 10894 | Lola In The Mirror | Trent Dalton | 2023 | Australian | English | |
| 10898 | After Many A Summer Dies The Swan | Aldous Huxley | 1939 | British | English | |
| 10899 | America’s Women | Gail Collins | 2003 | American | English | |
| 10900 | Hotel Splendid | Marie Redonnet | 1986 | French | French | |
| 10901 | Les Amours | Pierre Ronsard | 1552 | French | French | |
| 10903 | Rising Out Of Hatred | Eli Saslow | 2018 | American | English | |
| 10905 | Inside My Mother | Ali Cobby Eckermann | 2015 | Australian | English | |
| 10905 | Liveblog | Megan Boyle | 2015 | American | English | |
| 10903 | Before I Forget | Anne Pauly | 2019 | French | French | |
| 10910 | Grief | Andrew Holleran | 2022 | American | English | |
| 10910 | Samedi The Deafness | Jesse Ball | 2007 | American | English | |
| 10910 | The Last Novel | David Markson | 2007 | American | English | |
| 10908 | Singing Softly | Carmen De Monteflores | 1979 | American | English | |
| 10908 | A Small Country | Sian James | 1979 | British | English | |
| 10913 | Gaspard De La Nuit | Aloysius Bertrand | 1842 | French | French | |
| 10915 | La Casa Del Padre | Justo Navarro | 2015 | Spanish | Spanish | |
| 10914 | Роман | Vladimir Sorokin | 1998 | Russian | Russian | |
| 10916 | Common As Air | Lewis Hyde | 2010 | American | English | |
| 10919 | The Economic Weapon | Nicholas Mulder | 2022 | American | English | |
| 10919 | Classified | David E. Bernstein | 2022 | American | English | |
| 10921 | Mark Twain | Ron Chernow | 2025 | American | English | |
| 10922 | Pope Joan | Donna Cross | 1996 | American | English | |
| 10923 | Women Don’t Ask | Linda Babcock, Sara Laschever | 2003 | American | English | |
| 10924 | Fools of Fortune | William Trevor | 1983 | Irish | English | |
| 10925 | The Health Services Since The War | Charles Webster | 1988 | British | English | |
| 10925 | The Lost Father | Marina Warner | 1988 | British | English | |
| 10925 | Robert Grosseteste | R. W. Southern | 1988 | British | English | |
| 10925 | Stirrings Still | Samuel Beckett | 1988 | Irish | English | |
| 10925 | Whale Nation | Heathcote Williams | 1988 | British | English | |
| 10931 | Wilt | Tom Sharpe | 1976 | British | English | |
| 10933 | Consent To Kill | Vince Flynn | 2005 | American | English | |
| 10932 | Trilogy | Jon Fosse | 2014 | Norwegian | Norwegian | |
| 10934 | Bodies Of Light | Jennifer Down | 2021 | Australian | English | |
| 10935 | Blowback | Brad Thor | 2005 | American | English | |
| 10936 | The Bone Key | Sarah Monette | 2024 | American | English | |
| 10937 | Langrishe, Go Down | Aidan Higgins | 1966 | Irish | English | |
| 10939 | The Art Of Cruelty | Maggie Nelson | 2011 | American | English | |
| 10938 | Bitches, Bimbos, And Ballbreakers | Guerilla Girls | 2003 | American | English | |
| 10940 | The Leavers | Lisa Ko | 2017 | American | English | |
| 10953 | The World Without Us | Alan Weisman | 2007 | American | English | |
| 10947 | Collected Stories | John O'Hara | 1984 | American | English | |
| 10947 | Selected Poems | Philip Levine | 1984 | American | English | |
| 10941 | I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter | Erika L. Sánchez | 2017 | American | English | |
| 10941 | The 57 Bus | Dashka Slater | 2017 | American | English | |
| 10941 | The Marrow Thieves | Cherie Dimaline | 2017 | Canadian | English | |
| 10941 | We Are Okay | Nina LaCour | 2017 | American | English | |
| 10945 | Barracoon | Zora Neale Hurston | 2018 | American | English | |
| 10947 | Golden Hill | Francis Spufford | 2016 | British | English | |
| 10955 | Tears in the Darkness | Michael Norman, Elizabeth M. Norman | 2009 | American | English | |
| 10954 | Spillover | David Quammen | 2012 | American | English | |
| 10956 | Surprised By Hope | N.T. Wright | 2008 | British | English | |
| 10957 | The Magicians | Lev Grossman | 2009 | American | English | |
| 10960 | The Bird's Nest | Shirley Jackson | 1954 | American | English | |
| 10961 | Radiant Terminus | Antoine Volodine | 2014 | French | French | |
| 10959 | The Lack Of Light | Nino Haratischwili | 2014 | German | German | |
| 10963 | Heartsnatcher | Boris Vian | 1953 | French | French | |
| 10964 | Rotters | Daniel Kraus | 2011 | American | English | |
| 10967 | The Hair of Harold Roux | Thomas Williams | 1974 | American | English | |
| 10965 | The Films In My Life | Francois Truffaut | 1975 | French | French | |
| 10965 | The Roman Empire | Paul Veyne | 1975 | French | French | |
| 10969 | The Hunger | Alma Katsu | 2018 | American | English | |
| 10968 | That Time Of Year | Marie NDiaye | 2020 | French | French |