List of the 100 Best Books of All Time

Title Author Year Country Language

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

1958

Nigeria

English

Fairy tales

Hans Christian Andersen

183537

Denmark

Danish

The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri

12651321

Italy

Italian

Epic of Gilgamesh

Anonymous

18th 17th century BCE

Sumer and Akkadian Empire

Akkadian

Book of Job

Anonymous

6th 4th century BCE

Achaemenid Empire

Hebrew

One Thousand and One Nights

Anonymous

7001500

India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt

Persian

Njl's Saga

Anonymous

13th century

Iceland

Old Norse

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

1813

United Kingdom

English

Le Pre Goriot

Honor de Balzac

1835

France

French

Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, a trilogy

Samuel Beckett

195153

Republic of Ireland

French, English

The Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio

134953

Ravenna

Italian

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges

194486

Argentina

Spanish

Wuthering Heights

Emily Bront

1847

United Kingdom

English

The Stranger

Albert Camus

1942

Algeria, French Empire French

Poems

Paul Celan

1952

Romania, France

German

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Cline

1932

France

French

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

1605 (part 1), 1615 (part 2)

Spain

Spanish

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer

14th century

England

English

Stories

Anton Chekhov

1886

Russia

Russian

Nostromo

Joseph Conrad

1904

United Kingdom

English

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

1861

United Kingdom

English

Jacques the Fatalist

Denis Diderot

1796

France

French

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Alfred Dblin

1929

Germany

German

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866

Russia

Russian

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869

Russia

Russian

The Possessed

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872

Russia

Russian

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880

Russia

Russian

Middlemarch

George Eliot

1871

United Kingdom

English

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

1952

United States

English

Medea

Euripides

431 BCE

Greece

Greek

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner

1936

United States

English

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

1929

United States

English

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

1857

France

French

Sentimental Education

Gustave Flaubert

1869

France

French

Gypsy Ballads

Federico Garca Lorca

1928

Spain

Spanish

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garca Mrquez

1967

Colombia

Spanish

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garca

1985

Colombia

Spanish

Title

Author Mrquez

Year

Country

Language

Faust

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1832

Saxe-Weimar

German

Dead Souls

Nikolai Gogol

1842

Russia

Russian

The Tin Drum

Gnter Grass

1959

Germany

German

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

Joo Guimares Rosa

1956

Brazil

Portuguese

Hunger

Knut Hamsun

1890

Norway

Norwegian

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway 1952

United States

English

Iliad

Homer

850750 BCE

Greece

Greek

Odyssey

Homer

8th century BCE

Greece

Greek

A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen

1879

Norway

Norwegian

Ulysses

James Joyce

1922

Irish Free State

English

Stories

Franz Kafka

1924

Austria

German

The Trial

Franz Kafka

1925

Austria

German

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

The Castle

Franz Kafka

1926

Austria

German

Shakuntala

Klidsa

1st century BCE 4th century CE

India

Sanskrit

The Sound of the Mountain Yasunari Kawabata 1954

Japan

Japanese

Zorba the Greek

Nikos Kazantzakis

1946

Greece

Greek

Sons and Lovers

D. H. Lawrence

1913

United Kingdom

English

Independent People

Halldr Laxness

193435

Iceland

Icelandic

Poems

Giacomo Leopardi

1818

Italy

Italian

The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

1962

United Kingdom

English

Pippi Longstocking

Astrid Lindgren

1945

Sweden

Swedish

A Madman's Diary

Lu Xun

1918

China

Chinese

Children of Gebelawi

Naguib Mahfouz

1959

Egypt

Arabic

Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann

1901

Germany

German

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

1924

Germany

German

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

1851

United States

English

Essays

Michel de Montaigne

1595

France

French

History

Elsa Morante

1974

Italy

Italian

Beloved

Toni Morrison

1987

United States

English

The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu

11th century

Japan

Japanese

The Man Without Qualities

Robert Musil

193032

Austria

German

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

1955

Russia/United States

English

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

1949

United Kingdom

English

Metamorphoses

Ovid

1st century CE

Roman Empire

Classical Latin

The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa

1928

Portugal

Portuguese

Tales

Edgar Allan Poe

19th century

United States

English

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust

191327

France

French

The Life of Gargantua and

Franois Rabelais

153234

France

French

Title of Pantagruel

Author

Year

Country

Language

Pedro Pramo

Juan Rulfo

1955

Mexico

Spanish

Masnavi

Rumi

125873

Persia, Mongol Empire Persian

Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie

1981

United Kingdom, India

English

Bostan

Saadi

1257

Persia, Mongol Empire Persian

Season of Migration to the North

Tayeb Salih

1966

Sudan

Arabic

Blindness

Jos Saramago

1995

Portugal

Portuguese

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

1603

England

English

King Lear

William Shakespeare

1608

England

English

Othello

William Shakespeare

1609

England

English

Oedipus the King

Sophocles

430 BCE

Greece

Greek

The Red and the Black

Stendhal

1830

France

French

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

Tristram Shandy

Laurence Sterne

1760

England

English

Confessions of Zeno

Italo Svevo

1923

Italy

Italian

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

1726

Ireland

English

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

18651869

Russia

Russian

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

1877

Russia

Russian

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy

1886

Russia

Russian

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

1884

United States

English

Ramayana

Valmiki

3rd century BCE 3rd century CE

India

Sanskrit

Aeneid

Virgil

2919 BCE

Roman Empire

Classical Latin

Mahabharata

Vyasa

4th century BCE 4th century CE

India

Sanskrit

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman

1855

United States

English

Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

1925

United Kingdom

English

Title

Author

Year

Country

Language

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

1927

United Kingdom

English

Memoirs of Hadrian

Marguerite Yourcenar

1951

France

French