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100 books based on 295 votes: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 by George Orwell, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Catcher in the Rye...
- The Grapes of Wrath
all-time-favorites-fiction. 263 likes. Like. Comment. Sean...
- The Goodreads 100—Fiction (100 books)
Reflecting the amazing diversity of the Goodreads community,...
- The Grapes of Wrath
Explore 288 'best of' book lists to find the world's most acclaimed books in fiction and other genres. Discover the plot, themes, and style of each book, from One Hundred Years of Solitude to Crime and Punishment.
A list of 100 classic novels from different genres, periods, and countries, compiled by The Observer. Each novel is briefly introduced with a summary, themes, and context.
A list of 100 novels from various genres and periods, selected by TIME Magazine as the greatest books of all time. Each novel is briefly summarized and ranked by its position on the list, with links to more information and reviews.
- Overview
- Anna Karenina
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Great Gatsby
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- A Passage to India
- Invisible Man
- Don Quixote
- Beloved
- Mrs. Dalloway
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
Literary critics, historians, avid readers, and even casual readers will all have different opinions on which novel is truly the “greatest book ever written.” Is it a novel with beautiful, captivating figurative language? Or one with gritty realism? A novel that has had an immense social impact? Or one that has more subtly affected the world? Here ...
Any fan of stories that involve juicy subjects like adultery, gambling, marriage plots, and, well, Russian feudalism, would instantly place Anna Karenina at the peak of their “greatest novels” list. And that’s exactly the ranking that publications like Time magazine have given the novel since it was published in its entirety in 1878. Written by Rus...
Harper Lee, believed to be one of the most influential authors to have ever existed, famously published only a single novel (up until its controversial sequel was published in 2015 just before her death). Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and became an immediate classic of literature. The novel examines racism in the American South ...
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is distinguished as one of the greatest texts for introducing students to the art of reading literature critically (which means you may have read it in school). The novel is told from the perspective of a young man named Nick Carraway who has recently moved to New York City and is befriended by his eccentric n...
The late Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez published his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, in 1967. The novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and follows the establishment of their town Macondo until its destruction along with the last of the family’s descendents. In fantastical form, the novel explor...
E.M. Forster wrote his novel A Passage to India after multiple trips to the country throughout his early life. The book was published in 1924 and follows a Muslim Indian doctor named Aziz and his relationships with an English professor, Cyril Fielding, and a visiting English schoolteacher named Adela Quested. When Adela believes that Aziz has assau...
Often confused with H.G. Wells’s science-fiction novella of nearly the same name (just subtract a “The”), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a groundbreaking novel in the expression of identity for the African American male. The narrator of the novel, a man who is never named but believes he is “invisible” to others socially, tells the story of his m...
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, perhaps the most influential and well-known work of Spanish literature, was first published in full in 1615. The novel, which is very regularly regarded as one of the best literary works of all time, tells the story of a man who takes the name “Don Quixote de la Mancha” and sets off in a fit of obsession over roma...
Toni Morrison’s 1987 spiritual and haunting novel Beloved tells the story of an escaped slave named Sethe who has fled to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the year 1873. The novel investigates the trauma of slavery even after freedom has been gained, depicting Sethe’s guilt and emotional pain after having killed her own child, whom she named Beloved, to keep h...
Possibly the most idiosyncratic novel of this list, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway describes exactly one day in the life of a British socialite named Clarissa Dalloway. Using a combination of a third-person narration and the thoughts of various characters, the novel uses a stream-of-consciousness style all the way through. The result of this style ...
Explore a list of 12 novels that have been praised for their literary merit, social impact, and cultural significance. From Anna Karenina to Invisible Man, these works of fiction span different genres, periods, and authors.
Dec 28, 2021 · 606. In October, as we marked the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we invited readers to nominate the best book published during that time. This was a nod to our history: In its first few...
