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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 Greatest Books of All Time. This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 288 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books.
- 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 ...
Learn about the 12 novels that have been acclaimed by critics, historians, and readers as some of the greatest works of literature ever written. From Anna Karenina to One Hundred Years of Solitude, these novels explore various themes, genres, and historical contexts with masterful craftsmanship and impact.
Oct 12, 2003 · 1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes. The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries. Harold Bloom on Don Quixote – the first modern novel. 2....
- Ulysses by James Joyce – Banned for obscenity in the United States, a stream of consciousness classic that follows one Irish man’s every thought for an entire day.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – Often called the best novel ever written. Dozens of characters, stretching from Muscovite peasants all the way to Napoleon himself.
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – A hundred years ahead of its time, Tolstoy’s investigation of the silent, stifling life of women is an all-time great.
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert – A classic of 19th century realism. A cautionary tale about romanticism.
All the books on the list "The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time: The List" from The Observer. The list of essential fiction from the past 300 years from Robert McCrum of The Observer.
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1. The Story of Sinuhe by Unknown (c. 1800 BC) More than three thousand years before the Bard was born, the Egyptian Shakespeare wrote the Hathor worshipper’s answer to Hamlet — and we don’t even know their name. Anonymously authored, the elegant and haunting Story of Sinuhe has been hailed as ancient Egypt’s best.
