Time Magazine's 100 Best English-language Novels (1923-present)

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Time Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present (2005).
Enjoy!

Pages: 1

  1. 1.
    The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  2. 2.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

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  3. 3.
    American Pastoral
    by Philip Roth

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  4. 4.
    An American Tragedy (Signet Classics (Paperback))
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  5. 5.
    Animal Farm
    by George Orwell

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  6. 6.
    Appointment in Samarra: A Novel
    by John O'Hara

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  7. 7.
    Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    by Judy Blume

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  8. 8.
    The Assistant: A Novel
    by Bernard Malamud

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  9. 9.
    At Swim-Two-Birds (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series)
    by Flann O'Brien

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  10. 10.
    Atonement: A Novel
    by Ian McEwan

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  11. 11.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

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  12. 13.
    The Big Sleep
    by Raymond Chandler

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  13. 14.
    The Blind Assassin: A Novel
    by Margaret Atwood

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  14. 16.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  15. 17.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

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  16. 18.
    Call It Sleep: A Novel
    by Henry Roth

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  17. 19.
    Catch 22
    by Joseph Heller

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  18. 20.
    The Catcher in the Rye

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  19. 21.
    A Clockwork Orange
    by Anthony Burgess

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  20. 22.
    The Confessions of Nat Turner
    by William Styron

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  21. 23.
    The Corrections: A Novel
    by Jonathan Franzen

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  22. 24.
    The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  23. 26.
    The Day of the Locust (Signet Classic)
    by Nathanael West

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  24. 27.

  25. 28.
    A Death in the Family
    by James Agee

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  26. 29.
    The Death of the Heart
    by Elizabeth Bowen

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  27. 30.
    Deliverance
    by James Dickey

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  28. 31.
    Dog Soldiers
    by Robert Stone

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  29. 32.
    Falconer
    by John Cheever

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  30. 33.
    The French Lieutenant's Woman
    by John Fowles

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  31. 35.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

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  32. 36.
    Gone with the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

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  33. 37.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

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  34. 38.
    Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  35. 39.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  36. 40.
    A Handful of Dust
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  37. 41.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Carson McCullers

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  38. 43.
    Herzog (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  39. 44.
    Housekeeping: A Novel
    by Marilynne Robinson

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  40. 45.
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  41. 47.
    Infinite Jest : A Novel
    by David Foster Wallace

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  42. 48.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

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  43. 49.
    Light in August
    by William Faulkner

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Pages: 1

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Created by Juliana on Mar 25, 2006.
 

Comments

Mixed bag — 23 weeks ago

Some of these are not among the best, in my experience. For instance, missing is Harry Mulisch’s THE ASSAULT, brilliant. Another is NIGHT by Wiesel, brilliant. ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF SOLITUDE, probably the best book written in the last half-century: missing: ridiculous. And yet books like the one by Kingsley Amis, about a drunk who is supposed to be funny, is questionable. As is Steinbeck’s dated book instead of his better EAST OF EDEN, or Hemingway’s FAREWELL TO ARMS (missing), or Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, or the brilliant book by Gunter Grass, or any one of a number of books by the wonderful Penelope Fitzgerald. What about Pym? Louis Auchincloss? James Cain? Molly Gloss’s THE JUMP-OFF CREEK? Kawabatta? Ivan Doig? Mishima? In their place? – many lesser works.


miss kiki
St. Paul

Why? — 1 year ago

Looks like someone deleted a book from the list (there’s only 99 now).


Oprah's Book Club- Blah! — 1 year ago

Tamsinator, 100% agree. Seeing that ‘Oprah’s Book Club choice’ sticker on a book makes me want to look elsewhere.


miss kiki
St. Paul

Untitled — 1 year ago

Deleting The Handmaid’s Tale that was added recently. It’s a great book, but not on the list.

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html


Tamsinator
Spanish Fork

Is it just me... — 2 years ago

or does nothing turn you off a book more than the words “Oprah’s book club”?


Missing! — 2 years ago

The Adventures of Augie March should be here, yet there are already 100. So which of the ones here doesn’t belong?


Juliet
Toronto

Found it! — 3 years ago

The missing one was The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. :)