The Guardian's "100 Best Books of All Time"

Add to my lists | Print this list

Full list of the 100 best works of fiction, alphabetically by author, as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided.

You can see the 100 writers who voted here:
http://www.bokklubben.no/SamboWeb/side.do?dokId=547576

Pages: 1

  1. 1.
    Things Fall Apart
    by Chinua Achebe

    Drag me to re-order


  3. 3.
    Pride and Prejudice (Modern Library Classics)
    by Jane Austen

    Drag me to re-order


  4. 4.
    Old Goriot (Penguin Classics)
    by Honore de Balzac; Introduction-Marion Ayton Crawford

    Drag me to re-order


  6. 6.
    The Decameron (Signet Classics)
    by Giovanni Boccaccio

    Drag me to re-order


  7. 7.
    Borges: Collected Fictions
    by Jorge Luis Borges

    Drag me to re-order


  8. 8.
    Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Emily Bronte

    Drag me to re-order


  9. 9.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

    Drag me to re-order


  10. 10.
    Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
    by Paul Celan

    Drag me to re-order


  11. 11.
    Journey to the End of the Night
    by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

    Drag me to re-order


  12. 12.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

    Drag me to re-order


  13. 13.
    Canterbury Tales (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

    Drag me to re-order


  14. 14.
    Selected Stories (Signet Classics)
    by Anton Chekhov

    Drag me to re-order


  15. 15.
    Nostromo (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

    Drag me to re-order


  17. 17.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

    Drag me to re-order


  18. 18.
    Jacques the Fatalist (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Denis Diderot

    Drag me to re-order


  19. 19.
    Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf
    by Alfred Doblin

    Drag me to re-order


  20. 20.
    Crime and Punishment (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Drag me to re-order


  21. 21.
    The Idiot (Modern Library Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    Drag me to re-order


  22. 22.
    The Devils : The Possessed
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Drag me to re-order


  23. 23.
    The Brothers Karamazov
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    Drag me to re-order


  24. 24.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

    Drag me to re-order


  25. 25.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

    Drag me to re-order


  26. 26.
    Medea (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)
    by Euripides

    Drag me to re-order


  27. 27.
    Absalom, Absalom! (Vintage International)
    by WILLIAM FAULKNER

    Drag me to re-order


  28. 28.
    The Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner

    Drag me to re-order


  29. 29.
    Madame Bovary (Bantam Classics)
    by GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

    Drag me to re-order


  30. 30.
    Sentimental Education (Classics S.)
    by Gustave Flaubert

    Drag me to re-order


  31. 31.
    ?
    Gypsy Ballads of Garcia Lorca
    by Federico Garcia Lorca

    Drag me to re-order


  32. 32.
    One Hundred Years of Solitude
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    Drag me to re-order


  33. 33.
    Love in the Time of Cholera
    by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

    Drag me to re-order


  34. 34.
    The Epic of Gilgamesh
    by Maureen Gallery Kovacs

    Drag me to re-order


  35. 35.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

    Drag me to re-order


  36. 36.
    Dead Souls: A Novel
    by Nikolai Gogol

    Drag me to re-order


  37. 37.
    The Tin Drum (Vintage International)
    by Gunter Grass

    Drag me to re-order


  38. 38.
    ?
    The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
    by Joao Guimaraes Rosa

    Drag me to re-order


  39. 39.
    Hunger
    by Knut Hamsun

    Drag me to re-order


  40. 40.
    The Old Man and The Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

    Drag me to re-order


  41. 41.
    The Iliad of Homer (Phoenix Books)
    by Homer

    Drag me to re-order


  42. 42.
    The Odyssey (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Homer

    Drag me to re-order


  43. 43.
    A Doll's House
    by Henrik, Ibsen

    Drag me to re-order


  44. 44.
    ?
    The Book of Job

    Drag me to re-order


  45. 45.
    Ulysses (Vintage International)
    by James Joyce

    Drag me to re-order


  46. 46.
    The Complete Stories
    by Franz Kafka

    Drag me to re-order


  47. 47.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

    Drag me to re-order


  48. 48.
  50. 50.
    The Sound of the Mountain
    by Yasunari Kawabata

    Drag me to re-order


Pages: 1

This is a community list. You can contribute, edit, or help maintain it by adding it to your lists.
Created by Robot Co-op on Nov 30, 2005.
 

Comments

Pages: Pages: 1 3

Jargoneer

Atlas Shrugged — 9 weeks ago

Missing the best book of all time – Atlas Shrugged.

Sep 05, 03:30AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

bradb3992

Untitled — 22 weeks ago

To Kill a Mockingbird should be on this

Jun 02, 05:00PM | 0 comments | Reply to this

frbrown

Untitled — 1 year ago

Before this list, Norwegian Book Clubs made two others:
top 100 books of the 20th century
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/59831

and top 100 non-fiction books of all time
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/59682

Oct 17, 08:39AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

Dyanna

agreed — 1 year ago

This is a fairly poor list on the surface. Once i get through all the books that I haven’t read, I’ll repost with an update.

Jun 22, 09:35AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

Tarquin_Furie

ok... — 1 year ago

So of course there are a lot of great titles, of great literature. Classics, but what about the more recent stuff, what about the best fiction that most people have not heard of. Anyone could tell you that these books are ‘imortant’ to read, I’m sure they are, but I’m sure most people know this already. What about the new, less spoken about fiction? Tell me something I don’t know. Best books I haven’t heard of, or have yet to encounter. Give me something that will be a classic in fifty more years…yeah?

Jun 06, 09:05AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

rwhitney22
Golden

missing — 1 year ago

and of course no Catch-22. Hmm. There was an impressive mentioning of Dostoyevsky, though.

Jan 20, 02:34PM | 0 comments | Reply to this

Yossariangirl

Untitled — 1 year ago

It’s generally thought that an intellectual or culture-vulture should be equipped with a broader mind familiar with WORLD literature, but the Guardian is obviously oblivious of the literature of small nations and languages that still count for something in the world outside the UK or the USA… Or do intellectuals live only in these countries…

Jan 12, 09:47AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

Ilovebuddy

Incredibly Stupid — 1 year ago

Where is Les Miserables? Acctually, where is Victor Hugo at all? These people were probably too shallow to read any of his masterpieces.

Dec 30, 10:13AM | 0 comments | Reply to this

Lisili
Jena

Lop-sided crap! — 2 years ago

I think this list is a bit biased. There are so many great books and authors – it seems weird, that in a list limited to 100 places Dostoyevsky is named 4 times and Kafka 3 times.
Moreover, most of the books are either heavy or dull (in some cases both) and I honestly doubt that any person employed at the Guardian ever read Ulysses.

May 11, 12:40PM | 4 comments | Reply to this

Lisa
Melbourne

Untitled — 2 years ago

Oops, I accidentally deleted Pippi Longstocking, which should be on the list after The Golden Notebook. Sorry!

Apr 21, 04:11PM | 1 comment | Reply to this


Pages: Pages: 1 3