sefs240's "The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century"

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This was compiled by combining several other "definitive" lists (Modern Library, Radcliffe, Western Canon, etc). I tried to incorporate as many educated opinions as possible in constructing this list. Please remember that these are 20th century, English-language novels only, with the exceptions of Heart of Darkness (originally published in 1899) and Darkness at Noon (originally published in German). I included these two because most other lists did.

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  1. 1.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce

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  2. 2.
    The Sound and the Fury
    by William Faulkner

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  3. 3.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  4. 4.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  5. 5.
    To the Lighthouse (Annotated)
    by Virginia Woolf

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  6. 6.
    Nineteen Eighty-four
    by George Orwell

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  7. 7.
  8. 8.
    Invisible Man: A Novel
    by Ralph Ellison

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  9. 9.
    The Ambassadors
    by Henry James

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  10. 10.
    The Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  11. 11.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

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  12. 12.
    Native Son
    by Richard Wright

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  13. 13.
    A Passage to India (Penguin Classics)
    by E.M. Forster

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  14. 14.
    Sons and Lovers (Penguin Classics)
    by D.H. Lawrence

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  15. 15.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

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  16. 16.
    Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
    by Joseph Heller

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  17. 17.
    Women in Love: Cambridge Lawrence Edition
    by D.H. Lawrence

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  18. 18.
    Pale Fire (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  20. 20.
    Brave New World (P.S.)
    by Aldous Huxley

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  21. 21.
    Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell

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  22. 22.
    Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  23. 23.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  24. 24.
    A Farewell to Arms (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  25. 25.
    Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Malcolm Lowry

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  26. 26.
    Finnegans Wake (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
    by James Joyce

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  27. 27.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

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  28. 28.
    On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by Jack Kerouac

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  29. 29.
    Gravity's Rainbow
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  30. 30.
    The Heart of the Matter
    by Graham Greene

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  32. 32.
    The Wings of the Dove (Modern Library Classics)
    by Henry James

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  33. 33.
    ?
  34. 34.
    Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by E. M. Forster

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  35. 35.
    The Golden Bowl (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Henry James

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  36. 36.
    Tender is the Night
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  37. 37.
    Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  38. 38.
    Dubliners (Oxford World's Classics)
    by James Joyce

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  39. 39.
    A Clockwork Orange (Essential.penguin)
    by Anthony Burgess

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  40. 40.
    The Age of Innocence (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  41. 41.
    Light in August
    by William Faulkner

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  42. 42.
    Lord Jim: A Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  43. 43.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

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  44. 44.
    Dreiser American Tragedy (Library of America)
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  45. 45.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  46. 46.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

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  47. 47.
    The Crying of Lot 49 (Perennial Fiction Library)
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  48. 48.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

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  49. 49.
    Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  50. 50.
    The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton

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Created by sefs240 on Jan 29, 2008.
 

Comments

freakclub99

Why? — 1 year ago

I always find it irritating to see “The Great Gatbsy” being included in the lists of great novels. I regard F. Scott Fitzgerald highy, and have heard great witticisms from him, but this book is simply immature. It has no brilliant plot; no brilliant ideas can be derived from it; and it is not even a good meditation on life. When I hear people say it is The Great American Novel, I just go like, “Are Americans that silly?” To just compare it to Melville’s masterpice, Moby Dick, makes me shudder. People please remove it from your list.

Aug 07, 09:13PM | 1 comment | Reply to this