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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.

  1. 1.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce
  2. 2.
    The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner
  3. 3.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov
  4. 4.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  5. 5.
    To the Lighthouse (Annotated)
    by Virginia Woolf
  6. 6.
    Nineteen Eighty-four
    by George Orwell
  7. 7.
  8. 8.
    Invisible Man: A Novel
    by Ralph Ellison
  9. 9.
    The Ambassadors
    by Henry James
  10. 10.
    The Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway
  11. 11.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck
  12. 12.
    Native Son
    by Richard Wright
  13. 13.
    A Passage to India (Penguin Classics)
    by E. M. Forster
  14. 14.
    Sons and Lovers (Penguin Classics)
    by D. H. Lawrence
  15. 15.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J. D. Salinger
  16. 16.
    Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
    by Joseph Heller
  17. 17.
    Women in Love (Penguin Classics)
    by D. H. Lawrence
  18. 18.
    Pale Fire (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)
    by Vladimir Nabokov
  19. 19.
    The Good Soldier (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    by Ford Madox Ford
  20. 20.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley
  21. 21.
    Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell
  22. 22.
    Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad
  23. 23.
    As I Lay Dying (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner
  24. 24.
    A Farewell to Arms (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway
  25. 25.
    Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Malcolm Lowry
  26. 26.
    Finnegans Wake (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
    by James Joyce
  27. 27.
    Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
    by Kurt Vonnegut
  28. 28.
    On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by Jack Kerouac
  29. 29.
    Gravity's Rainbow
    by Thomas Pynchon
  30. 30.
    The Heart of the Matter
    by Graham Greene
  31. 31.
    Lord of the Flies (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by William Golding
  32. 32.
    The Wings of the Dove (Modern Library Classics)
    by Henry James
  33. 33.
    ?
  34. 34.
    Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by E. M. Forster
  35. 35.
    The Golden Bowl (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Henry James
  36. 36.
    Tender is the Night
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  37. 37.
    Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad
  38. 38.
    Dubliners (Oxford World's Classics)
    by James Joyce
  39. 39.
    A Clockwork Orange (Essential.penguin)
    by Anthony Burgess
  40. 40.
    The Age of Innocence (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Edith Wharton
  41. 41.
    Light in August (The Corrected Text)
    by William Faulkner
  42. 42.
    Lord Jim: A Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad
  43. 43.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin
  44. 44.
  45. 45.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh
  46. 46.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf
  47. 47.
    The Crying of Lot 49 (Perennial Fiction Library)
    by Thomas Pynchon
  48. 48.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison
  49. 49.
    Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Saul Bellow
  50. 50.
    The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton
  51. 51.
    Sister Carrie (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Theodore Dreiser
  52. 52.
    The Secret Agent (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad
  53. 53.
    Things Fall Apart: A Novel
    by Chinua Achebe
  54. 54.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Worlds Classics)
    by Sherwood Anderson
  55. 55.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    by Carson McCullers
  56. 56.
    A Handful of Dust
    by Evelyn Waugh
  57. 57.
    Absalom, Absalom! (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner
  58. 58.
    Kim
    by Rudyard Kipling
  59. 59.
    A Room with a View
    by Edward, Morgan Forster
  60. 60.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren
  61. 61.
    Appointment in Samarra: A Novel
    by John O'Hara
  62. 62.
    Main Street (Modern Library)
    by Sinclair Lewis
  63. 63.
    Tropic of Cancer
    by Henry Miller
  64. 64.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop (Virago Modern Classics)
    by Willa Cather
  66. 66.
    The Day of the Locust
    by Nathanael West
  67. 67.
    The Rainbow: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Penguin Classics)
    by D. H. Lawrence
  68. 68.
    Old Man And The Sea (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway
  69. 69.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie
  70. 70.
    Adventures of Augie March, The (50th Anniv. Edition)
    by Saul Bellow
  71. 71.
    The Magus
    by John Fowles
  72. 72.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston
  73. 73.
    The Way of All Flesh
    by Samuel Butler
  76. 76.
    Parade's End
    by Ford Madox Ford
  77. 77.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
    by Thornton Wilder
  78. 78.
    Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham
  79. 79.
    Portnoy's Complaint
    by Philip Roth
  80. 80.
    The Old Wives' Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Arnold Bennett
  82. 82.
    The Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks)
    by Dashiell Hammett
  83. 83.
    The Moviegoer
    by Walker Percy
  84. 84.
    The Call of the Wild (Aladdin Classics)
    by Jack London
  85. 85.
    Gone With the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell
  86. 86.
    Ragtime: A Novel
    by E.L. Doctorow
  87. 87.
    Darkness at Noon: A Novel
    by Arthur Koestler
  88. 88.
    Justine (Alexandria Quartet)
    by Lawrence Durrell
  89. 89.
  90. 90.
    Lord of the Rings H/B Slipcased
    by J R R Tolkien
  91. 91.
    A Bend in the River
    by V. S. Naipaul
  92. 92.
  93. 93.
    The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
    by Norman Mailer
  94. 94.
    Wise Blood: A Novel
    by Flannery O'Connor
  95. 95.
    The Sheltering Sky (P.S.)
    by Paul Bowles
  96. 96.
    Herzog (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow
  97. 97.
    Ethan Frome (Penguin Classics)
    by Edith Wharton
  98. 98.
    Under the Net
    by Iris Murdoch
  99. 99.
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics)
    by Muriel Spark
  100. 100.
    Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Student Editions)
    by Jean Rhys
This is sefs240's list. Only sefs240 can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by sefs240 on Jan 29, 2008.
 

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