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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

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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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  19. 20.
    Brave New World (P.S.)
    by Aldous Huxley

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  20. 21.
    Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell

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  21. 22.
    Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  22. 23.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  23. 24.
    A Farewell to Arms (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  24. 25.
    Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Malcolm Lowry

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  25. 26.
    Finnegans Wake (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
    by James Joyce

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  26. 27.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

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  27. 28.
    On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by Jack Kerouac

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  28. 29.
    Gravity's Rainbow
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  29. 30.
    The Heart of the Matter
    by Graham Greene

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  30. 32.
    The Wings of the Dove (Modern Library Classics)
    by Henry James

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  31. 33.
    ?

  32. 34.
    Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by E. M. Forster

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  33. 35.
    The Golden Bowl (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Henry James

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  34. 36.
    Tender is the Night
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  35. 37.
    Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  36. 38.
    Dubliners (Oxford World's Classics)
    by James Joyce

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  37. 39.
    A Clockwork Orange (Essential.penguin)
    by Anthony Burgess

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  38. 40.
    The Age of Innocence (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  39. 41.
    Light in August
    by William Faulkner

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  40. 42.
    Lord Jim: A Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  41. 43.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

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  42. 44.
    Dreiser American Tragedy (Library of America)
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  43. 45.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  44. 46.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

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  45. 47.
    The Crying of Lot 49 (Perennial Fiction Library)
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  46. 48.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

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  47. 49.
    Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  48. 50.
    The House of Mirth
    by Edith Wharton

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  49. 51.
    Sister Carrie (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Theodore Dreiser

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  50. 52.
    The Secret Agent (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  51. 53.
    Things Fall Apart: A Novel
    by Chinua Achebe

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  52. 54.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Sherwood Anderson

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  53. 55.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    by Carson McCullers

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  54. 56.
    A Handful of Dust
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  55. 57.
    Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  56. 58.
    Kim
    by Rudyard Kipling

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  57. 59.
    A Room with a View
    by Edward, Morgan Forster

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  58. 60.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

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  59. 61.
    Appointment in Samarra: A Novel
    by John O'Hara

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  60. 62.
    Main Street (Modern Library)
    by Sinclair Lewis

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  61. 63.
    Tropic of Cancer: With an Introduction by Louise Desalvo
    by Henry Miller

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  62. 64.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop
    by Willa Cather

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  63. 66.
    The Day of the Locust
    by Nathanael West

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  64. 67.
    The Rainbow: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Penguin Classics)
    by D. H. Lawrence

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  65. 68.
    Old Man And The Sea (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  66. 69.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

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  67. 70.
    Adventures of Augie March, The (50th Anniv. Edition)
    by Saul Bellow

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  68. 71.
    The Magus
    by John Fowles

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  69. 72.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

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  70. 73.
    The Way of All Flesh
    by Samuel Butler

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  71. 76.
    Parade's End
    by Ford Madox Ford

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  72. 77.
    Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
    by Thornton Wilder

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  73. 78.
    Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

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  74. 79.
    Portnoy's Complaint
    by Philip Roth

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  75. 80.
    The Old Wives' Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Arnold Bennett

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  76. 82.
    The Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks)
    by Dashiell Hammett

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  77. 83.
    The Moviegoer
    by Walker Percy

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  78. 84.
    The Call of the Wild (Aladdin Classics)
    by Jack London

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  79. 85.
    Gone With the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

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  80. 86.
    Ragtime: A Novel
    by E.L. Doctorow

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  81. 87.
    Darkness at Noon: A Novel
    by Arthur Koestler

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  82. 88.
    Justine (Alexandria Quartet)
    by Lawrence Durrell

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  83. 89.

  84. 90.
    The Lord of the Rings
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  85. 91.
    A Bend in the River
    by V. S. Naipaul

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  86. 92.

  87. 93.
    The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
    by Norman Mailer

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  88. 94.
    Wise Blood: A Novel
    by Flannery O'Connor

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  89. 95.
    The Sheltering Sky (P.S.)
    by Paul Bowles

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  90. 96.
    Herzog (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  91. 97.
    Ethan Frome (Penguin Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  92. 98.
    Under the Net
    by Iris Murdoch

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  93. 99.
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics)
    by Muriel Spark

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  94. 100.
    Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Student Editions)
    by Jean Rhys

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Created by sefs240 on Jan 29, 2008.