You want to make your own version of the list below…

We will copy the list title and type for you. Do you want to copy all of the items on the list as well, or start from scratch?

Yes, copy the items
No, start with an empty list

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

Add to my lists | Print this list

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

  65. 66.
    The Day of the Locust
    by Nathanael West

  66. 67.
    The Rainbow: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Penguin Classics)
    by D. H. Lawrence

  67. 68.
    Old Man And The Sea (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

  68. 69.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

  69. 70.
    Adventures of Augie March, The (50th Anniv. Edition)
    by Saul Bellow

  70. 71.
    The Magus
    by John Fowles

  71. 72.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

  72. 73.
    The Way of All Flesh
    by Samuel Butler

  73. 76.
    Parade's End
    by Ford Madox Ford

  74. 77.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
    by Thornton Wilder

  75. 78.
    Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

  76. 79.
    Portnoy's Complaint
    by Philip Roth

  77. 80.
    The Old Wives' Tale (Penguin Classics)
    by Arnold Bennett

  78. 82.
    The Maltese Falcon (Crime Masterworks)
    by Dashiell Hammett

  79. 83.
    The Moviegoer
    by Walker Percy

  80. 84.
    The Call of the Wild (Aladdin Classics)
    by Jack London

  81. 85.
    Gone With the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

  82. 86.
    Ragtime: A Novel
    by E.L. Doctorow

  83. 87.
    Darkness at Noon: A Novel
    by Arthur Koestler

  84. 88.
    Justine (Alexandria Quartet)
    by Lawrence Durrell

  85. 89.

  86. 90.
    Lord of the Rings H/B Slipcased
    by J R R Tolkien

  87. 91.
    A Bend in the River
    by V. S. Naipaul

  88. 92.

  89. 93.
    The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
    by Norman Mailer

  90. 94.
    Wise Blood: A Novel
    by Flannery O'Connor

  91. 95.
    The Sheltering Sky (P.S.)
    by Paul Bowles

  92. 96.
    Herzog (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

  93. 97.
    Ethan Frome (Penguin Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

  94. 98.
    Under the Net
    by Iris Murdoch

  95. 99.
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Perennial Classics)
    by Muriel Spark

  96. 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.
 

or
Login with Facebook