Top 100 Works in World Literature

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Source: Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2002.

The editors of the Norwegian Book Clubs, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute, polled a panel of 100 authors from 54 countries on what they each considered the ten "best and most central works in world literature.” Among the authors polled were Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer, and Carlos Fuentes. The list of the top 100 works appears alphabetically by author. Although the books were not ranked, the editors revealed that Don Quixote received 50% more votes than any other book.

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  1. 51.
    Zorba the Greek (Faber Fiction Classics)
    by Nikos Kazantzakis

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  2. 53.
    Independent People
    by Halldor Laxness

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  3. 54.
    The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi
    by Giacomo Leopardi

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  4. 56.
    The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking
    by Astrid Lindgren

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  5. 57.
    ?
    Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
    by Lu Xun

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  6. 59.
    Children of the Alley: A Novel
    by Naguib Mahfouz

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  7. 61.
    The Magic Mountain (Everyman's Library)
    by Thomas Mann

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  8. 62.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
    by Herman Melville

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  9. 63.
    Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics)
    by Michel de Montaigne

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  10. 64.
    ?
    History (Penguin Modern Classics)
    by Elsa Morante

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  11. 65.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

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  12. 66.
    The Tale of Genji (Penguin Classics)
    by Murasaki Shikibu

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  13. 67.
    Man Without Qualities
    by Robert Musil

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  14. 68.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  15. 69.
    Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

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  16. 70.
    Nineteen Eighty-four
    by George Orwell

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  17. 71.
    Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics)
    by Ovid

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  18. 72.
    The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)
    by Fernando Pessoa

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  19. 73.
    Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems
    by Edgar Allan Poe

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  20. 75.
    Gargantua and Pantagruel (Penguin Classics)
    by Francois Rabelais

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  21. 76.
    Pedro Paramo.
    by Juan Rulfo

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  22. 78.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

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  23. 79.
    ?
    The Orchard
    by Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi

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  24. 80.
    Season of Migration to the North: A Novel
    by Al-Tayyib Salih

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  25. 81.
    Blindness (Harvest Book)
    by Jose Saramago

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  26. 82.
    Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  27. 83.
    King Lear (Oxford School Shakespeare Series)
    by William Shakespeare

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  28. 84.
    Othello (Oxford World's Classics)
    by William Shakespeare

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  29. 85.
    Oedipus Rex (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

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  30. 86.
    The Red and the Black (Penguin Classics)
    by Stendhal

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  31. 88.
    Confessions of Zeno
    by Italo Svevo

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  32. 89.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

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  33. 90.
    Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  34. 91.
    War and Peace
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  35. 92.
    The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  36. 93.

  37. 94.
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain Library)
    by Mark Twain

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  38. 95.
    The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic
    by Ramesh Menon

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  39. 96.
    The Aeneid (Penguin Classics)
    by Virgil

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  40. 97.

  41. 98.
    The Mrs. Dalloway Reader
    by Virginia Woolf

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  42. 99.
    To the Lighthouse
    by Virginia Woolf

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  43. 100.
    Memoirs of Hadrian
    by Marguerite Yourcenar

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Created by tknowlton on May 28, 2008.
 

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