Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

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Selected by the Guardian’s Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time in a single list.

The novels are organised into themes:
Love: #1 – 141
Crime: #142 – 288
Comedy: #289 – 437
Family and Self: #438 – 583
State of the Nation: #584 – 717
Science Fiction and Fantasy: #718 – 866
War and Travel: #867 – 998

Note: In the list provided by The Guardian at the link below, there are only 998 books. The Guardian has been informed.

Pages: 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 19 20

  1. 1.
    Le Grand Meaulnes (Penguin Classics)
    by Henri Alain-Fournier

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  2. 2.
    ?
    Dom Casmurro Joaquim
    by Maria Machado de Assis

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  3. 3.
    Northanger Abbey (Vintage Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  4. 4.
    Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  5. 5.
    Pride and Prejudice (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  6. 6.
    Mansfield Park (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  7. 7.
    Emma (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  8. 8.
    Persuasion
    by Jane Austen

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  9. 9.
    Giovanni's Room
    by James Baldwin

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  10. 10.
    Nightwood
    by Djuna Barnes

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  12. 12.
    ?
    Love For Lydia
    by H.E. Bates

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  13. 13.
    More Die of Heartbreak (Penguin Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

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  14. 14.
    Lorna Doone (Penguin Classics)
    by R. D. Blackmore

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  15. 15.
    The Death of the Heart
    by Elizabeth Bowen

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  16. 16.
    The Heat of the Day
    by Elizabeth Bowen

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  17. 17.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

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  18. 18.
    Villette (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

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  19. 19.
    Wuthering Heights (Penguin Popular Classics)
    by Emily Bronte

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  20. 20.
    Look at Me
    by Anita Brookner

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  21. 21.
    Rubyfruit Jungle
    by Rita Mae Brown

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  22. 22.
    Possession A. S.. Byatt
    by A S BYATT

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  23. 23.
  24. 24.
    Oscar and Lucinda
    by Carey Peter

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  25. 25.
  26. 26.
    My Antonia (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition)
    by Willa Cather

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  27. 27.
    A Lost Lady (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition)
    by Willa Cather

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  28. 28.
    ?
    Claudine à l'école
    by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

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  29. 29.
    Chéri
    by Colette

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  31. 31.
    ?
    The Princess of Cleves
    by Madame de La Fayette

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  32. 32.
    ?
    The Parasites
    by Daphne Du Maurier

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  33. 33.
    Rebecca
    by Daphne du Maurier

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  34. 34.
    The Lover
    by Marguerite Duras

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  35. 35.
    ?
    Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
    by Ed. Margaret Reynolds George Eliot

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  36. 36.
    Daniel Deronda (Modern Library Classics)
    by George Eliot

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  37. 37.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

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  38. 38.
    The Virgin Suicides
    by Jeffrey Eugenides

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  39. 39.
    The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics)
    by F.Scott Fitzgerald

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  40. 40.
    Tender is the Night
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  41. 41.
    The Blue Flower
    by Penelope Fitzgerald

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  42. 42.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

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  44. 44.
    A Room With a View
    by E. M. Forster

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  45. 45.
    The French Lieutenant's Woman
    by John Fowles

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  46. 46.
    The Snow Goose
    by Paul Gallico

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  47. 47.
    Ruth (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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  48. 48.
    Strait is the Gate (La Porte etroite)
    by Andre Gide

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  49. 49.
    Sunset Song (Dodo Press)
    by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

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  50. 50.
    The Sorrows of Young Werther (Modern Library Classics)
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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Created by Athena08 on Jan 21, 2009.
 

Comments

Mayhem17
Vancouver

Native son — 18 weeks ago

What happened to number 287 it was Native son by Wright but it seems to have disappeared.

Jul 02, 01:57AM | 1 comment | Reply to this

tassini

Number 606 — 40 weeks ago

Judging from where the book is on the list, I think the Waiting for the Barbarians should be the one authored by Coetzee.

Jan 29, 08:49PM | 1 comment | Reply to this

cfrydj

Helping Out — 40 weeks ago

This is a huge list, so I thought I’d give you a hand. I deleted a bunch of duplicates, and fixed The Hollow Man to the correct version, which is actually under the name The Three Coffins, which is what it was published as in the USA.

I’m also going through just to double-check that you didn’t miss any, and then I’ll start adding from where you finished.

Jan 25, 04:34PM | 3 comments | Reply to this