1.

Title: The Tale of Genji (Eleventh Century)

Author : Murasaki Shikibu

Debates continue to rage over whether or not Lady Murasaki’s deeply psychological
inquiry into an emperor’s son forced to live as a pauper should be considered the first
novel. Regardless, it remains one of the most influential literary works ever penned
and an absolutely essential lynchpin of the canon.

2. Title: Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Author : Jane Austen

Modern adaptations of Jane Austen sadly tone down her biting Regency satires in
favor of the romantic elements, but Sense and Sensibility remains a classic
commentary on the gender and class

3. Title: Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818)

Author : Mary Shelley

Horror novelists owe a debt of gratitude to Frankenstein scribe Mary Shelley, whose
deeply psychological inquiry into human existence through the eyes of a monster
revolutionized the genre — and literature, and pop culture — forever.

issues of an earlier time. Many of her statements eerily ring true even today.

4. Title: The Pickwick Papers (1837)

Author : Charles Dickens

Originally serialized in monthly installations from April of 1836 through November

of 1837, Charles Dickens quickly compiled his first novel into one volume. Told
vignette-style, the stories revolve around Samuel Pickwick and his humorous
misadventures with the law, spurned lovers and more.

5. Title: Jane Eyre (1847)

Author : Charlotte Bronte

Even today readers still love the story of a governess, her spunky charge, the gruff
homeowner who runs the show and his crazy first wife locked in the attic.

6. Title: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Author : Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte only wrote one novel in her lifetime — the story of a self-destructing
couple whose love manifests itself in wanton acts of cruelty.
7. Title: Black Beauty (1877)

Author : Anna Sewell

This classic tale for children and adults alike preaches kindness to all living things,
including animals placed in their care and providing them with valuable services.

8. Title: A Study in Scarlet (1887)

Author : Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have grown to hate his Sherlock Holmes character as the
years passed and the fans became more ardent. But his very first novel nevertheless
remains a classic mystery tale with an iconic protagonist. Unusually enough, it did not
exactly pique the public’s interest until much later.

9. Title: The Time Machine (1895)

Author: H.G. Wells

One of H.G. Wells’ most beloved tales involves the wondrous travels of an idealistic
young scientist who soon learns the grim reality of humanity’s future.

10. Title: Three Lives (1909)

Author : Gertrude Stein

As the title promises, Three Lives chronicles the story of three women with vastly
different experiences who still share some commonalities.

11. Title: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Author : James Joyce

Young Stephen Dedalus stands in for a young James Joyce, setting the modernist tone
of his later works. Wandering the streets of Dublin, the protagonist muses on his
differences with the prevailing Irish-Catholic culture.

12. Title: This Side of Paradise (1920)

Author : F. Scott Fitzgerald

Angry at his future wife’s first round of rejections, F. Scott Fitzgerald found solace in
writing about the romantic and social troubles of Princeton student Amory Blaine.

13. Title: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937)

Author : J.R.R. Tolkien

 One of the most beloved and influential fantasy writers of all time, J.R.R. Tolkien
hoped to write a challenging children’s story with classic themes of heroism and
friendship. Allen & Unwin published the book at the behest of one owner’s young
son, and the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy grew out of the demand for more.

14. Title: The Big Sleep (1939)

Author : Raymond Chandler

Fans of the noir genre certainly know the quintessentially hardboiled detective Philip
Marlowe, who made his debut in this classic crime novel.

15. Title: Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)

Author : Alan Paton

Easily the most well-known South African writer thus far, Alan Paton channeled his
righteous anger and frustration at the Dutch’s persecution of the country’s native
peoples into one of the most spellbinding works of political literature.

16. Title: Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Author : Truman Capote

Truman Capote’s very first novel sends youthful protagonist Joel Harrison Knox out
into the world to find the father who walked out on him. Along the way, however, he
begins to understand himself and his sexual identity.

17. Title: The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Author : Ray Bradbury

Loosely-aligned vignettes and short stories compiled from Ray Bradbury’s earlier
publications paint a detailed portrait of what life could be like someday on Earth’s
closest neighbor.

18. Title: The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Author: J.D. Salinger

This controversial classic parodies the self-exile protagonist Holden Caulfield puts
himself through in order to feel like a special and unique snowflake in a blizzard full
of "phonies."

19. Title: Invisible Man (1952)

Author: Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man was the only one of Ralph Ellison’s novels to be published during his
lifetime. Even today, its intensity relating to segregation, exploitation and
 marginalization of African-Americans prior to the Civil Rights movement sends chills
up and down the spine.

20. Title: Player Piano (1952)

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Rightfully beloved writer Kurt Vonnegut launched his illustrious career with this
provocative dystopian reflection on the role of technology in society.

21. Title: Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953)

Author : James Baldwin

This thought-provoking work explores the interrelationship between religion and race
amongst the African-American community in the United States, offering both
criticism and praise to the Christian establishment.

22. Title: Junky (1953)

Author : William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs’ first novel was a collaboration with fellow beat author Jack
Kerouac, written in 1945, published in 2008 and titled And the Hippos Were Boiled in
Their Tanks. His first solo foray into the medium featured his pseudonym William
Lee. Titled Junky – alternately spelled Junkie – it brutally and achingly captures his
intense battle against heroin addiction.

23. Title: Night (1955)

Author : Elie Wiesel

Part memoir, part novel, this harrowing account of Elie Wiesel and his father’s
horrifying experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald faced many challenges in
getting such an honest depiction of the terrors published. The first version was
released in Argentina under the title Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, with Dawn (1961) and
Day (1962) following.

24. Title: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Author: Harper Lee

Harper Lee never wrote another novel after her Southern Gothic bildungsroman that
tore apart the injustices unfairly heaped upon African-Americans prior to the Civil
Rights movement.

25. Title: Catch-22 (1961)

Author: Joseph Heller

 One of the most scathing and hilarious satires ever written, Catch-22 asks what
bureaucracy and war are good for — ultimately concluding "absolutely nothing."

26. Title: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

Author : Ken Kesey

Counterculture figurehead Ken Kesey drew from his work in a psychiatric hospital to
write this highly provocative novel about chaos and control between mental patients
and their caregivers.

27. Title: The Bell Jar (1963)

Author : Sylvia Plath

Better known for her poetry rather than her prose, Sylvia Plath still wrote one novel in
her lifetime under the penname Victoria Lucas. The Bell Jar pulls directly from her
own tragic life and chronicles the rise and fall (and rise?) of a promising young
magazine intern.

28. Title: V. (1963)

Author: Thomas Pynchon

The enigmatic, exceptional postmodern writer Thomas Pynchon launched his

illustrious career with the hallucinogenic journey of ex-Navy sailor Benny Profane as
he seeks the titular figure.

29. Title: The Bluest Eye (1970)

Author : Toni Morrison

Bravely addressing themes of racism, sexism, incest and other horrific realities faced
by African-American communities after the Great Depression, The Bluest Eye
remains one of the most controversial and essential entries in the literary canon.

30. Title: Americana (1971)

Author: Don DeLillo

Corporate satire and commentary have become a staple of Don DeLillo’s impressive
oeuvre, and he set the tone for the rest of his career with this crackling, quintessential
road novel.

31. Title: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Author : Hunter S. Thompson

The iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is technically Hunter S. Thompson’s first
published work of fiction, but the manuscript for The Rum Diary had been written
 prior to that in the early 1960s. It just never saw publication until 1998. This gritty,
grimy peek into the drug culture of the time ruminates on how Americans managed to
lose sight of their collective dreams.

32. Title: Carrie (1974)

Author : Stephen King

Teenage cruelty and religious fanaticism get their comeuppance when a telekinetic
high school girl gets pushed to her breaking point. Carrie was actually the fourth
manuscript Stephen King ever wrote, but the first to be accepted for publication.

33. Title: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Author : Douglas Adams

The gut-busting science-fiction Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy begin its life as a
radio serial that ultimately became a pop culture phenomenon. A whopping five
books follow the initial novel, with the last of the bunch controversially written by
Eoin Colfer following Douglas Adams’ death.

34. Title: Neuromancer (1984)

Author : William Gibson

The first installment of the Sprawl trilogy — also involving Count Zero (1986) and
Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) — is considered one of the greatest cyberpunk and
science-fiction novels ever published. It popularized the term "cyberspace" and
depicted the adventures of hacker Case and Razorgirl Molly through Gibson’s
interpretation of what the internet might someday become.

35. Title: The Joy Luck Club (1989)

Author : Amy Tan

Multiple narrators weigh in on universal themes of racial identity, gender roles, family
— most especially as it pertains to mothers and daughters — the different types of
love and much more in Amy Tan’s acclaimed debut novel.

36. Title: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991)

Author : Douglas Coupland

Through the struggles of Andy, Dag and Claire, writer Douglas Coupland bottles up
the American and Canadian cultural climate as it transitioned from the 1980s to the
1990s and impacted the lives of Baby Boomers’ children.

37. Title: The Virgin Suicides (1993)

Author : Jeffrey Eugenides

 In this heart wrenching story, five sheltered sisters begin cracking under veritable
totalitarian parenting styles while their neighbors provide their own commentaries.

38. Title: Fight Club (1996)

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club burst unapologetically onto the literary scene, offering up some brutal
deconstructions of masculinity, commercialism, business, materialism and society in
general.

39. Title: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

Author : J.K. Rowling

Renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States, this debut novel
launched an entirely unexpected pop culture extravaganza, making J.K. Rowling the
only billionaire (as defined by Forbes) author. Six books, a successful movie series,
scads of merchandise and millions of fans followed.

40. Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)

Author: Stephen Chbosky

MTV actually produced something intellectually stimulating for once when it agreed
to publish Stephen Chbosky’s contemporary classic The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
This epistolary novel candidly captures a coming-of-age tale both timeless and — in
1999 — timely.

41. Title: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)

Author : Dave Eggers

Although a memoir, the magic of Dave Eggers’ first work of long (very long)
literature contains many intentional fictitious elements as a means of blending two
very different narrative approaches together. What results is a terribly sad, terribly
beautiful and terribly funny amalgamation of stories about the author’s struggle to
raise his little brother after losing both parents to cancer.

42. Title: House of Leaves (2000)

Author : Mark Z. Danielewski

One of the most haunting, twisting literary works of the early 21st Century sends
readers on a sprawling journey through a mysterious, ever-changing house and the
protagonist’s life of drugs, booze and strippers.

43. Title: Persepolis (2000)

Author/Illustrator: Marjane Satrapi

 Marjane Satrapi is one of the most respected graphic novelists currently working
today, and her memoir of life in Iran following the deposition of the Shah and the
establishment of a militant Islamic regime contains equal parts humor and horror.

44. Title: Everything is Illuminated (2002)

Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

A young man travels to Ukraine in order to meet the woman who saved his
grandfather’s life after the Nazi invasion, learning valuable lessons about love, family
and friendship along the way.

45. Title: White Teeth (2000)

Author: Zadie Smith

The lives of British families from vastly different backgrounds converge in one
compelling story of identity and interpersonal relationships.

46. Title: The Kite Runner (2003)

Author: Khaled Hosseini

Watch the political climate of Afghanistan dramatically shift through the eyes of the
young Amir as he comes of age amongst the turmoil.

47. Title: American Born Chinese (2006)

Author/Illustrator: Gene Luen Yang

Suitable for audiences young and old alike, the celebrated debut graphic novel of
writer, artist and educator Gene Luen Yang entwines the ancient tale of the Journey to
the West with a young man’s quest to resign his minority status with the majority
culture.

48. Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)

Author: Junot D�\iaz

Dominican history and family chaos come sprinkled liberally with geeky pop-culture
references in this startling, haunting Pulitzer winner.

49. Title: Crooked Little Vein (2007)

Author : Warren Ellis

The noir and hardboiled genres receive the deliciously loopy Warren Ellis treatment,
complete with bizarre acts of obscure fetishism that would make Chuck Palahniuk
proud.
50. Title: Then We Came to the End (2007)

Author: Joshua Ferris

Multiple narrators weigh in on the rise and fall of an advertising agency as the internet
begins permanently changing the way people do business.
100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein

WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a
“masterpiece”.

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A child’s-eye view of racial prejudice and freaky neighbours in Thirties Alabama.

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

A rich Bengali noble lives happily until a radical revolutionary appears.

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Earth is demolished to make way for a Hyperspatial Express Route. Don’t panic.

96 One Thousand and One Nights Anon

A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Werther loves Charlotte, but she’s already engaged. Woe is he!

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

The children of poor Hindus and wealthy Muslims are switched at birth.

93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Hilarious satire on doom-laden rural romances. “Something nasty” has been observed in the
woodshed.

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

The life and loves of an emperor’s son. And the world’s first novel?

90 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

A feckless writer has dealings with a canine movie star. Comedy and philosophy combined.

89 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Lessing considers communism and women’s liberation in what Margaret Drabble calls “inner
space fiction”.

88 Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Passion, poetry and pistols in this verse novel of thwarted love.

87 On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Beat generation boys aim to “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles”.

86 Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

A disillusioning dose of Bourbon Restoration realism. The anti-hero “Rastingnac” became a

byword for ruthless social climbing.

85 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

Plebian hero struggles against the materialism and hypocrisy of French society with his
“force d’ame”.

84 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

“One for all and all for one”: the eponymous swashbucklers battle the mysterious Milady.

83 Germinal by Emile Zola

Written to “germinate” social change, Germinal unflinchingly documents the starvation of

French miners.

82 The Stranger by Albert Camus

Frenchman kills an Arab friend in Algiers and accepts “the gentle indifference of the world”.

81The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Illuminating historical whodunnit set in a 14th-century Italian monastry.

80 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

An Australian heiress bets an Anglican priest he can’t move a glass church 400km.

79 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Prequel to Jane Eyre giving moving, human voice to the mad woman in the attic.

78 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Carroll’s ludic logic makes it possible to believe six impossible things before breakfast.
77 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Yossarian feels a homicidal impulse to machine gun total strangers. Isn’t that crazy?

76 The Trial by Franz Kafka

K proclaims he’s innocent when unexpectedly arrested. But “innocent of what”?

75 Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

Protagonist’s “first long secret drink of golden fire” is under a hay wagon.

74 Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan

Gentle comedy in which a Gandhi-inspired Indian youth becomes an anti-British extremist.

73 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

The horror of the Great War as seen by a teenage soldier.

72 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Three siblings are differently affected by their parents’ unexplained separation.

71 The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

Profound and panoramic insight into 18th-century Chinese society.

70 The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Garibaldi’s Redshirts sweep through Sicily, the “jackals” ousting the nobility, or “leopards”.

69 If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

International book fraud is exposed in this playful postmodernist puzzle.

68 Crash by JG Ballard

Former TV scientist preaches “a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology”.

67 A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul

East African Indian Salim travels to the heart of Africa and finds “The world is what it is.”

66 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Boy meets pawnbroker. Boy kills pawnbroker with an axe. Guilt, breakdown, Siberia,
redemption.

65 Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Romantic young doctor’s idealism is trampled by the atrocities of the Russian Revolution.

64 The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

Follows three generations of Cairenes from the First World War to the coup of 1952.

63 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson’s “bogey tale” came to him in a dream.

62 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Swift’s scribulous satire on travellers’ tall tales (the Lilliputian Court is really George I’s).

61 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

A painter is murdered in Istanbul in 1591. Unusually, we hear from the corpse.

60 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Myth and reality melt magically together in this Colombian family saga.

59 London Fields by Martin Amis

A failed novelist steals a woman’s trashed diaries which reveal she’s plotting her own
murder.

58 The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Gang of South American poets travel the world, sleep around, challenge critics to duels.

57 The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse

Intellectuals withdraw from life to play a game of musical and mathematical rules.

56 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

Madhouse memories of the Second World War. Key text of European magic realism.

55 Austerlitz by WG Sebald

Paragraph-less novel in which a Czech-born historian traces his own history back to the
Holocaust.

54 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Scholar’s sexual obsession with a prepubescent “nymphet” is complicated by her mother’s

passion for him.

53 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

After nuclear war has rendered most sterile, fertile women are enslaved for breeding.

52 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Expelled from a “phony” prep school, adolescent anti-hero goes through a difficult phase.

51 Underworld by Don DeLillo

From baseball to nuclear waste, all late-20th-century American life is here.

50 Beloved by Toni Morrison

Brutal, haunting, jazz-inflected journey down the darkest narrative rivers of American
slavery.

49 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

“Okies” set out from the Depression dustbowl seeking decent wages and dignity.

48 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Explores the role of the Christian Church in Harlem’s African-American community.

47The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

A doctor’s infidelities distress his wife. But if life means nothing, it can’t matter.

46 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

A meddling teacher is betrayed by a favourite pupil who becomes a nun.

45 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Did the watch salesman kill the girl on the beach. If so, who heard?

44 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

A historian becomes increasingly sickened by his existence, but decides to muddle on.

43 The Rabbit books by John Updike

A former high school basketball star is unsatisfied by marriage, fatherhood and sales jobs.

42 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

A boy and a runaway slave set sail on the Mississippi, away from Antebellum “sivilisation”.

41 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

A drug addict chases a ghostly dog across the midnight moors.

40 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue.

39 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

A Nigerian yam farmer’s local leadership is shaken by accidental death and a missionary’s
arrival.

38The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

A mysterious millionaire’s love for a woman with “a voice full of money” gets him in
trouble.

37 The Warden by Anthony Trollope

“Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money,” said W?H
Auden.

36 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.

35 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

An uncommitted history lecturer clashes with his pompous boss, gets drunk and gets the girl.

34 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” in this hardboiled crime noir.

33 Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Epistolary adventure whose heroine’s bodice is savagely unlaced by the brothel-keeping

Robert Lovelace.

32 A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

Twelve-book saga whose most celebrated character wears “the wrong kind of overcoat”.

31 Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

Published 60 years after their author was gassed, these two novellas portray city and village
life in Nazi-occupied France.

30 Atonement by Ian McEwan

Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.

29 Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec

The jigsaw puzzle of lives in a Parisian apartment block. Plus empty rooms.

28 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Thigh-thwacking yarn of a foundling boy sewing his wild oats before marrying the girl next
door.

27 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Human endeavours “to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” have
tragic consequences.

26 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Northern villagers turn their bonnets against the social changes accompanying the industrial
revolution.

25 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Hailed by T?S Eliot as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective
novels”.

24 Ulysses by James Joyce

Modernist masterpiece reworking of Homer with humour. Contains one of the longest
“sentences” in English literature: 4,391 words.

23 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Buying the lies of romance novels leads a provincial doctor’s wife to an agonising end.

22 A Passage to India by EM Forster

A false accusation exposes the racist oppression of British rule in India.

21 1984 by George Orwell

In which Big Brother is even more sinister than the TV series it inspired.

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Samuel Johnson thought Sterne’s bawdy, experimental novel was too odd to last. Pah!

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Bloodsucking Martian invaders are wiped out by a dose of the sniffles.

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Waugh based the hapless junior reporter in this journalistic farce on former Telegraph editor
Bill Deedes.

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Sexual double standards are held up to the cold, Wessex light in this rural tragedy.

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

A seaside sociopath mucks up murder and marriage in Greene’s literary Punch and Judy
show.

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse

A scrape-prone toff and pals are suavely manipulated by his gentleman’s personal gentleman.

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he
storms off.

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Debt and deception in Dickens’s semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman crammed with cads,

creeps and capital fellows.

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

A slave trader is shipwrecked but finds God, and a native to convert, on a desert island.

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Every proud posh boy deserves a prejudiced girl. And a stately pile.

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Picaresque tale about quinquagenarian gent on a skinny horse tilting at windmills.

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee

An English professor in post-apartheid South Africa loses everything after seducing a

student.

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.
6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Seven-volume meditation on memory, featuring literature’s most celebrated lemony cake.

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

“The conquest of the earth,” said Conrad, “is not a pretty thing.”

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

An American heiress in Europe “affronts her destiny” by marrying an adulterous egoist.

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot

“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.
Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for
centuries.
Buy Don Quixote at the Guardian Bookshop

2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan

The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.
Buy Pilgrim's Progress at the Guardian Bookshop

3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe

The first English novel.
Buy Robinson Crusoe at the Guardian Bookshop

4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift

A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.
Buy Gulliver's Travels at the Guardian Bookshop

5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding

The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a
blissful marriage.
Buy Tom Jones at the Guardian Bookshop

6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson

One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.
Buy Clarissa at the Guardian Bookshop

7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne

One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.
Buy Tristram Shandy at the Guardian Bookshop

8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.
Buy Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Guardian Bookshop

9. Emma Jane Austen

Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to
fascinate and annoy.
Buy Emma at the Guardian Bookshop

10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.
Buy Frankenstein at the Guardian Bookshop

11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock

A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel.
Buy Nightmare Abbey at Amazon.co.uk
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac
Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked.
Buy The Black Sheep at the Guardian Bookshop

13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal

Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.
Buy The Charterhouse of Parma at the Guardian Bookshop

14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.
Buy The Count of Monte Cristo at the Guardian Bookshop

15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli

Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius.
Buy Sybil at the Guardian Bookshop

16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens

This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best.
Buy David Copperfield at the Guardian Bookshop

17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore.
Buy Wuthering Heights at the Guardian Bookshop

18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Obsessive emotional grip and haunting narrative.
Buy Jane Eyre at the Guardian Bookshop

19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

The improving tale of Becky Sharp.
Buy Vanity Fair at the Guardian Bookshop

20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

A classic investigation of the American mind.
Buy The Scarlet Letter at the Guardian Bookshop

21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville

'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.
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22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point
entirely.
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23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.
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24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.
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25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott

Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls.
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26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope

A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England.
Buy The Way We Live Now at the Guardian Bookshop

27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man.
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28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot

A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling.
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29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment.
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30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James

The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.
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31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

Twain was a humorist, but this picture of Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still
incredibly influential.
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32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson

A brilliantly suggestive, resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller.
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33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome

One of the funniest English books ever written.
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34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.
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35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith

This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.
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36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first twentieth-century novels.
Buy Jude the Obscure at the Guardian Bookshop

37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers

A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican
rising.
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38. The Call of the Wild Jack London

The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves after his master's death.
Buy The Call of the Wild at the Guardian Bookshop

39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad

Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics.
Buy Nostromo at the Guardian Bookshop

40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

This children's classic was inspired by bedtime stories for Grahame's son.
Buy The Wind in the Willows at the Guardian Bookshop

41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust

An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the belle epoque. Probably the longest novel on this list.
Buy In Search of Lost Time at the Guardian Bookshop

42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence

Novels seized by the police, like this one, have a special afterlife.
Buy The Rainbow at the Guardian Bookshop

43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford

This account of the adulterous lives of two Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable
narration.
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44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan

A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, violence and suspense.
Buy The Thirty-Nine Steps at the Guardian Bookshop

45. Ulysses James Joyce

Also pursued by the British police, this is a novel more discussed than read.
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46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf

Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English novelists.
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47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster

The great novel of the British Raj, it remains a brilliant study of empire.
Buy A Passage to India at the Guardian Bookshop
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The quintessential Jazz Age novel.
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49. The Trial Franz Kafka

The enigmatic story of Joseph K.
Buy The Trial at the Guardian Bookshop

50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway

He is remembered for his novels, but it was the short stories that first attracted notice.
Buy Men Without Women at the Guardian Bookshop

51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The experiences of an unattractive slum doctor during the Great War: a masterpiece of
linguistic innovation.
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52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner

A strange black comedy by an American master.
Buy As I Lay Dying at the Guardian Bookshop

53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley

Dystopian fantasy about the world of the seventh century AF (after Ford).
Buy Brave New World at the Guardian Bookshop

54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh

The supreme Fleet Street novel.
Buy Scoop at the Guardian Bookshop

55. USA John Dos Passos

An extraordinary trilogy that uses a variety of narrative devices to express the story of
America.
Buy USA at the Guardian Bookshop

56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler

Introducing Philip Marlowe: cool, sharp, handsome - and bitterly alone.
Buy The Big Sleep at the Guardian Bookshop

57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford

An exquisite comedy of manners with countless fans.
Buy The Pursuit of Love at the Guardian Bookshop

58. The Plague Albert Camus

A mysterious plague sweeps through the Algerian town of Oran.
Buy The Plague at the Guardian Bookshop

59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

This tale of one man's struggle against totalitarianism has been appropriated the world over.
Buy Nineteen Eighty-Four at the Guardian Bookshop
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett
Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the black comic voice of the author of Waiting
for Godot.
Buy Malone Dies at the Guardian Bookshop

61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel that still mesmerises.
Buy Catcher in the Rye at the Guardian Bookshop

62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor

A disturbing novel of religious extremism set in the Deep South.
Buy Wise Blood at the Guardian Bookshop

63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White

How Wilbur the pig was saved by the literary genius of a friendly spider.
Buy Charlotte's Web at the Guardian Bookshop

64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien

Enough said!
Buy The Lord of the Rings at the Guardian Bookshop

65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis

An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English novel of the Fifties.
Buy Lucky Jim at the Guardian Bookshop

66. Lord of the Flies William Golding

Schoolboys become savages: a bleak vision of human nature.
Buy Lord of the Flies at the Guardian Bookshop

67. The Quiet American Graham Greene

Prophetic novel set in 1950s Vietnam.
Buy The Quiet American at the Guardian Bookshop

68 On the Road Jack Kerouac

The Beat Generation bible.
Buy On the Road at the Guardian Bookshop

69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

Humbert Humbert's obsession with Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative.
Buy Lolita at the Guardian Bookshop

70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass

Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler's Germany.
Buy The Tin Drum at the Guardian Bookshop

71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of African literature.
Buy Things Fall Apart at the Guardian Bookshop
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
A writer who made her debut in The Observer - and her prose is like cut glass.
Buy The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Guardian Bookshop

73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee

Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates an enthralling story of racial prejudice in the Deep South.
Buy To Kill A Mockingbird at the Guardian Bookshop

74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller

'[He] would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to
fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and
had to.'
Buy Catch-22 at the Guardian Bookshop

75. Herzog Saul Bellow

Adultery and nervous breakdown in Chicago.
Buy Herzog at the Guardian Bookshop

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A postmodern masterpiece.
Buy One Hundred Years of Solitude at the Guardian Bookshop

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor

A haunting, understated study of old age.
Buy Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont at the Guardian Bookshop

78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre

A thrilling elegy for post-imperial Britain.
Buy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at the Guardian Bookshop

79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison

The definitive novelist of the African-American experience.
Buy Song of Solomon at the Guardian Bookshop

80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge

Macabre comedy of provincial life.
Buy The Bottle Factory Outing at the Guardian Bookshop

81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer

This quasi-documentary account of the life and death of Gary Gilmore is possibly his
masterpiece.
Buy The Executioner's Song at the Guardian Bookshop

82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino

A strange, compelling story about the pleasures of reading.
Buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller at the Guardian Bookshop

83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul

The finest living writer of English prose. This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart
of Darkness.
Buy A Bend in the River at the Guardian Bookshop

84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee

Bleak but haunting allegory of apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner.
Buy Waiting for the Barbarians at the Guardian Bookshop

85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson

Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and light, about three generations of women.
Buy Housekeeping at the Guardian Bookshop

86. Lanark Alasdair Gray

Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic.
Buy Lanark at the Guardian Bookshop

87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster

Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the Manhattan of the 1970s.
Buy The New York Trilogy at the Guardian Bookshop

88. The BFG Roald Dahl

A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for children of all ages.
Buy The BFG at the Guardian Bookshop

89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi

A prose poem about the delights of chemistry.
Buy The Periodic Table at the Guardian Bookshop

90. Money Martin Amis

The novel that bags Amis's place on any list.
Buy Money at the Guardian Bookshop

91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro

A collaborator from prewar Japan reluctantly discloses his betrayal of friends and family.
Buy An Artist of the Floating World at the Guardian Bookshop

92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey

A great contemporary love story set in nineteenth-century Australia by double Booker
prizewinner.
Buy Oscar and Lucinda at the Guardian Bookshop

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera

Inspired by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is a magical fusion of history,
autobiography and ideas.
Buy The Book of Laughter and Forgetting at the Guardian Bookshop

94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie

In this entrancing story Rushdie plays with the idea of narrative itself.
Buy Haroun and the Sea of Stories at the Guardian Bookshop
95. La Confidential James Ellroy
Three LAPD detectives are brought face to face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent
careers.
Buy LA Confidential at the Guardian Bookshop

96. Wise Children Angela Carter

A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant exponent of magic realism.
Buy Wise Children at the Guardian Bookshop

97. Atonement Ian McEwan

Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary classic of mesmerising narrative
conviction.
Buy Atonement at the Guardian Bookshop

98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman

Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the play of ideas into a truly great contemporary
children's book.
Buy Northern Lights at the Guardian Bookshop

99. American Pastoral Philip Roth

For years, Roth was famous for Portnoy's Complaint . Recently, he has enjoyed an
extraordinary revival.
Buy American Pastoral at the Guardian Bookshop

100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald

Posthumously published volume in a sequence of dream-like fictions spun from memory,
photographs and the German past.
Buy Austerlitz at the Guardian Bookshop
25 – Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man (Joseph Heller)

24 – Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)

23 – Bridge of Sighs (Richard Russo)

22a – Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon) – added 5 August 2009

22 – American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

21 – The True History of the Kelly Gang (Peter Carey) – Booker Prize

20 – The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) – National Book Award

19 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)

18 – Middlesex (Geoffrey Eugenedis) – Pulitzer Prize

17 – The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri)

16 – Everyman (Philip Roth) – PEN/Faulkner Award

15 – Exit, Ghost (Philip Roth)

14 – Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

13 – On Beauty (Zadie Smith)

12 – Snow (Orhan Pamuk)

11 – The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood) – Booker Prize

10 – The Plot Against America (Philip Roth)

9 – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Mark Haddon)

8 – Shalimar the Clown (Salman Rushdie)

7a – Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)

7 – Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) – PEN/Faulkner Award

6 – No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)

5b – Freedom (Jonathan Franzen)

5a – The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman)

5 – Empire Falls (Richard Russo) – Pulitzer Prize

4 – Atonement (Ian McEwan) – National Book Critics Circle Award

3 – White Teeth (Zadie Smith)

2 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon) – Pulitzer Prize

1 – Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Suzannah Clarke)