The 100 Greatest Books of All Time

Don Quixote, the full title being The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and the first modern novel.

Novel 100 #1 · OCLC #1 · BBC Stories #7 · GAR #31 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume.

Novel 100 #22 · OCLC #22 · BBC Stories #23 · GAR #28 · Big Read #60 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

One of the twentieth century’s enduring works, *One Hundred Years of Solitude* is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.

BBC Stories #9 · Novel 100 #19 · Big Read #32 · Le Monde #33 · OCLC #54 · GAR #74 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 novel of manners written by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.

Big Read #2 · OCLC #6 · BBC Stories #24 · Novel 100 #40 · GAR #80 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Charles Bovary, médecin de campagne, veuf d'une mégère, fait lors d'une tournée la rencontre du père Rouault et de sa fille, Emma. Après leur mariage, Emma reste insatisfaite et rêve d'une nouvelle vie. Son premier amant lui donne le goût du luxe et fait miroiter un avenir à deux avant de l'abandonner.

Novel 100 #7 · BBC Stories #20 · OCLC #23 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

OCLC #7 · Big Read #12 · BBC Stories #38 · Novel 100 #39 · GAR #100 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

"Command the murderous chalices! Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow -- Death to Moby Dick!" So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession -- the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance.

Novel 100 #6 · OCLC #9 · BBC Stories #40 · GAR #72 · Big Read #161 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

The Trial (German: Der Prozess) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by an inaccessible authority, with the nature of the crime of which he is accused revealed neither to him nor to the reader.

Le Monde #3 · BBC Stories #36 · Novel 100 #46 · OCLC #69 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her ti…

OCLC #8 · Big Read #10 · BBC Stories #19 · Novel 100 #52 · GAR #59 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.

Novel 100 #8 · Big Read #27 · BBC Stories #55 · OCLC #112 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Resurrection (pre-reform Russian: Воскресеніе; post-reform Russian: Воскресение, romanized: Voskreséniye, also translated as The Awakening), first published in December 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the final of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime.

Novel 100 #2 · Big Read #20 · BBC Stories #26 · GAR #95 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.

BBC Stories #4 · Big Read #8 · Le Monde #22 · OCLC #86 · Novel 100 #91 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · Observer

*Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.

BBC Stories #3 · OCLC #19 · GAR #37 · Big Read #171 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Anna Karenina is a 2012 historical romantic drama film directed by Joe Wright. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from Leo Tolstoy's 1878 novel, the film depicts the tragedy of Russian aristocrat and socialite Anna Karenina, wife of senior statesman Alexei Karenin, and her affair with the affluent cavalry officer Count Vronsky.

Novel 100 #13 · OCLC #38 · Big Read #54 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. It depicts pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first to receive global critical acclaim.

BBC Stories #5 · Novel 100 #55 · GAR #91 · OCLC #229 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.

Novel 100 #16 · Big Read #17 · OCLC #17 · GAR #46 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Virginia Woolf’s novel chronicles a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a politician’s wife in 1920s London, as she prepares to host a party that evening. The narrative follows Clarissa’s thoughts (and sometimes those of people she meets) as she goes about her errands, and events in the day remind her of her youth and friendships from the past.

BBC Stories #48 · Novel 100 #48 · OCLC #122 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts.

Novel 100 #20 · OCLC #34 · Big Read #43 · Le Monde #46 · GAR #47 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Invisible Man is the story of a young black man from the South who does not fully understand racism in the world. Filled with hope about his future, he goes to college, but gets expelled for showing one of the white benefactors the real and seamy side of black existence. He moves to Harlem and becomes an orator for the Communist party, known as the Brotherhood.

Novel 100 #34 · BBC Stories #39 · GAR #58 · OCLC #180 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work.

Le Monde #7 · Big Read #29 · OCLC #41 · GAR #45 · Novel 100 #60 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部; [mɯ.ɾa.sa.kʲi ɕi̥.kiꜜ.bɯ, -ɕi̥ꜜ.kʲi-], c. 973 – c. 1014 or 1025), or Shijo (紫女; [ɕiꜜ.(d)ʑo], lit. 'Lady Murasaki'), was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012.

Novel 100 #10 · BBC Stories #34 · OCLC #138 · Bokklubben · 1001 Books · Telegraph

This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever.In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships.

Novel 100 #21 · BBC Stories #42 · OCLC #123 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he sexually molests after he becomes her stepfather. "Lolita" is his private nickname for Dolores.

Le Monde #27 · Novel 100 #47 · Big Read #178 · OCLC #258 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

In many ways this was an experimental novel, using several differing narrative styles. Divided into four parts, the author relates the same episodes from four different viewpoints, using a different style for each. The story concerns various members of a Southern family, once wealthy landowners but now struggling to maintain their reputation.

Novel 100 #23 · Le Monde #34 · OCLC #105 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Magic Mountain (German: Der Zauberberg, pronounced [deːɐ̯ ˈtsaʊbɐˌbɛʁk] ) is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, published in November 1924 about a young and aspiring engineer Hans Castorp.

Novel 100 #9 · Le Monde #40 · OCLC #157 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the United States.

Big Read #6 · BBC Stories #27 · OCLC #29 · GAR #93 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer · Telegraph

Le Rouge et le Noir (French pronunciation: [lə ʁuʒ e l(ə) nwaʁ]; meaning The Red and the Black) is a psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him.

Novel 100 #29 · OCLC #67 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Toni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the unassailable truths of experience and emotion with the vision of legend and imagination.

BBC Stories #11 · GAR #15 · Novel 100 #43 · OCLC #121 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

The Sorrows of Young Werther ([ˈveːɐ̯tɐ]; German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers), or simply Werther, is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement.

BBC Stories #35 · Novel 100 #75 · OCLC #182 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or as it is known in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.

OCLC #3 · Novel 100 #14 · BBC Stories #88 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Le Père Goriot (French pronunciation: [lə pɛʁ ɡɔʁjo], "Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot") is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine.

Novel 100 #26 · OCLC #100 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

Louisa May Alcotts classic novel, set during the Civil War, has always captivated even the most reluctant readers. Little girls, especially, love following the adventures of the four March sisters--Meg, Beth, Amy, and most of all, the tomboy Jo--as they experience the joys and disappointments, tragedies and triumphs, of growing up.

OCLC #16 · Big Read #18 · GAR #64 · BBC Stories #79 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.

OCLC #31 · BBC Stories #54 · Novel 100 #97 · Big Read #114 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

"The Little Prince tends his small planet--then enjoys the warm glow of sunset."…

Le Monde #4 · OCLC #35 · GAR #63 · BBC Stories #67 · Big Read #180 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world.

BBC Stories #30 · Novel 100 #80 · OCLC #91 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock.

BBC Stories #18 · OCLC #33 · Big Read #46 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

Originally published in 1932, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, antiaging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media -- has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future?

Le Monde #21 · OCLC #27 · Big Read #87 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George.

Novel 100 #24 · OCLC #75 · Big Read #122 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

Journey to the End of the Night (French: Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work follows the adventures of Ferdinand Bardamu in World War I, colonial Africa, the United States and the poor suburbs of Paris where he works as a doctor.

Le Monde #6 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer

The story of the inner and outer life of Anna, a young writer, single mother and member of the Communist Party, struggling with crises both in her domestic and political life, this book was hailed as a landmark by the Women's Movement.

Novel 100 #61 · BBC Stories #64 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Story of Holden Caufield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.

Big Read #15 · GAR #21 · OCLC #72 · Le Monde #88 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

A gripping tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion, set amid the mist-shrouded mountains of a fictional South American republic, employs flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men. Conrad's deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique are at their best in this, one of his greatest works.

Novel 100 #44 · OCLC #304 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t…

Novel 100 #12 · Big Read #79 · OCLC #99 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Tin Drum (German: Die Blechtrommel, pronounced [diː ˈblɛçˌtʁɔml̩] ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass, the first book of his Danzig Trilogy. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980. To "beat a tin drum" means to create a disturbance in order to bring attention to a cause.

Novel 100 #38 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Dead Souls (Russian: Мёртвые души Myórtvyye dúshi, pre-reform spelling: Мертвыя души) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time.

Novel 100 #25 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Margaret Mitchell's monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries.

Big Read #21 · Le Monde #38 · GAR #44 · OCLC #77 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. A young girl named Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre.

OCLC #2 · Big Read #30 · BBC Stories #44 · 1001 Books · Observer

It adds to the charm of this book to remember that it is virtually a picture of the author's own boyhood. It is an excellent picture of the life of a struggling English youth in the middle of the last century. The pictures of Canterbury and London are true pictures and through these pages walk one of Dickens' wonderful processions of characters, quaint and humorous, villainous and tragic.

OCLC #14 · Big Read #34 · Novel 100 #53 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

In Search of Lost Time (French: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, and sometimes referred to in French as La Recherche (IPA: [la ʁə.ʃɛʁʃ]; lit. 'The Search'), is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early twentieth-century work is his most prominent, known for both its length and its theme of involuntary memory.

Novel 100 #4 · Bokklubben · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

<p><i>Sons and Lovers</i>, a story of working-class England, is <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/d-h-lawrence"><abbr>D. H.</abbr> Lawrence’s</a> third novel. It went through various drafts, and was titled “Paul Morel” until the final draft, before being published and met with an indifferent reaction from contemporary critics. Modern critics now consider it to be <abbr>D.

Novel 100 #62 · OCLC #96 · Big Read #190 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

This unforgettable novel tells the story of Tom, a devoutly Christian slave who chooses not to escape bondage for fear of embarrassing his master. However, he is soon sold to a slave trader and sent down the Mississippi, where he must endure brutal treatment. This is a powerful tale of the extreme cruelties of slavery, as well as the price of loyalty and morality.

BBC Stories #2 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

Hunger (Norwegian: Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun published in 1890 by P.G. Philipsens Forlag. The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. Hunger portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner.

GAR #55 · Novel 100 #69 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by the French writer Alexandre Dumas. It was serialised from 1844 to 1846, then published in book form in 1846. It is one of his most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers (1844) and Man in the Iron Mask (1850).

GAR #27 · Big Read #44 · OCLC #49 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer

During one of his several adventurous voyages in the 1600's, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a deserted island.

Novel 100 #84 · BBC Stories #86 · OCLC #142 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

*Catch-22* is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original.

Big Read #11 · GAR #20 · OCLC #118 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer · Telegraph

Persuasion tells the love story of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, whose sister rents Miss Elliot's father's house, after the Napoleonic Wars come to an end. The story is set in 1814. The book itself is Jane Austen's last published book, published posthumously in December of 1818.

Big Read #38 · Novel 100 #51 · OCLC #89 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature.

OCLC #10 · Novel 100 #41 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best.

BBC Stories #46 · GAR #52 · Big Read #158 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

Na história, um casal e seus amigos são atormentados por Conde Drácula, uma entidade sobrenatural e hematófoga que, presa em uma maldição contagiosa, pretende se mudar de seu recluso castelo na Transilvânia para a efervescente Londres do século XIX. Com a ajuda do professor Van Helsing, o grupo de amigos pretende enfrentar o morto-vivo, mesmo com todos os perigos que a ofensiva trará.

OCLC #25 · BBC Stories #71 · Big Read #104 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Man Without Qualities (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften; 1930–1943) is an unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various drafts, by the Austrian writer Robert Musil. The novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's last days.

Novel 100 #35 · Le Monde #86 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Young American Isabel Archer charms European society, but falls prey to the machinations of a calculating older woman.

Novel 100 #27 · OCLC #148 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is a classic Harlem Renaissance novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. The novel follows Janie Crawford as she recounts the story of her life as she journeys from a naive teenager to a woman in control of her destiny.

BBC Stories #41 · Novel 100 #88 · GAR #90 · OCLC #194 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter, the amours and military obsessions of Uncle Toby, and a host of other characters.

Novel 100 #30 · OCLC #477 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

The Gambler (Russian: Игрокъ, romanized: Igrok; modern spelling Игрок) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. Set in a hotel and casino in a German city, the theme of gambling reflects Dostoevsky's own experience of addiction to roulette.

OCLC #144 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Originally published from 1954 through 1956, J.R.R. Tolkien's richly complex series ushered in a new age of epic adventure storytelling.

Big Read #1 · Le Monde #58 · GAR #67 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer · Telegraph

The Stranger (French: L'Étranger [letʁɑ̃ʒe], lit. 'The Foreigner'), also published in English as The Outsider, is a 1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus's novels to be published, the story follows Meursault, an indifferent man in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers.

Novel 100 #57 · OCLC #68 · Bokklubben · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

This epic, sub-titled ‘The Decline of a Family’, was Mann’s first novel, published in 1901. It traces the gradual downfall of a wealthy family over four generations in the city of Lubeck. The novel is widely regarded as a classic portrait of bourgeois society and family life in 19th century Germany.

Novel 100 #33 · OCLC #276 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

In this quintessential Shakespeare tragedy, a young prince's halting pursuit of revenge for the murder of his father unfolds in a series of highly charged confrontations that have held audiences spellbound for nearly four centuries. Those fateful exchanges, and the anguished soliloquies that precede and follow them, probe depths of human feeling rarely sounded in any art.

BBC Stories #8 · Bokklubben · 1001 Books · Bloom

The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness.

Novel 100 #17 · OCLC #219 · Bokklubben · 1001 Books · Bloom

When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim.

Novel 100 #64 · OCLC #133 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes.

Le Monde #44 · OCLC #109 · Big Read #128 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

**The Picture of Dorian Gray** is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical *Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine*. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.

OCLC #40 · Big Read #118 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

The foundling Tom Jones is found on the property of a benevolent, wealthy landowner. Tom grows up to be a vigorous, kind-hearted young man, whose love of his neighbor's well-born daughter brings class friction to the fore. The presence of prostitution and promiscuity in Tom Jones caused a sensation at the time it was published, as such themes were uncommon.

Novel 100 #15 · OCLC #102 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer · Telegraph

Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is an adventure tale known for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature then and now. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels.

OCLC #5 · Big Read #36 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Castle (German: Das Schloss, also spelled Das Schloß [das ˈʃlɔs]) is the last novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1926. In it, a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Graf Westwest.

OCLC #155 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.

Le Monde #8 · OCLC #92 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted.

Big Read #111 · OCLC #131 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison.

Big Read #77 · OCLC #218 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean.

BBC Stories #28 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.

Novel 100 #45 · OCLC #83 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met.

OCLC #15 · Big Read #63 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.

OCLC #50 · Big Read #173 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

"The inspiration for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic film and that The Guardian named one of the "Top 100 Books of All Time," Berlin Alexanderplatz is considered one of the most important works of the Weimar Republic and twentieth century literature. Franz Biberkopf, pimp and petty thief, has just finished serving a term in prison for murdering his girlfriend.

Novel 100 #70 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak.

Big Read #48 · OCLC #93 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Described as everything from a "last gasp" of romantic fiction to a founding text of the Beat Generation movement, this story amounts to a nonfiction novel (as critics were later to describe some works). Unpublished writer buddies wander from coast to coast in search of whatever they find, eager for experience.

Le Monde #67 · Big Read #90 · OCLC #117 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Telegraph

The Brothers Karamazov (Russian: Братья Карамазовы, romanized: Brat'ya Karamazovy, IPA: [ˈbratʲjə kərɐˈmazəvɨ]), also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the sixteenth and final novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880.

Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Sentimental Education: History of a Young Man (French: L'éducation sentimentale : histoire d'un jeune homme) is an 1869 novel by Gustave Flaubert. It focuses on the romantic life of a young man named Frédéric Moreau at the time of the French Revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second French Empire.

Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Stephen Dedalus grows up in Dublin, feeling different from the other boys. His childhood and adolescence are shaped by bullying, his father's weaknesses and the growing realization that in order to make his way in the world he must reject a conventional life and boecome an artist.

Novel 100 #36 · OCLC #64 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

Women in Love is a 1920 novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his 1915 novel The Rainbow, and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist.

Novel 100 #28 · OCLC #163 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

"Austerlitz is the story of a man's search for the answer to his life's central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him.

NYT 21C · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer · Vulture 21C · Telegraph

As Buck, a mixed breed dog, is taken away from his home, instead of facing a feast for breakfast and the comforts of home, he faces the hardships of being a sled dog. Soon he lands in the wrong hands, being forced to keep going when it is too rough for him and the other dogs in his pack.

GAR #19 · OCLC #36 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer

A new translation of the epic poem retells the story of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

BBC Stories #1 · Bokklubben · Bloom

Molloy is a novel by Samuel Beckett first written in French and published by Paris-based Les Éditions de Minuit in 1951. The English translation, published in 1955, is by Beckett and Patrick Bowles.

Novel 100 #37 · Bokklubben · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Rainbow is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen & Co. in 1915. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, focusing particularly on the individual's struggle for growth and fulfilment within the confining structures of English social life.

Novel 100 #42 · OCLC #343 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Observer

Muriel Spark’s timeless classic about a controversial teacher who deeply marks the lives of a select group of students in the years leading up to World War II…

BBC Stories #61 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer · Telegraph

Chad Newsome has gone to Paris. He is charmed by Old World fascinations and caught up in the leisurely craft and bohemian direction of European worldliness. An older woman of rank and adventurous but subtle skill, Madame de Vionnet, strokes his ego and does her best to keep Chad in Paris indefinitely. Chad's mother lives in Woollett, Mass., and wants her son to return to run the family business.

Novel 100 #18 · OCLC #311 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom

The Counterfeiters (French: Les Faux-monnayeurs) is a 1925 novel by French author André Gide, first published in Nouvelle Revue Française.

Le Monde #30 · Novel 100 #59 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books

One of the first English detective novels, this mystery involves the disappearance of a valuable diamond, originally stolen from a Hindu idol, given to a young woman on her eighteenth birthday, and then stolen again. A classic of 19th-century literature.

OCLC #167 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Bloom · Telegraph

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.

OCLC #62 · Big Read #70 · Guardian 1000 · 1001 Books · Observer