Over the
past few years, I have being referring to a number of ‘100 Best Novels’ lists
to fill the gaps in my knowledge about literature and discover new authors and
novels. The five main lists I have been using are Modern Library’s 100 best novels of
the 20th century (English-language), TIME magazine’s all-TIME
100 Novels (1923-2005, English-language), The Observer’s 100 greatest
novels of all time, the BBC’s Big Read top 100 novels,
and Le Monde's 100
Books of the Century.
I have
attempted to compile a definitive list based predominantly on the five lists in
addition to a few novels that I thought deserved to be on the list. Because
some of the lists are only for English language novels, I thought it’s fair for
my list to also have only English-language novels. I am working on another list
for international novels.
While The
Observer and The BBC lists have some non-English novels, they are skewed
towards English-language novels and specifically British novels. By contrast,
TIME and Modern Library’s lists do not favour American novels. Le Monde’s list
is excellent, but it is not restricted to novels. It’s the only list however on
which you will come across Georges Perec’s masterpiece Life A User's
Manual.
There are
four novels that feature on all five lists, they are: Nineteen Eighty-Four by
George Orwell, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.
Salinger and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There are also eight
novels that appear on four of the five lists, such as Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and a further nine that appear on three of the
five lists, such as Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Big Sleep by Raymond
Chandler. Lastly, there are fifty-six novels that appear on two of the five
lists.
Without further
ado, here is the list below. Please feel free to leave your comments and
suggestions.
A Bend in the River
V. S. Naipaul
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell
A Farewell To Arms
Ernest Hemingway
A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh
A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul
A Passage to India
E.M. Forster
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral
Philip Roth
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm
George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra
John O’Hara
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner
Atonement
Ian McEwan
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
Carter Beats the Devil
Glen David Gold
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather
Deliverance
James Dickey
Emma
Jane Austen
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
I, Claudius
Robert Graves
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Little Women
Louisa M. Alcott
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Loving
Henry Green
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
Money
Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs
Native Son
Richard Wright
Neuromancer
William Gibson
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth
Possession
A.S. Byatt
Rabbit (Series)
John Updike
Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Sophie’S Choice
William Styron
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The BFG
Roald Dahl
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
The Call Of The Wild
Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon
The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
The Godfather
Mario Puzo
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
Carson Mccullers
The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
CS Lewis
The Lord of the Rings
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington
The Magus
John Fowles
The Moviegoer
Walker Percy
The Naked And The Dead
Norman Mailer
The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark
The Rainbow
D.H. Lawrence
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John Le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Tristram Shandy
Laurence Sterne
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller
U.S.A.(Trilogy)
John Dos Passos
Ulysses
James Joyce
Under the Net
Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte
Many books on here I haven't read, but all the good ones I have read are here. Is the list arranged in a specific order?
ReplyDeleteNo, just alphabetic order. I think it would be going too far to rank them.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteExcellent list. I'd add some "contemporary" can't-miss ones:
ReplyDelete- Kane & Abel: Jeffrey Archer
- IT: Stephen King
- Gai-Jin/Shogun/and the rest of this incredible series by James Clavell
- Roots: Alex Hailey
That's for the fiction list. Hit me up when you write a non-fiction one :).
That's with regards to the fiction genre of course :).
A non-fiction one would be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteGreat selection, but I would add:
ReplyDeleteThe Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (Or American Psycho, which is the same, but with more violence)
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Clearly, I'm a big fan of stuff written in the 1900s.
1900s are great! I had to draw the line somewhere with Evelyn Waugh, there are already two books on the list.
DeleteIt's quite a task to attempt to compile a list of the ultimate 100 novels. Obviously, it will be next to impossible to find someone who would agree with every single entry that appears on the list, and I am no exception.
ReplyDeleteMy two cent worth of comment is as follows:
1- I think no ultimate list would be "ultimate" without the inclusion of a work by Franz Kafka. And for me it's hard to single out one of his in particular. But if I must, I would nominate The Castle (Das Schloß).
2- As far as Ernest Hemingway's work goes, I personally find "A Farewell to Arms" to be his most "pop-ish" piece of work, and one with least literary value. I prefer The Sun Also Rises any day.
3- Joseph Conrad's Nostromo is, as all his work, a brilliant piece of writing. But is it really better than the Heart of Darkness?
4- As a great fan of James Joyce, I declare that Ulysses is the most over rated piece of writing to ever adorn paper (I am yet to find someone who really, truely, understands it, and not wasting any more time on that). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man wins - no compteition, IMHO.
Finally, Some writers who might deserve to be on the list:
Michael Ondaatje
Gunter Grass
Albert Camus
Milan Kundera
I am finding hard to accept that Pride and Prejudice isn't on the list. Also not one work of Robert Louis Stevenson or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, many great books are listed.I like that you pulled from each of those lists
Your blog is very informative. It is very interesting and i have enjoyed reading it. Thank you for sharing your ideas. I'm happy i found what i am searching for.
ReplyDeleteI have fun with, result in I discovered just what I used to be having a look for. You have ended my 4 day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye
ReplyDeleteWilton Armetale Grillware Grill Tray
Its a fantastic post and i am impressed with it. Thanks for sharing such a useful information. All comments are nice.
ReplyDeleteI think you could enhance your master list slightly by giving the number of sub-lists (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or 0) each title appears on adjacent to each title in your listing. I would find that useful, anyway.
ReplyDeletePersonalized article writing providers are usually rampant online these days. Whenever We publish, it appears as though you will find there's completely new internet site selling dissertation writers in order to unsuspecting university students worldwide. These firms are usually underhand along with doing his or her customers a serious disservice.
ReplyDelete