The 100 Greatest Novels

Name the 100 greatest novels of all time, according to these "subjective and cranky standards" :)

List by Ted Gioia @ Great Books Guide.

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Last updated: March 4, 2015

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First submitted	May 15, 2012
Times taken	38,066
Average score	22.0%
Rating	3.69

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#	Author	Novel
1	Marcel Proust	In Search of Lost Time
2	Fyodor Dostoevsky	The Brothers Karamazov
3	Thomas Mann	The Magic Mountain
4	Henry James	The Ambassadors
5	Miguel de Cervantes	Don Quixote
6	Herman Melville	Moby-Dick
7	William Faulkner	Absalom, Absalom!
8	Leo Tolstoy	War and Peace
9	Henry Fielding	Tom Jones
10	Mark Twain	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
11	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude
12	Henry James	The Wings of the Dove
13	Fyodor Dostoevsky	Crime and Punishment
14	Charles Dickens	Great Expectations
15	Victor Hugo	Les Miserables
16	Jane Austen	Pride and Prejudice
17	Fyodor Dostoevsky	The Idiot
18	Ernest Hemingway	The Sun Also Rises
19	Hermann Broch	The Sleepwalkers
20	Franz Kafka	The Trial
21	James Joyce	Ulysses
22	Gustave Flaubert	Madame Bovary
23	F. Scott Fitzgerald	The Great Gatsby
24	William Faulkner	The Sound and the Fury
25	George Eliot	Middlemarch
26	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man
27	Henry James	The Golden Bowl
28	Stendhal	The Red and the Black
29	Henry James	The Portrait of a Lady
30	Leo Tolstoy	Anna Karenina
31	Joseph Conrad	Heart of Darkness
32	Virginia Woolf	To the Lighthouse
33	William Thackeray	Vanity Fair
34	Ivan Turgenev	Fathers and Sons
35	Vladimir Nabokov	Pale Fire
36	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March
37	Charles Dickens	Bleak House
38	Ian McEwan	Atonement
39	George Eliot	Silas Marner
40	Fyodor Dostoevsky	The Gambler
41	Honore de Balzac	Le Pere Goriot
42	John Steinbeck	The Grapes of Wrath
43	J.D. Salinger	The Catcher in the Rye
44	Jane Austen	Emma
45	Charlotte Bronte	Jane Eyre
46	Emily Bronte	Wuthering Heights
47	Joseph Conrad	Nostromo
48	Ken Kesey	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
49	Truman Capote	In Cold Blood
50	Henry James	The American

#	Author	Novel
51	Charles Dickens	Oliver Twist
52	Nathanael West	Miss Lonelyhearts
53	John Fowles	The French Lieutenant's Woman
54	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections
55	Laurence Sterne	Tristram Shandy
56	Nathanel West	The Day of the Locust
57	John Steinbeck	Of Mice and Men
58	Joseph Conrad	Lord Jim
59	George Orwell	1984
60	Edgar Allan Poe	The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
61	Evelyn Waugh	Brideshead Revisited
62	Stendhal	The Charterhouse of Parma
63	Willa Cather	Death Comes for the Archbishop
64	George Orwell	Animal Farm
65	James Fenimore Cooper	The Last of the Mohicans
66	Graham Greene	The Power and the Glory
67	Kingsley Amis	Lucky Jim
68	Raymond Chandler	The Big Sleep
69	J.K. Rowling	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
70	Arthur Conan Doyle	The Hound of the Baskervilles
71	Jack Kerouac	On the Road
72	Rudyard Kipling	Kim
73	Thomas Hardy	Tess of the d'Urbervilles
74	Charles Dickens	A Tale of Two Cities
75	Philip Roth	American Pastoral
76	Robert Heinlen	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
77	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein
78	Jonathan Lethem	The Fortress of Solitude
79	Zane Grey	Riders of the Purple Sage
80	William Gibson	Neuromancer
81	Martin Amis	Money
82	Nathaniel Hawthorne	The Scarlet Letter
83	Agatha Christie	The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
84	William Faulkner	As I Lay Dying
85	Henry James	Daisy Miller
86	Thomas Hardy	The Return of the Native
87	David Foster Wallace	Infinite Jest
88	Ernest Hemingway	For Whom the Bell Tolls
89	Fyodor Dostoevsky	Demons/The Possessed
90	Leo Tolstoy	The Death of Ivan Illych
91	Thomas Mann	Buddenbrooks
92	Leo Tolstoy	The Kreutzer Sonata
93	Virginia Woolf	Mrs. Dalloway
94	Charles Dickens	David Copperfield
95	Henry James	The Spoils of Poynton
96	V.S. Naipaul	A Bend in the River
97	Frank Herbert	Dune
98	Thomas Hardy	Jude the Obscure
99	Philip K. Dick	Ubik
100	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow

Level 27

May 30, 2012

BTW @ShoTheVipa: I found A Clockwork Orange a rather dull and boring book, the film was a thousand times better. But I got your point.

Level 10

Aug 22, 2012

This quiz is frustrating if you don't know the engish titles.

Level 33

Dec 25, 2012

I spent half the time trying to get the P K Dick novel. I must've tried 10 Dick novels. Never even thought of Ubik. Unusual choice.

Level 82

Feb 20, 2013

Given all the great novels left off this list, the inclusion of friggin Harry Potter is an egregious insult.

Level 55

Jan 11, 2014

what makes you say that

Level 82

May 24, 2015

... are you trolling?

Level 69

Jul 20, 2018

I agree the Harry Potter series is an odd selection. It is certainly popular but nothing in it seems to be original, I found it distinctly lacking in charm (I couldn't start the 4th book I disliked it so much). The writing is average, I couldn't care less about the characters and it had no redeeming moral. I like those sorts of books but wouldn't put Harry Potter in the Top 25 of Sci-Fi/Fantasy. It paled in comparison to the Lord of the Rings, The various Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Fahrenheit 451, Dune (the first book and a half), The Foundation Trilogy, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, A Song of Fire and Ice, the Earthsea Trilogy, the Belgariad, Watership Down, The Once and Future King, the Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, The Sword of Shannara, the Eye of the World, the Dragons of Pern, the Princess Bride, the Drawing of the Dark, the King of Elfland's Daughter, the Narnia Series, the Mists of Avalon, Redwall, 2001, The Martian Chronicles, the Titans of Siren, etc.

Level 66

Sep 21, 2018

PHG1960 did you seriously just knock Harry Potter as unoriginal and then praise The Sword of Shannara, which is basically Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off? Don't get me wrong, Terry Brooks was my gateway into fantasy literature and I have fond memories of his work, but it's hardly fair to praise him while criticizing Potter for lacking originality.

Level 72

Aug 12, 2016

Yeah, some bizarre inclusions and some glaring omissions!

Level 75

Mar 14, 2023

Yeah, whoever created this list needed a little distance from popular culture. I will confess to having enjoyed listening to the books with my kids. The entertainment value is there, but hundreds of other books should be ranked higher in terms of originality and social commentary.

Level 75

May 20, 2014

For Thomas Hardy I wrote "Jude" but the rest of the title was just too obscure for me to remember. ;-)

Level 77

May 25, 2014

It's Mary Shelley, not Mary Shelly!

Also I am a bit peeved I knew and tried to write Hound of Baskerville (yes I wrote it like that) and also The Scalett Letter (yeah probably with two T's) and missed both. Ultimately got 30/100, but could/should've known Tom Jones, The Idiot, Vanity Fair, The Catcher in the Rye (I missed Salinger, that's the only way I missed that!), Emma, Jane Eyre, The Last of the Mohicans, Mrs Dalloway and Jude the Obscure. Also Robert Heinlein! - most peeved I missed him, more people should get him! -- so max 40 that I knew :P

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

Scalett is clearly wrong and a different word. But I too am often tempted to write the hound of baskerville, that is how I originally remember(ed)/heard/learned it and have a hard time shaking it.

Level 48

Jun 2, 2014

Metamorphosis is a LOT better than The Trial!

Level 69

Jul 10, 2016

Isn't Metamorphosis a short story, though? Or at best a novella?

Level 82

Nov 22, 2016

Yeah, certainly not a novel

Level 77

Jun 16, 2014

In every one of these "greatest novels" lists, Jules Verne is inexplicably left off every single time. I don't get it.

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

Agreed verne definitely agrees to be on some greatest of all times list

Level 45

Jun 25, 2014

Its funny that you would put Frankenstein on the list, but no Dracula.

Level 83

Sep 16, 2017

The books aren't even similar. I won't go into the individual merits of each, but I always find it weird how they get pigeon-holed into the same category.

Level 66

Sep 21, 2018

I think it's a symptom of how genre fiction in general tends to get snubbed. Why are sci-fi and fantasy always lumped together? Same basic reason.

Level 72

Nov 2, 2014

Agree with everyone who mentioned To Kill A Mockingbird.

Level 66

Nov 2, 2014

Where was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?

Level 66

Nov 2, 2014

I have to strongly disagree with everyone who complains about Harry Potter being on the list. While they're far from my favorite books, they're a modern landmark whose impact cannot be overstated. If anything, more modern books should be on these lists, while overrated trash like The Catcher in the Rye (yeah, I went there) should stop being promoted as classics.

Level 69

Jul 20, 2018

I have to disagree. Harry Potter is to literature as Britney Spears is to music. Neither deserve to be on a list of all time greats. Besides, the Lord of the Rings is far superior to Harry Potter and should have been selected. And Gandalf could kick Dumbledork's butt anytime, but he's too much of a gentleman to do so.

Level 69

Jul 20, 2018

Harry Potter was a popular series but I don't see it being remembered in a 100 years. The Lord of the Rings is the third best selling novel of all time and has been on the NYT best sellers list on several occasions spanning an era of over 40 years. LOTR has staying power because, in my opinion, it's all time classic. Harry Potter is more a best seller than a classic. The characters (for me) are forgettable and don't draw in the reader. The writing is mundane--Tolkien's style is lyrical, Rowling reads like a gossipy grocery list. At the end of each Potter book (never made it to the 4th and kept wondering why there was so much filler), I kept wondering why this was taking so long and if the writer had lost focus. George R.R. Martin is also a much better writer than Rowling although he has been torturing his readers for I don't know how many years not putting out another book.

Level 66

Sep 21, 2018

I disagree with your assessment of Harry Potter. I'm honestly not a huge fan of Rowling's work myself - I read the novels once, found them okay, and moved on with my life - but they remain super popular and with an extremely devoted fandom that's still growing. Do I think Rowling's prose is among the best writers of today, let alone all time? No. Do I think her books will still be read and enjoyed 100 years from now? Absolutely. As a librarian who works with middle school and high school students on a daily basis, they still love these books. Saying they won't endure is like saying the (original) Star Wars movies won't endure.

Level 88

Nov 25, 2018

I'm taking exception to your mention of Martin--I dropped out of the GoT series about 75% through book 5, because I simply could.not.take. one more use of the "c-word" to describe Every Single Woman In The Series, or one more description of Tyrion "waddling" somewhere--the poor man can't move without waddling. As for story, I actually think that Martin was sort of planning a few books, and was surprised that they took off, so he just started rambling along, killing people randomly as he went, without any clear plan except to make a lot more money selling as many books as people would buy.

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

I agree that some classics are just there because they are being repeated over and over, and everybody knows the titles. Regardless of if they are truely worthy of a spot.

(I guess that is how popularity goes. Most people know madonna but definately not the best singer out there. There are probably thousands of singer that havent been discovered and only sing in the shower or to their family) Promotion goes a long way over substance.

Level 83

Jan 5, 2015

Finally, my second major in Russian literature pays off!!

Still, this list seems rather random and subjective.

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

you can not make one that is not subjective. No way to order or measure, all based on opinion and not fact.

Level 74

Feb 9, 2015

Is 'In Cold Blood' really a novel? Don't novels have to be fictional?

Level 69

Jul 10, 2016

That occurred to me, too, so I Googled it. And it says that "In Cold Blood" is "a non-fiction novel". I'm kinda having trouble wrapping my head around that too.

Level 75

Mar 14, 2023

It was a mold-breaking concept at the time. Personally, I lean toward just calling it nonfiction, though.

Level 86

Apr 9, 2015

A good half of the list should be french and german novels... did anyone say english-centric?

Level 78

May 26, 2015

And Italian, Polish, Catalan, Chinese, Japanese, and many more.

The notion that amore than three quarters of the "100 greatest novels" are written in English is beyond ridiculous.

Level 66

Sep 21, 2018

If they took all the overrated junk off this list, I imagine there would be plenty of room for more novels in other languages.

Level 89

Jul 14, 2018

All Quiet On the Western Front is a glaring absentee.

Level 13

Apr 11, 2015

Hi !

Why do you sometimes accept the original title and sometimes not ?

I'm french and there are many translations of "A la recherche du temps perdu". How can I do to find the one you choose ? It's just an exemple.

I'm surprised you like so much Henry James. I never read him, I'm curions now.

Level 20

Apr 25, 2015

Would it be possible to accept the English title of 'Le Pere Goriot' by Balzac?

+11

Level 55

May 24, 2015

I'm sure he's good, but Henry James did not write 7% of the greatest books in the world.

Level 84

May 24, 2015

Henry James being there so much is ridiculous - his writing is florid and impenetrable

Level 75

May 24, 2015

I had not heard of 35 of these books so I dont feel too bad only getting 42/100.

Level 51

May 24, 2015

am i the only one that hated jane eyre?

Level 42

May 26, 2015

Probably.

Level 73

Oct 12, 2015

Level 78

May 26, 2015

The Divine Comedy, Zorba the Greek, Tirant the White, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Faust, Blindness, the Name of the Rose, Zeno's Conscience...

The list is pathetically English-centric.

Level 78

May 26, 2015

... and novel-centric.

Level 65

Feb 19, 2020

And white male centric. Not saying there aren't a few women, "few" being the operative word.

Level 62

May 27, 2015

Is there a particular reason for the proliferation of Henry James novels on this list? I'm not too familiar with his work, but I can't say it's all that well-known these days.

Level 33

May 27, 2015

Surprised i don't know most of these. but i'm 13 so who cares

Level 75

Oct 7, 2015

I'm a sucker for lists like these - thanks for making it!

Now, I just want to point out that there are Africans who write too!(Achebe, Mahfouz, Tayeb Salih, Ngugi, Coetzee, Kateb Yacine, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ben Okri, and a ton more) And Asians. (Cao Xueqin, Lu Xun, Murasaki, Soseki, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Tagore, Abdelrahman Munif, Yashar Kemal - this could go on forever) And Latin Americans other than Garcia Marquez as well (Borges, Neruda, Allende, Amado, Machado de Assis, Cortazar, Carpentier, and many, many more). So many great Italians, Germans, Austrians and non-Russian eastern Europeans too!

I'd encourage people to check out some of these writers' works along with the generally excellent books from this list.

Level 60

Jan 1, 2016

Is it just me or is To KiIl a Mockingbird not on here? ...

Level 75

Mar 14, 2023

Well, now we're in the realm of verifiable facts. You are correct. It is not there. Sadly

Level 66

Feb 26, 2016

What is with this Henry James obsession of the Great Books Guide?

Level 45

Mar 31, 2016

I know that other people have different tastes than I do...

But a part of me still rages that Harry Potter was placed over Hound of the Baskervilles.

Level 47

Apr 25, 2016

Can you please accept "Devils" for "Demons/The Possessed".

This is the title used by Wordsworth Classics.

Level 84

Feb 6, 2017

This quiz is too Earth-centric.

Level 68

Nov 28, 2017

Murakami once wrote something along the lines of, "when you finish reading In Search of Lost Time you know half your life has already passed." Corrections welcome!

Level 69

Dec 27, 2017

How in the world does Agatha Christie's worst murder mystery make it onto this list? I figured the mystery out in the first 10 pages. Surely, the mysterious Affair at Styles, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and even Curtain, etc. were better choices.

Level 93

Aug 15, 2023

It still baffles me that 'And Then There Were None' isn't the Agatha Christie entry.

Level 65

Dec 27, 2017

Very odd list, but it's subjective. I am surprised at how many repeats of authors show up. Most lists like this seem to select 1-2 seminal works from an author, but 4 authors (Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and James) account for 20% of the 100 best novels of all time, apparently.

Level 27

Dec 27, 2017

Why did you name Philip K. Dick's book Ubik and not Valis which is what was used on the site that you got your list from???

Level 55

Dec 27, 2017

No Atlas Shrugged/Ayn Rand?

Level 82

Jul 14, 2018

No Battlefield Earth either. How weird is that?

Level 79

Jan 27, 2023

Was going to make a snarky comment about it being a list of great books, not popular ones, but then I realized that Harry Potter is on it.

Seriously, "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Cry, the Beloved Country" could/should have bumped off the Nth Henry James title, "Lord Jim," or "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Among others.

Level 93

Aug 15, 2023

Aww I like For Whom the Bell Tolls lol

Level 55

Dec 27, 2017

(add-on to last comment):

Darn, thought something by Dumas would have made it (Count of Monte Cristo...??)

Level 40

Feb 25, 2018

Nothing by Dr. Suess. Outrageous!

Level 68

Jul 14, 2018

No To Kill a Mockingbird? Wow. Can't believe this isn't listed.

Level 69

Jul 20, 2018

This list was far from my taste and seemed to have a distinctly Euro slant to it. The Russian and German novelists bore me to tears, maybe it's a cultural thing. I'd have added To Kill a Mockingbird--the most shocking omission in my opinion, the Lord of the Rings, Sometimes a Great Notion (better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), the House of the Seven Gables instead of the Scarlet Letter and in Cold Blood.

Level 55

Jul 20, 2018

Surprised at no Alexandre Dumas on the list; personally one of my favorite novels of all-time is "The Count of Monte Cristo". I was also hoping to see "The Three Musketeers".

Level 69

Sep 21, 2018

Looking at this list, I just can’t work out how the compiler defines ‘great’

Level 70

Nov 29, 2018

Well, clearly, the compiler sat down and listed the first 100 novels he could think of.

Level 60

Sep 21, 2018

You should add To Kill A Mockingbird, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Sense and Sensibility.

Level 50

Nov 9, 2019

While I agree To Kill a Mockingbird should be added, Homer's works are considered epic poems, not novels. Nonetheless, they are all great literary works.

Level 66

Sep 21, 2018

Ugh, how did I end up defending Harry Potter so much in these comments? I don't even like them that much, but the backlash they're getting is a little ridiculous.

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

I agree, I think some people think it is cool to be totally against something, which might not be as great as some people make it out to be ( bigger fandoms than you would expect) but not nearly as bad as others make it out to be. I guess they are trying to overcompensate or something, when someone says it is good, I must say it is horrible. (when in reality it is more like, not bad at all)

obviously tastes differ, but yea some reactions are over the top. Like they take it personal (same thing happens on the subject of singers, instead of simply saying they are not good or "meh" at best, they get demonised like it is the worst thing that ever happened to the world)

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

Maybe it is like a highschool clique thing, you must either completely for something or in the other group and completely against it. Have to pick a side to stay with the "in-crowd"

Level 75

Mar 14, 2023

I guess it comes down to what criteria you feel should be used to gauge a novel's merit. If popularity is among them, it would be hard not to include HP. However, I suspect most commenters are inclined to stick to the intrinsic qualities of the novels.

Level 70

Nov 28, 2018

I get that the lister loves him some Henry James, but listing him 7 times seems more than extreme. Really? No wonder the lister couldn't find room for Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," or Huxley's "Brave New World!" And where is "To Kill a Mockingbird?"

Level 55

Dec 29, 2018

No Thomas Wolfe?

Level 56

Apr 8, 2019

This is a VERY idiosyncratic list. Not really quibbling but so much Henry James! And HOUNDS of the Baskervilles doesn't fly, really?

Level 89

Apr 21, 2019

Titles like "Tale of Two Cities" don't work for A Tale of Two Cities?

Level 67

Jun 5, 2019

Whattt no terry pratchet?? Outrageous, I will just have to move to a different universe, cause this will not do...

Level 83

Jul 19, 2019

Surprised to see Stendhal so little known, but glad to see him highly rated, even if I don't much like or agree with this list. It took me a while to warm to him, but his novels are very enjoyable and clever.

Level 51

Aug 13, 2019

All the good names for books have already been used. If I wrote a novel today I would have to name it something stupid like The Fingers and The Toes.

Level 93

Oct 11, 2022

Ok but I'd actually pick that book off the shelf because it would stand out immediately.

Level 67

Apr 5, 2020

Surprised not to see TKAM on the list.

Level 74

Jun 27, 2020

The name of the book is The Death of Ivan Ilyich. I-L-Y-I-C-H, not I-L-L-Y-C-H. That took all the remaining time to figure out.

Level 69

Nov 22, 2020

Far too much Henry James.

Level 78

Jan 11, 2021

To Kill a Mockingbird

Level 87

Mar 2, 2021

I was annoyed to only get half of them (worth 4 points). I believe more time is needed because some of these folks wrote LOTS of famous novels that I kept trying but didn't happen to be on your list. My literary revenge: to correct your spelling of Nathanael West (in no. 56) and Robert Heinlein (76). And doesn't it violate Jetpunk standards to leave out the accents and umlauts from Honoré de Balzac, Gabriel García Márquez and the Brontës? :)

Level 67

Apr 16, 2022

Such lists always remind me of Mark Twain's definition of a classic...

Level 65

Sep 22, 2022

Henry James fan, clearly.

Level 55

Mar 7, 2023

It seems to me like the most famous works by an author aren't typically included on this list. Including Nabokov and not Lolita seems odd, as well Kipling without The Jungle Book, and Dick without Man in the High Castle. Some authors also seem over represented. I'm as big a Henry James fan as anyone else, but I'm not sure he deserves 7 spots on this list. Same with Joseph Conrad and Fyodor Dostoevsky. No hate on these authors, just seems like once they appear once on the list, they're much more likely to appear again.

Level 66

May 7, 2023

No wonder, Dostoevsky is the greatest writer of all time.

Level 66

May 7, 2023

Pretty good list, lacking Camus though. The Stranger could definitely take the place of the likes of... Harry Potter.

Level 61

Jul 30, 2023

The amount of Henry James here is ridiculous, and it didn't even include "The Turn of the Screw" lol

Level 78

Sep 23, 2023

Some of these choices are.... interesting.