Greater Books

*Lubbock* *Baldwin* *Eliot* *Powys* *Durant* *Invitation* *Classics* *Hundred* *France* *Downs* *Rexroth* *Zulli* *Read* *List* *Ward* *Magill* *Oriental* *Adler* *Good* *Learning* *Bloom* *Fadiman* *Foundation* *Kanigel* *SeymourSmith* *Trinity* *Utne* *Campbell* *Norway* *Dirda* *Great* *Guardian* *O'Hear* *Zane* *GlobeMail* *Smart* *Taylor* *Telegraph* *Van Doren* *Harvard* *Reynolds* *World* *Deposit* *Newman* *Graphic* *Recommended* *Educated*

The Norwegian Book Club, Verdensbiblioteket [2002]

103 entries: 96 monographical, 7 otherwise

Unranked—arranged alphabetically by author

The Norwegian Book Club initiated one of the best "great books" projects in 2002. One-hundred writers were polled; the results are only arranged chronologically, with the caveat that Don Quixote is the best. A Wikipedia article about the project provides the names of the 100 scholars and writers on the same page as the list.

  1. Chinua Achebe
    Things Fall Apart
    1958—English

    • Hans Christian Andersen

    2. Fables
    Nineteenth Century—Danish

  2. Jane Austen

    3. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  3. Honoré de Balzac

    4. Le Père Goriot
    Father Goriot
    originally published serially Dec. 1834-Feb. 1835 in Revue de Paris—French

    Samuel Beckett
  4. Molloy

    5. 1951—French

  5. Malone Muert

    6. 1951—French

  6. L'Innommable

    7. The Unnameable
    1953—French

  7. Giovanni Boccaccio

    8. Il Decameron, Cognominato Prencipe Galeotto
    ca. 1351-53—Italian

  8. Jorge Luis Borges

    9. Ficciones
    originally entitled El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan, published 1941; expanded 1944 and 1956—Spanish

  9. Emily Brontë

    10. Wuthering Heights
    originally published 1847 under the pseudonym, Ellis Bell; revised 1850—English

  10. Albert Camus
    L'Étranger
    The Stranger
    1942—French

    • Paul Celan

    11. Poems
    Twentieth Century—German

  11. Louis-Ferdinand Céline

    12. Voyage au Bout de la Nuit
    Journey to the End of Night
    1932—French

  12. Miguel de Cervantes

    13. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
    Don Quixote
    originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615—Spanish

  13. Geoffrey Chaucer
    Canterbury Tales
    1478—English

    • Anton Chekhov

    14. Stories
    late Nineteenth-early Twentieth centuries—Russian

  14. Joseph Conrad

    15. Nostromo
    originally published serially 1904 in T P's Weekly—English

  15. Dante

    16. La Divina Commedia
    The Divine Comedy
    originally entitled La Commedia; written ca. 1308-21—Italian

  16. Charles Dickens

    17. Great Expectations
    originally published serially Dec. 1860-Aug. 1861 in All the Year Round—English

  17. Denis Diderot

    18. Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître
    Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
    published in part, 1785; in its entirety, 1796—French

  18. Alfred Döblin

    19. Berlin Alexanderplatz
    1929—German

    Fyodor Dostoevsky
  19. Prestuplénie i Nakazániye

    20. Crime and Punishment
    originally published serially Jan.-Dec. 1866 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian

  20. Idiot

    21. originally published serially 1868-9 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian

  21. Besy

    22. Demons; The Devils; The Possessed
    1872—Russian

  22. Brat'â Karamazovy

    23. The Brothers Karamazov
    originally published serially 1880 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian

  23. George Eliot

    24. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
    originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872—English

  24. Ralph Ellison

    25. Invisible Man
    1952—English

  25. Euripides

    26. Mēdeia
    Medea
    431 B C—Greek

    William Faulkner
  26. Absalom, Absalom!

    27. 1936—English

  27. The Sound and the Fury

    28. 1929—English

    Gustave Flaubert
  28. Madame Bovary

    29. originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  29. L'Éducation Sentimentale

    30. 1869—French
    *Classics* *France* *Rexroth* *Ward* *Bloom* *Recommended* *Norway* *Newman*

  30. Federico García Lorca

    31. Romancero Gitano
    Gypsy Ballads
    originally entitled Primero Romancero Gitano, published 1928—Spanish

    Gabriel García Márquez
  31. Cien Anõs de Soledad

    32. One Hundred Years of Solitude
    1967—Spanish

  32. El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera

    33. Love in the Time of Cholera
    1985—Spanish

    --
  33. Sha Naqba Imuru

    34. The Epic of Gilgamesh; He Who Saw the Deep
    Eighteenth-Tenth centuries B C—Sumerian; Akkadian

  34. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    35. Faust
    originally published in two volumes: first, Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil, published in part, 1790; in its entirey, 1808; revised 1829; second, Faust. Der Tragödie Zweiter Teil, 1832—German

  35. Nikolai Gogol

    36. Mërtvyâ Duši
    Dead Souls
    1842—Russian

  36. Günter Grass

    37. Die Blechtrommel
    The Tin Drum
    1959—German
    *Ward* *Bloom* *Recommended* *Trinity* *Norway* *Zane*

  37. João Guimarães Rosa

    38. Grande Sertão: Veredas
    The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
    1956—Portuguese
    *Ward* *Norway*

  38. Knut Hamsun

    39. Sult
    Hunger
    published in part, 1888, in Ny Jord; in its entirety, 1890—Norwegian

  39. Ernest Hemingway

    40. The Old Man and the Sea
    1952—English

    Homer
  40. Iliad

    41. ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  41. Odýsseia

    42. The Odyssey
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek

  42. Henrik Ibsen
    Et Dukkehjem
    A Doll's House
    1879—Norwegian

    --
    • The Book of Job

    43. part of the Bible—Hebrew; Aramaic; Greek

  43. James Joyce

    44. Ulysses
    published in part serially Mar. 1918-Dec. 1920 in the Little Review; in its entirety, 1922—English

    Franz Kafka
  44. Die Verwandlung

    45. The Metamorphosis
    originally published 1915 in Die Weißen Blätter—German

  45. Der Prozess

    46. The Trial
    1925—German

  46. Das Schloss

    47. The Castle
    1926—German

  47. Kalidasa

    48. Abhijnanasakuntalam
    The Recognition of Sakuntala
    ca. Fifth Century—Sanskrit

  48. Kawabata Yasunari

    49. Yama no Oto
    The Sound of the Mountain
    1954—Japanese

  49. Nikos Kazantzakis

    50. Zorba the Greek
    1946—Greek

  50. D H Lawrence

    51. Sons and Lovers
    1913—English

  51. Halldór Laxness
    Sjálfstætt Fólk
    Independent People
    originally published in two volumes, 1934 and 1935—Icelandic

    • Giacomo Leopardi

    52. Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—Italian

  52. Doris Lessing

    53. The Golden Notebook
    1962—English

  53. Astrid Lindgren
    Pippi Långstrump
    Pippi Longstocking
    1945—Swedish

    • Lu Xun

    54. 'Kuángrén Rìjì'
    'A Madman's Diary'
    1918—Chinese

  54. Vyasa

    55. Mahabharata
    includes Bhagavad Gita; ca. Ninth Century B C-Fourth Century—Sanskrit

  55. Naguib Mahfouz

    56. Awlad Haritna
    Children of Gebelawi
    originally published serially 1959 in Al-Ahram—Arabic

    Thomas Mann
  56. Buddenbrooks

    57. 1901—German

  57. Der Zauberberg

    58. The Magic Mountain
    1924—German

  58. Herman Melville

    59. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
    1851—English

  59. Michel de Montaigne

    60. Les Essais
    Essays
    originally published in three volumes: 1580, 1588, and 1595—French

  60. Elsa Morante

    61. La Storia
    1974—Italian

  61. Toni Morrison

    62. Beloved
    1987—English

  62. Murasaki Shikibu

    63. Genji Monogatari
    The Tale of Genji
    ca. early Eleventh Century—Japanese

  63. Robert Musil

    64. Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften
    The Man Without Qualities
    originally published in three volumes: 1930, 1933, and 1943—German
    *Ward* *Bloom* *Fadiman* *Trinity* *Norway*

  64. Vladimir Nabokov

    65. Lolita
    1955—English

    --
  65. Njáls Saga

    66. ca. Thirteenth Century—Norse
    *Rexroth* *Read* *Ward* *Norway* *Dirda*

  66. George Orwell

    67. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    1949—English

  67. Ovid

    68. Metamorphoseon
    Metamorphoses
    8—Latin

  68. Fernando Pessoa
    Livro do Desassossego: Composto por Bernardo Soares, Ajudante de Guarda-Livros na Cidade de Lisboa
    The Book of Disquiet
    1928—Portuguese

    • Edgar Allan Poe

    69. Complete stories
    No particular edition specified; nearly all collections include The Narrative of Gordon Pym—English

  69. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of Nantucket

    70. published in part, 1836-37, in the Southern Literary Messenger, under the author's given name; in its entirety, 1838, under the pseudonym, Arthur Gordon Pym—English

  70. Marcel Proust

    71. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
    In Search of Lost Time; In Remembrance of Things Past
    originally published in seven volumes, two of which originally published as two books each, 1913-27—French

  71. François Rabelais

    72. La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel
    originally published in five volumes: Les Horribles et Épouvantables Faits et Prouesses du Très Renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, Fils du Grand Géant Gargantua, 1532; La Vie Très Horrifique du Grand Gargantua, Père de Pantagruel, 1534; Le Tiers Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1546; Le Quart Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1552; Le Cinquiesme et Dernier Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1564—French

  72. Juan Rulfo

    73. Pedro Páramo
    1955—Spanish

  73. Rumi

    74. Masnavi-l Ma'navi
    Mathnavi
    written ca. 1258-73—Persian

  74. Salman Rushdie

    75. Midnight's Children
    1981—English

  75. Saadi Shirazi

    76. Bostan
    written 1257—Persian

  76. Tayeb Salih

    77. Mawsim al-Hijra ila ash-Shamal
    Season of Migration to the North
    1966—Arabic

  77. José Saramago

    78. Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira
    Blindness
    1995—Portuguese

    William Shakespeare
  78. Hamlet

    79. 1602—English

  79. King Lear

    80. 1606—English

  80. Othello

    81. ca. 1604—English

  81. Sophocles

    82. Oidipous Tyrannos
    Oedipus Rex; Oedipus the King
    ca. 429 B C—Greek

  82. Stendhal

    83. Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe Siècle
    The Red and the Black
    1830—French

  83. Laurence Sterne

    84. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
    originally published in nine volumes, 1759-67—English

  84. Italo Svevo

    85. La Coscienza di Zeno
    Zeno's Conscience
    1923—Italian

  85. Jonathan Swift

    86. Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships
    Gulliver's Travels
    1726; revised 1735—English

    Leo Tolstoy
  86. Voyna i Mir"

    87. War and Peace
    originally entitled 1805, published in part, 1865 and 1867; retitled and published in its entirety, 1869—Russian

  87. Anna Karenina

    88. published in part serially 1873-7 in Rússkij Véstnik; in its entirety, 1877—Russian

  88. Smert' Ivana Il'icha

    89. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    1886—Russian

    --
  89. Kitab alf Laylah Wa-Laylah

    90. The Thousand and One Nights; The Arabian Nights
    Ninth-Fifteenth centuries—Arabic

  90. Mark Twain

    91. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    1884—English
    *Classics* *Hundred* *Rexroth* *Zulli* *Read* *Ward* *Van Doren* *Magill* *Adler* *Good* *Learning* *Bloom* *Recommended* *Fadiman* *Trinity* *Campbell* *Norway* *Great* *Zane* *GlobeMail* *Newman* *Graphic* *Educated*

  91. Valmiki

    92. Ramayana
    ca. Fifth-Second centuries B C—Sanskrit

  92. Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)

    93. Aeneid
    First Century B C—Latin

  93. Walt Whitman

    94. Leaves of Grass
    1855; expanded and revised through ninth edition, 1892—English

    Virginia Woolf
  94. Mrs. Dalloway

    95. published in part, Jul. 1923, as 'Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street', in the Dial; in its entirety, 1925—English

  95. To the Lighthouse

    96. 1927 —English

  96. Marguerite Yourcenar

    97. Les Mémoires d'Hadrien
    The Memoirs of Hadrian
    1951—French