The Greatest Books

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1. 1 . Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed

section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed
with books of chivalry, and believes th...

2. 2 . In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's
seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run
through the entire work. The narr...

3. 3 . Ulysses by James Joyce

 Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an
ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus (Latinised
into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyss...

4. 4 . The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It
is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The
poem is fundamental to the m...

5. 5 . War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to
Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist
society, as seen through the eyes of fi...
6. 6 . Moby Dick by Herman Melville

First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words,

"the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his
monomaniacal pursuit of the white wh...

7. 7 . The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Belonging in the immortal company of the great works of literature, Dante

Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an
unforgettable visionary journey through the ...

8. 8 . Hamlet by William Shakespeare

 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by
William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The
play, set in Denmark, recounts how Pri...

9. 9 . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Revered by all of the town's children and dreaded by all of its mothers, Huckleberry
Finn is indisputably the most appealing child-hero in American literature. Unlike
the tall-tale, idyllic worl...

10. 10 . The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age".
Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed
unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roar...
11. 11 . The Iliad by Homer

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer.

Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it
tells of the battles and e...

12. 12 . One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of the 20th 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 car...

13. 13 . Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with
profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against
morality and religion." What shoc...

14. 14 . Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is a murder story, told from a murder;s point of view, that implicates even the
most innocent reader in its enormities. It is a cat-and-mouse game between a
tormented young killer and a cheerful...

15. 15 . The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers, is both a brilliantly
told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner
Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is mur...
16. 16 . Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The book is narrated in free indirect speech following the main character Elizabeth
Bennet as she deals with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and
education in her aristocratic socie...

17. 17 . Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and two primary

narrators: Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Mr.
Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange,...

18. 18 . The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

 The Sound and the Fury is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The novel
centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to
deal with the dissolution of their fa...

19. 19 . Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its
controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged
Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed and se...

20. 20 . Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell

The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil
servant assigned the task of perpetuating the regime's propaganda by falsifying
records and political literatur...
21. 21 . Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

In 1862 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy Oxford mathematician with a stammer,

created a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole. Thus began the
immortal adventures of Alice, perhaps th...

22. 22 . To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and
their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully
manipulates temporality and psycholog...

23. 23 . Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

 Great Expectations is written in the genre of "bildungsroman" or the style of book
that follows the story of a man or woman in their quest for maturity, usually
starting from childhood and ending i...

24. 24 . Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious
Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her
passionless marriage and must endu...

25. 25 . The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1945 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for
adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula
throughout the English-speaking wo...
26. 26 . Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of
Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and
then put aside during the final i...

27. 27 . Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

From the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, a great classic
recounting the four remarkable journeys of ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver. For
children it remains an enchanting fantasy;...

28. 28 . The Aeneid by Virgil

 The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC (29–19
BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where
he became the ancestor of the...

29. 29 . Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign

assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa.
Although Conrad does not specify the name of th...

30. 30 . One Thousand and One Nights by India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt

 One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian
stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often
known in English as the Arabian Ni...

31. 31 . The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales
have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into
modern English, these tales of a mo...

32. 32 . The Stranger by Albert Camus

Since it was first published in English, in 1946, Albert Camus's extraordinary first
novel, The Stranger (L'Etranger), has had a profound impact on millions of
American readers. Through this story ...

33. 33 . The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and
physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of
world literature. His career as a dram...

34. 34 . The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of
sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship,
and changes in the agriculture industry. In a ...

35. 35 . Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first
published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1943
onwards, is frequently cite...
36. 36 . The Red and the Black by Stendhal

Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), subtitled Chronique du XIXe siécle
("Chronicle of the 19th century"), is an historical psychological novel in two
volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830...

37. 37 . The Trial by Franz Kafka

Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth
century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly
and inexplicably arrested and mu...

38. 38 . Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

 Leaves of Grass (1855) is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman.
Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric,"
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Roc...

39. 39 . Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William

Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American
South, taking place before, during,...

40. 40 . Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Oedipus the King is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c.
429 BC. It was the second of Sophocles's three Theban plays to be produced, but it
comes first in the internal chron...
41. 41 . Candide by Voltaire

Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a

philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. Candide is characterized by its sarcastic
tone and its erratic, fantastical, an...

42. 42 . David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The story of the abandoned waif who learns to survive through challenging
encounters with distress and misfortune.

43. 43 . Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

 The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-
Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the
relationship between black identity and Marx...

44. 44 . Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished
"The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of
which she is to be hostess. Wit...

45. 45 . Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

The novel, her fifth, is loosely based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret
Garner, about whom Morrison...
46. 46 . Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced,

intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages:
Jane's childhood at Gateshead...

47. 47 . The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan
Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer,
poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic
Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery...

48. 48 . As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

 The book is told in stream of consciousness writing style by 15 different narrators in
59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest—
noble or selfish—to honor he...

49. 49 . Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play, although more appropriately
it should be defined a tragicomedy, despite the very title of the work. It was
published in two parts: Faust. Der Tr...

50. 50 . The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka

The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka is a compilation of all Kafka's short stories.
With the exception of Kafka's three novels (The Trial, The Castle and Amerika), this
collection includes all of Ka...