The Greatest Novels, Ever.

(a purposefully incomplete & arbitrarily organized list)

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11

19th Century American

11

1.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain

2.  Moby-Dick—Herman Melville

3.  The Complete Tales—Edgar Allan Poe

4.  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl—Harriet Jacobs

5.  The Squatter and the Don—María Amparo Ruiz de Burton

6.  The Awakening—Kate Chopin

7.  Maggie, Girl of the Streets—Stephen Crane

8.  The Red Badge of Courage—Stephen Crane

9.  Autobiography—Black Hawk

10.  Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States —William Wells Brown

11.  The Grandissimes—George Washington Cable

12.  Hobomok—Lydia Maria Child

13.  Sister Carrie—Theodore Dreiser

14.  Ramona—Helen Hunt Jackson

15.  Daisy Miller—Henry James

16.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Harriet Beecher Stowe

17.  Up from Slavery—Booker T. Washington

18.  Our Nig—Harriet E. Wilson

19.  Life among the Paiutes—Sara Winnemucca

20.  The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton

11

20th Century American

11

1.  Naked Lunch—William Burroughs

2.  Queer—William Burroughs

3.  On the Road—Jack Kerouac

4.  To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee

5.  Absalom, Absalom!—William Faulkner

6.  Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison

7.  Lolita—Vladimir Nabokov

8.  The Sound and the Fury—William Faulkner

9.  The Old Man and the Sea—Ernest Hemingway

10.  Beloved—Toni Morrison

11.  The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald

12.  Storyteller—Leslie Marmon Silko

13.  In the Time of the Butterflies—Julia Alvarez

14.  So Far From God—Ana Castillo

15.  The Last of the Menu Girls—Denise Chavez

16.  Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison

17.  The House on the Lagoon—Rosario Ferré

18.  The Eagle’s Throne—Carlos Fuentes

19.  A Handbook to Luck—Cristina García

20.  The Sun Also Rises—Ernest Hemingway

21.  The Woman Warrior—Maxine Hong Kingston

22.  Middle Passage—Charles Johnson

23.  The Interpreter of Maladies (short stories)—Jhumpa Lahiri

24.  Praisesong for the Widow—Paule Marshall

25.  Mother Tongue—Demetria Martínez

26.  The Crying of Lot 49—Thomas Pynchon

27.  Bodega Dreams—Ernesto Quiñonez

28.  And the Earth Did Not Devour Him—Tomas Rivera

29.  Song of the Water Saints—Nelly Rosario

30.  The Jungle—Upton Sinclair

31.  Of Mice and Men—John Steinbeck

32.  The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck

33.  Down These Mean Streets—Piri Thomas

34.  Cane—Jean Toomer

35.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay—Michael Chabon

36.  The Road—Cormac McCarthy

37.  Fight Club—Chuck Palahniuk

38.  American Psycho—Bret Easton Ellis

39.  Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston

40.  The Virgin Suicides—Jeffrey Eugenides

41.  One of Ours—Willa Cather

42.  More Die of Heartbreak—Saul Bellow

43.  All the Pretty Horses—Cormac McCarthy

44.  Blood Meridian—Cormac McCarthy

45.  Gravity's Rainbow—Thomas Pynchon

11


19th Century British

1.  Great Expectations—Charles Dickens

2.  Mrs. Dalloway—Virginia Woolf

3.  To the Lighthouse—Virginia Woolf

4.  Nostromo—Joseph Conrad

5.  Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austen

6.  Emma—Jane Austen

7.  Sons and Lovers—DH Lawrence

8.  Middlemarch—George Eliot

9.  Mill on the Floss—George Eliot

10.  Wuthering Heights—Emily Brontë

11.  Jane Eyre—Charlotte Bronte

12.  Prometheus Unbound—Percy Bysshe Shelley.

13.  Frankenstein—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

14.  Tess of the D’Urbervilles—Thomas Hardy

15.  The Mayor of Casterbridge—Thomas Hardy

20th Century British

1.  The Golden Notebook—Doris Lessing

2.  Midnight's Children—Salman Rushdie

3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—James Joyce

4.  The Good Soldier—Ford Madox Ford

5.  The Return of the Soldier—Rebecca West

6.  Women in Love—D. H. Lawrence

7.  A Passage to India—E. M. Forster

8.  Frost in May—Antonia White

9.  The Quiet American—Graham Greene

10.  1984—George Orwell

11.  A Clockwork Orange—Anthony Burgess

12.  The White Hotel—D. M. Thomas

13.  A Bend in the River—V. S. Naipaul

14.  July’s People—Nadine Gordimer

15.  The God of Small Things—Arundhati Roy

16.  The Heat of the Day—Elizabeth Bowen

17.  The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner—Alan Sillitoe

18.  Nights at the Circus—Angela Carter

19.  The Country Girls—Edna O’Brien

20.  Oranges are Not the Only Fruit—Jeanette Winterson

21.  The Remains of the Day—Kazuo Ishiguro

22.  Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad

23.  Lord Jim—Joseph Conrad

24.  Nostromo—Joseph Conrad

11

Latin America

1.  The Devil to Pay in the Backlands—Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil

2.  Collected Fictions—Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina

3.  Juan Rulfo—Pedro Paramo Juan Rulfo, Mexico

4.  One Hundred Years of Solitude—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia

5.  Love in the Time of Cholera—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia

Caribbean

1.  Wide Sargasso Sea —Jean Rhys

2.  Divina Trace— Robert Antoni

3.  Rites of Passage—Kamau Brathwaite

4.  Louisiana—Erna Brodber,

5.  The Palace of the Peacock—Harris, Wilson

6.  Lucy—Kincaid, Jamaica

7.  A Small Place—Kincaid, Jamaica

8.  The Autobiography of My Mother—Kincaid, Jamaica

9.  In the Castle of My Skin—Lamming, George

10.  The Wine of Astonishment—Lovelace, Earl

11.  A Bend in the River—Naipaul, V.S.

12.  The Enigma of Arrival—Naipaul, V.S.

13.  Cambridge—Phillips, Caryl

14.  Omeros—Walcott, Derek

Middle East

1.  Thousand and One Nights—India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500)

Africa

1.  Season of Migration to the North—Tayeb Salih, Sudan

2.  Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe, Nigeria

3.  Nervous Conditions—Tsitsi Dangarembga

4.  Disgrace—J. M. Coetzee

5.  Arrow of God—Chinua Achebe, Nigeria

6.  Anowa—Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana

7.  The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born— Ayi Kwei Armah, Ghana

8.  A Dry White Season—André Brink, South Africa

9.  The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar— Syl Cheney-Choker, Sierra Leone

10.  Life and Times of Michael K—J.M. Coetzee, South Africa

11.  The Joys of Motherhood— Buchi Emecheta, Nigeria

12.  Maps—Nuruddin Farah, Somalia

13.  The Blood Knot—Athol Fugard, South Africa

14.  Burgher's Daughter—Nadine Gordimer, South Africa

15.  The Cairo Trilogy—Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt

16.  A Grain of Wheat—Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Kenya

17.  Butterfly Burning—Yvonne Vera, Zimbabwe

18.  Children of Gebelawi—Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt

Australia & New Zealand

1.  The Bone People—Keri Hulme

2.  Picnic at Hanging Rock—Lady Joan Weigall Lindsay

3.  The Book Thief—Markus Zusak

4.  Seven Little Australians—Ethel Turner

5.  My Brilliant Career—Miles Franklin

6.  My Brother Jack—George Johnston

7.  The Harp in the South—Ruth Park

8.  The Man Who Loved Children—Christina Stead

9.  For the Term of His Natural Life—Marcus Clarke

10.  I Can Jump Puddles—Alan Marshall

11.  The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith—Thomas Keneally

12.  The Getting of Wisdom—Handel Richardson

13.  The Power of One—Bryce Courtenay

14.  True History of the Kelly Gang—Peter Carey

15.  We of the Never Never—Jeannie/Aeneas Gunn

16.  The Bodysurfers—Robert Drewe

17.  Tirra Lirra By the River—Jessica Anderson

11

11

Europe

11

1.  Molloy—Samuel Beckett, Ireland

2.  Malone Dies—Samuel Beckett, Ireland

3.  The Unnamable—Samuel Beckett, Ireland

4.  Ulysses—James Joyce, Ireland

5.  Gulliver's Travels—Jonathan Swift, Ireland

6.  Gypsy Ballads—Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain

7.  Blindness—Jose Saramago, Portugal

8.  The Book of Disquiet—Fernando Pessoa, Portugal

9.  Confessions of Zeno—Italo Svevo, Italy

10.  History—Elsa Morante, Italy

11.  Zorba the Greek—Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece

12.  Foucault's Pendulum—Umberto Eco, Italy

13.  In the Name of the Rose—Umberto Eco, Italy

14.  The Good Soldier Svejk—Jaroslav Hasek, Czech Republic

15.  The Castle—Franz Kafka, Bohemia

16.  The Complete Stories—Franz Kafka, Bohemia

17.  The Trial—Franz Kafka, Bohemia

18.  Buddenbrooks—Thomas Mann, Germany

19.  Berlin Alexanderplatz—Alfred Doblin, Germany

20.  The Tin Drum—Gunter Grass, Germany

21.  Faust—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany

22.  The Magic Mountain—Thomas Mann, Germany

23.  The Man Without Qualities—Robert Musil, Austria

24.  Hunger—Knut Hamsun, Norway

25.  Pippi Longstocking—Astrid Lindgren, Sweden

26.  Fairy Tales and Stories—Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark

27.  Independent People—Halldor K Laxness, Iceland

28.  Njaals Saga—Iceland, (c 1300)

29.  Remembrance of Things Past—Marcel Proust, France

30.  The Stranger—Albert Camus, France

31.  Jacques the Fatalist and His Master—Denis Diderot, France

32.  Journey to the End of the Night—Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France

33.  Madame Bovary—Gustave Flaubert, France

34.  Memoirs of Hadrian—Marguerite Yourcenar, France

35.  Old Goriot—Honore de Balzac, France

36.  The Red and the Black—Stendhal, France

37.  A Sentimental Education—Gustave Flaubert, France

Russia

1.  Crime and Punishment—Fyodor M Dostoyevsky

2.  Dead Souls—Nikolai Gogol

3.  The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories—Leo Tolstoy

4.  Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy

5.  Selected Stories—Anton P Chekhov

6.  War and Peace—Leo Tolstoy

7.  The Idiot—Fyodor M Dostoyevsky

8.  The Brothers Karamazov—Fyodor M Dostoyevsky

9.  The Possessed—Fyodor M Dostoyevsky

10.  The Master and Margarita—Mikhail Bulgakov

11.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

11


Science Fiction

11

1.  The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy—Douglas Adams

2.  Non-Stop—Brian W Aldiss

3.  Foundation—Isaac Asimov

4.  The Blind Assassin—Margaret Atwood

5.  The Handmaid's Tale—Margaret Atwood

6.  In the Country of Last Things—Paul Auster

7.  The Drowned World—JG Ballard

8.  Crash—JG Ballard

9.  Millennium People—JG Ballard

10.  The Wasp Factory—Iain Banks

11.  Consider Phlebas—Iain M Banks

12.  The Time Ships—Stephen Baxter

13.  Darwin's Radio—Greg Bear

14.  The Stars My Destination—Alfred Bester

15.  Fahrenheit 451—Ray Bradbury

16.  A Clockwork Orange—Anthony Burgess

17.  A Princess of Mars—Edgar Rice Burroughs

18.  Kindred—Octavia Butler

19.  The Baron in the Trees—Italo Calvino

20.  Childhood's End—Arthur C Clarke

21.  The Einstein Intersection—Samuel R Delaney

22.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—Philip K Dick

23.  The Man in the High Castle—Philip K Dick

24.  Neuromancer—William Gibson

25.  The Forever War—Joe Haldeman

26.  Stranger in a Strange Land—Robert A Heinlein

27.  Dune—Frank L Herbert

28.  The Glass Bead Game—Herman Hesse

29.  Brave New World—Aldous Huxley

30.  Flowers for Algernon—Daniel Keyes

31.  The Earthsea Series—Ursula Le Guin

32.  The Left Hand of Darkness—Ursula Le Guin

33.  Solaris—Stanislaw Lem

34.  Memoirs of a Survivor—Doris Lessing

35.  The Monk—Matthew Lewis

36.  A Voyage to Arcturus—David Lindsay

37.  The Night Sessions—Ken Macleod

38.  I Am Legend—Richard Matheson

39.  Ascent—Jed Mercurio

40.  Cloud Atlas—David Mitchell

41.  Mother London—Michael Moorcock

42.  Ringworld—Larry Niven

43.  The Space Merchants—Pohl & Kornbluth

44.  Red Mars—Kim Stanley Robinson

45.  Hyperion—Dan Simmons

46.  Star Maker—Olaf Stapledon

47.  Snow Crash—Neal Stephenson

48.  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde—Robert Louis Stevenson

49.  Sirens of Titan—Kurt Vonnegut

50.  The Time Machine—HG Wells

51.  The War of the Worlds—HG Wells

52.  The Book of the New Sun—Gene Wolfe

53.  Day of the Triffids—John Wyndham

54.  The Midwich Cuckoos—John Wyndham

55.  We—Yevgeny Zamyatin

11


Fantasy

11

1.  The Hobbit—JRR Tolkien

2.  The Lord of the Rings—JRR Tolkien

3.  The Sword in the Stone—TH White

4.  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone—JK Rowling

5.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—Lewis Carroll

6.  The Chronicles of Narnia—CS Lewis

7.  His Dark Materials Trilogy—Pulman

8.  Wheel of Time (series)—Robert Jordan

9.  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever (series)—Stephen R. Donaldson

10.  Neverwhere—Neil Gaiman

11.  Percy Jackson and the Olympians—Rick Riordan

12.  The Phantom Tollbooth—Norton Juster

13.  The Neverending Story—Michael Ende

14.  Earthsea Cycle (series)—Ursula K. Le Guin

15.  The Princess Bride—William Goldman

16.  Wicked—Gregory Maguire

17.  The Wizard of Oz—

18.  Redwall—Brian Jacques

19.  A Song of Fire & Ice (series)—George RR Martin

20.  Malazan Book of the Fallen (series)—Steven Erikson

21.  The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles)—Patrick Rothfuss

22.  The Darkness that Comes Before—R. Scott Bakker

23.  The Black Company (Books of the North)—Glen Cook

24.  The Way of Kings—Brandon Sanderson

25.  The Red Wolf Conspiracy—Robert VS Redick

26.  Lies of Locke Lamora—Scott Lynch

27.  The Blade Itself—Joe Abercrombie

28.  Gormenghast—Mervyn Peake

29.  The Farseer—Robin Hobb

30.  Black Sun Rising (Coldfire Trilogy)—C.S. Friedman

31.  A Shadow in Summer—Daniel Abraham

32.  The Etched City—K.J. Bishop

33.  A Cavern of Black Ice (Sword of Shadows)—J. V. Jones

34.  Acacia: The War With Mein—David Anthony Durham

35.  Elric of Melinbone—Michael Moorcock

36.  Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—Susanna Clarke

37.  American Gods—Neil Gaiman

38.  Abhorsen Trilogy—Garth Nix

39.  The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn)—Tad Williams

40.  Magician—Raymond Feist

41.  The Dresden Files—Jim Butcher

42.  Earthsea Cycle—Ursula Le Guin

43.  Amber Chronicles—Roger Zelazny

44.  Mistborn—Brandon Sanderson

45.  The Warded Man—Peter V. Brett

46.  Riddle of Stars—Patricia A. McKillip

47.  The Dark Tower—Stephen King

48.  A Kingdom of Thorn and Bone—Greg Keyes

49.  Tigana—Guy Gavriel Kay

50.  The Seven Waters Trilogy—Juliet Marillier

51.  Mythago Wood—Robert Holdstock

52.  The Way of Shadows (Night Angel Trilogy)—Brent Weeks

53.  Tales of the Otori—Lian Hearn

54.  Heroes Die—Matthew Woodring Stover

55.  Legend—David Gemmell

56.  The Swan's War—Sean Russell

57.  Elantris—Brandon Sanderson

58.  Kushiel's Dart—Jacqueline Carey

59.  Godless World trilogy—Brian Ruckley

60.  The Sword, the Ring, and the Chalice—Deborah Chester

11


Crime

11

1.  The Man with the Golden Arm—Nelson Algren

2.  Fantomas—Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre

3.  The Mask of Dimitrios—Eric Ambler

4.  Epitaph for a Spy—Eric Ambler

5.  The New York Trilogy—Paul Auster

6.  Trent's Last Case—EC Bentley

7.  The Poisoned Chocolates Case—Anthony Berkeley

8.  The Beast Must Die—Nicholas Blake

9.  The Tin Roof Blowdown—James Lee Burke

10.  The Thirty-Nine Steps—John Buchan

11.  The Asphalt Jungle—WR Burnett

12.  The Postman Always Rings Twice—James Cain

13.  Double Indemnity—James Cain

14.  True History of the Ned Kelly Gang—Peter Carey

15.  The Hollow Man—John Dickson Carr

16.  The Big Sleep—Raymond Chandler

17.  The Long Goodbye—Raymond Chandler

18.  The Riddle of the Sands—Erskine Childers

19.  And Then There Were None—Agatha Christie

20.  The Mysterious Affair at Styles—Agatha Christie

21.  The Woman in White—Wilkie Collins

22.  A Study in Scarlet—Arthur Conan Doyle

23.  The Sign of Four—Arthur Conan Doyle

24.  The Manchurian Candidate—Richard Condon

25.  The Secret Agent—Joseph Conrad

26.  Postmortem—Patricia Cornwell

27.  The Ipcress File—Len Deighton

28.  Last Seen Wearing—Colin Dexter

29.  Dead Lagoon—Michael Dibdin

30.  My Cousin Rachel—Daphne du Maurier

31.  The Pledge—Friedrich Durrenmatt

32.  The Crime of Father Amado—José Maria de Eça de Queiroz

33.  LA Confidential—James Ellroy

34.  Casino Royale—Ian Fleming

35.  The Day of the Jackal—Frederick Forsyth

36.  The Third Man—Graham Greene

37.  A Time to Kill—John Grisham

38.  Hangover Square—Patrick Hamilton

39.  The Maltese Falcon—Dashiell Hammett

40.  The Thin Man—Dashiell Hammett

41.  Black Sunday—Thomas Harris

42.  Tourist Season—Carl Hiaasen

43.  The Friends of Eddie Coyle—George V Higgins

44.  Strangers on a Train—Patricia Highsmith

45.  The Talented Mr. Ripley—Patricia Highsmith

46.  Silence of the Grave—Arnadur Indridason

47.  Death at the President's Lodging—Michael Innes

48.  Cover Her Face—PD James

49.  A Taste for Death—PD James

50.  Friday the Rabbi Slept Late—Harry Kemelman

51.  The Constant Gardener—John le Carre

52.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—John le Carre

53.  52 Pick-up—Elmore Leonard

54.  Motherless Brooklyn—Jonathan Lethem

55.  The Bourne Identity—Robert Ludlum

56.  Enduring Love—Ian McEwan

57.  Sidetracked—Henning Mankell

58.  Devil in a Blue Dress—Walter Mosley