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The 100 Best Books of All Time
"This list of the 100 best books of all time was prepared by Norwegian Book Clubs. They asked 100 authors from 54 countries around the world to nominate the ten books which have had the most decisive impact on the cultural history of the world, and left a mark on the authors' own thinking. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided." The Guardian
The links below let you know where you can find the book in the AICS Library collection if available. If not available, links to free ebooks by providers such as Project Gutenberg or The Internet Archive have been provided and marked with an asterisk (*).
1984 by George Orwell, England, (1903-1950)
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906)
A Sentimental Education* by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910)
The Aeneid* by Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
Beloved by Toni Morrison, United States, (1931-2019)
Berlin Alexanderplatz* by Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957)
Blindness* by Jose Saramago, Portugal, (1922-2010)
The Book of Disquiet* by Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935)
The Book of Job*, Israel. (600-400 BC)
The Brothers Karamazov* by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Buddenbrooks* by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400)
The Castle* by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
Children of Gebelawi* by Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911)
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986)
Complete Poems* by Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837)
The Complete Stories* by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849)
Confessions of Zeno* by Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Dead Souls* by Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
The Decameron* by Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375)
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands* by João Guimarães Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967)
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories* by Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936)
The Divine Comedy* by Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616)
Essays* by Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592)
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories* by Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875)
Faust* by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832)
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553)
Gilgamesh Mesopotamia, (c 1800 BC)
The Golden Notebook* by Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870)
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745)
Gypsy Ballads* by Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
History* by Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985)
Hunger* by Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952)
The Idiot* by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
The Iliad by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
Independent People* by Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994)
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master* by Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784)
Journey to the End of the Night* by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961)
King Lear by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman* by Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
The Magic Mountain* by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
Mahabharata*, India, (c 500 BC)
The Man Without Qualities* by Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942)
The Mathnawi* by Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273)
Medea* by Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC)
Memoirs of Hadrian* by Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987)
Metamorphoses* by Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC)
Middlemarch by George Eliot, England, (1819-1880)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
Njal's Saga, Iceland, (c 1300)
Nostromo* by Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924)
The Odyssey by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
Oedipus Rex Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC)
Father Goriot* by Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850)
The Old Man and the Sea* by Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
The Orchard* by Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292)
Othello by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
Pedro Paramo* by Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986)
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002)
Poems* by Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970)
The Possessed* by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817)
The Ramayana* by Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC)
The Recognition of Sakuntala* by Kalidasa, India, (c. 400)
The Red and the Black* by Stendhal, France, (1783-1842)
Remembrance of Things Past* by Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922)
Season of Migration to the North* by Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929)
Selected Stories* by Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904)
Sons and Lovers* by DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930)
The Sound and the Fury* by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
The Sound of the Mountain* by Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972)
The Stranger by Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960)
The Tale of Genji* by Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (c 1000)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930)
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500)
The Tin Drum* by Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
The Trial* by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable* by Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989)
Ulysses by James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, England, (1818-1848)
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957)