Greater Books

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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

  3. Jane Austen

  4. Pride and Prejudice
    originally anonymously published 1813—English

  5. Honoré de Balzac

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


    Samuel Beckett
  7. Molloy

  8. 1951—French

  9. Malone Muert

  10. 1951—French

  11. L'Innommable

  12. The Unnameable
    1953—French


  13. Giovanni Boccaccio

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

  15. Jorge Luis Borges

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

  17. Emily Brontë

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

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


    • Paul Celan

  20. Poems
    Twentieth Century—German

  21. Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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


  23. Miguel de Cervantes

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


  25. Geoffrey Chaucer
    Canterbury Tales
    1478—English

    • Anton Chekhov

  26. Stories
    late Nineteenth-early Twentieth centuries—Russian

  27. Joseph Conrad

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

  29. Dante

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


  31. Charles Dickens

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

  33. Denis Diderot

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


  35. Alfred Döblin

  36. Berlin Alexanderplatz
    1929—German

    Fyodor Dostoevsky
  37. Prestuplénie i Nakazániye

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


  39. Idiot

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

  41. Besy

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


  43. Brat'â Karamazovy

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


  45. George Eliot

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

  47. Ralph Ellison

  48. Invisible Man
    1952—English

  49. Euripides

  50. Mēdeia
    Medea
    431 B C—Greek


    William Faulkner
  51. Absalom, Absalom!

  52. 1936—English

  53. The Sound and the Fury

  54. 1929—English

    Gustave Flaubert
  55. Madame Bovary

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

  57. L'Éducation Sentimentale

  58. 1869—French
    *Classics* *France* *Rexroth* *Ward* *Bloom* *Recommended* *Norway* *Newman*

  59. Federico García Lorca

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


    Gabriel García Márquez
  61. Cien Anõs de Soledad

  62. One Hundred Years of Solitude
    1967—Spanish


  63. El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera

  64. Love in the Time of Cholera
    1985—Spanish


    --
  65. Sha Naqba Imuru

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


  67. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  68. 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

  69. Nikolai Gogol

  70. Mërtvyâ Duši
    Dead Souls
    1842—Russian


  71. Günter Grass

  72. Die Blechtrommel
    The Tin Drum
    1959—German

    *Ward* *Bloom* *Recommended* *Trinity* *Norway* *Zane*

  73. João Guimarães Rosa

  74. Grande Sertão: Veredas
    The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
    1956—Portuguese

    *Ward* *Norway*

  75. Knut Hamsun

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


  77. Ernest Hemingway

  78. The Old Man and the Sea
    1952—English

    Homer
  79. Iliad

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

  81. Odýsseia

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


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


    --
    • The Book of Job

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

  85. James Joyce

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

    Franz Kafka
  87. Die Verwandlung

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


  89. Der Prozess

  90. The Trial
    1925—German


  91. Das Schloss

  92. The Castle
    1926—German


  93. Kalidasa

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


  95. Kawabata Yasunari

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


  97. Nikos Kazantzakis

  98. Zorba the Greek
    1946—Greek

  99. D H Lawrence

  100. Sons and Lovers
    1913—English

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


    • Giacomo Leopardi

  102. Poems
    early Nineteenth Century—Italian

  103. Doris Lessing

  104. The Golden Notebook
    1962—English

  105. Astrid Lindgren
    Pippi Långstrump
    Pippi Longstocking
    1945—Swedish


    • Lu Xun

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


  107. Vyasa

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

  109. Naguib Mahfouz

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


    Thomas Mann
  111. Buddenbrooks

  112. 1901—German

  113. Der Zauberberg

  114. The Magic Mountain
    1924—German


  115. Herman Melville

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

  117. Michel de Montaigne

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


  119. Elsa Morante

  120. La Storia
    1974—Italian

  121. Toni Morrison

  122. Beloved
    1987—English

  123. Murasaki Shikibu

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


  125. Robert Musil

  126. Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften
    The Man Without Qualities
    originally published in three volumes: 1930, 1933, and 1943—German

    *Ward* *Bloom* *Fadiman* *Trinity* *Norway*

  127. Vladimir Nabokov

  128. Lolita
    1955—English

    --
  129. Njáls Saga

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

  131. George Orwell

  132. Nineteen Eighty-Four
    1949—English

  133. Ovid

  134. Metamorphoseon
    Metamorphoses
    8—Latin


  135. 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

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

  137. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of Nantucket

  138. 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

  139. Marcel Proust

  140. 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


  141. François Rabelais

  142. 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

  143. Juan Rulfo

  144. Pedro Páramo
    1955—Spanish

  145. Rumi

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


  147. Salman Rushdie

  148. Midnight's Children
    1981—English

  149. Saadi Shirazi

  150. Bostan
    written 1257—Persian

  151. Tayeb Salih

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


  153. José Saramago

  154. Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira
    Blindness
    1995—Portuguese


    William Shakespeare
  155. Hamlet

  156. 1602—English

  157. King Lear

  158. 1606—English

  159. Othello

  160. ca. 1604—English

  161. Sophocles

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


  163. Stendhal

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


  165. Laurence Sterne

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

  167. Italo Svevo

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


  169. Jonathan Swift

  170. 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
  171. Voyna i Mir"

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


  173. Anna Karenina

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

  175. Smert' Ivana Il'icha

  176. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    1886—Russian


    --
  177. Kitab alf Laylah Wa-Laylah

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


  179. Mark Twain

  180. 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*

  181. Valmiki

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

  183. Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)

  184. Aeneid
    First Century B C—Latin

  185. Walt Whitman

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

    Virginia Woolf
  187. Mrs. Dalloway

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

  189. To the Lighthouse

  190. 1927 —English

  191. Marguerite Yourcenar

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