The best novels of all time

in the English language

Selected by piero scaruffi
Comments | Best novels ever | Best poetry in English | Timeline of English literature | To advertise on this page | Back to the main page
  1. Henry James (USA, 1843): "The Golden Bowl" (1904) +++
  2. James Joyce (Ireland, 1882): "Ulysses" (1922) +++
  3. Emily Bronte (Britain, 1818): "Wuthering Heights" (1847) ++
  4. Vladimir Nabokov (Russia, 1899): "Ada" (1969) ++
  5. Thomas Pynchon (USA, 1937): "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973) ++
  6. William Faulkner (USA, 1897): "Light in August" (1932) ++
  7. Virginia Woolf (Britain, 1882): "To the Lighthouse" (1927) ++
  8. William Gaddis (USA, 1922): "The Recognitions" (1955) ++
  9. Joseph Conrad (Poland, 1857): "Nostromo" (1904) ++
  10. John Barth (USA, 1930): "Giles Goat Boy" (1966) ++
  11. Herman Melville (USA, 1819): "Moby Dick" (1851) ++
  12. Salman Rushdie (India, 1947): "Midnight's Children" (1980) ++
  13. Saul Bellow (USA, 1915): "Herzog" (1964) ++
  14. Jane Austen (Britain, 1775): "Pride and Prejudice" (1813) ++
  15. Antonia Byatt (Britain, 1936): "Possession" (1990) ++
  16. Wilson Harris (Guyana, 1921): "Palace of the Peacock" (1960) ++
  17. Ian McEwan (Britain, 1948): "Atonement" (2001) ++
  18. Flann O'Brien (Ireland, 1911): "At Swim-two-birds" (1939) ++
  19. Francis-Scott Fitzgerald (USA, 1896): "The Great Gatsby" (1925) ++
  20. Malcolm Lowry (Britain, 1909): "Under the Volcano" (1947) ++
  21. Henry James (USA, 1843): "The Wings of the Dove" (1902) ++
  22. Patrick White (Australia, 1912): "Voss" (1957) ++
  23. George Eliot (Britain, 1819): "Middlemarch" (1872) ++
  24. Don DeLillo (USA, 1936): "Underworld" (1997) ++
  25. Edward-Morgan Forster (Britain, 1879): "Howards End" (1910) ++
  26. James Joyce (Ireland, 1882): "Finnegan's Wake" (1939) ++
  27. William Faulkner (USA, 1897): "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) ++
  28. Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1923): "The Burger's Daughter" (1979) ++
  29. Henry James (USA, 1843): "The Ambassadors" (1903) ++
  30. Janet Frame (New Zealand, 1924): "Scented Gardens For The Blind" (1963) ++
  31. Joseph McElroy (USA, 1930): "Women and Men" (1987) ++
  32. Cormac McCarthy (USA, 1933): "Suttree" (1979) ++
  33. Kazuo Ishiguro (Britain, 1954): "The Remains of the Day" (1989) ++
  34. Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, 1919): "The Golden Notebook" (1962) ++
  35. Peter Carey (Australia, 1943): "Illywhacker" (1986) ++
  36. Hilary Mantel (Britain, 1952): "Wolf Hall" (2008) ++
  37. Paul Bowles (USA, 1910): "The Sheltering Sky" (1949) ++
  38. Toni Morrison (USA, 1942): "Beloved" (1987) ++
  39. Thomas Pynchon (USA, 1937): "V" (1963) +
  40. Kurt Vonnegut (USA, 1922): "The Sirens of Titan" (1959) +
  41. Thomas Hardy (Britain, 1840): "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (1891) +
  42. Marilynne Robinson (USA, 1943): "Gilead" (2004) +
  43. Edward Jones (USA, 1950): "The Known World" (2004) +
  44. Gerald Murnane (Australia, 1939): "The Plains" (1982) +
  45. Philip Roth (USA, 1933): "American Pastoral" (1997) +

Chronological

See the Chronology of English Literature