100 Best Novels in English, Since 1900
We hope that our novels list confirms some of your own tastes and at other times confounds you, irritates you and turns you on to some fresh reading pleasures. As Alex was fond of saying: “By the quality of life, art and freedom that radicals commend, so will radicals prevail.”
- 1
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 2
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner · 1936 · 16 lists
- 3
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon · 1973 · 12 lists
- 4
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 5
Orlando
Virginia Wolff · 2015 · 1 list
- 6
The Rainbow
DH Lawrence · 1995 · 1 list
- 7
Under Western Eyes
Joseph Conrad · 1911 · 1 list
- 8
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 9
The Violent Bear it Away
Flannery O'Connor · 1960 · 3 lists
- 10
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller · 1934 · 12 lists
- 11
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing · 1962 · 7 lists
- 12
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 13
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 14
The Code of the Woosters
P. G. Wodehouse · 1938 · 3 lists
- 15
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1933 · 7 lists
- 16
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 1956 · 8 lists
- 17
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith · 1955 · 13 lists
- 18
At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien · 1939 · 7 lists
- 19
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 20
JR
William Gaddis · 1975 · 5 lists
- 21
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov · 1962 · 13 lists
- 22
End of the Affair
Graham Greene · 1951 · 1 list
- 23
Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett · 1929 · 9 lists
- 24
Mumbo Jumbo
Ishmael Reed · 1972 · 3 lists
- 25
A Lost Lady
Willa Cather · 1923 · 1 list
- 26
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle · 1901 · 11 lists
- 27
Far Tortuga
Peter Mattheissen · 1 list
- 28
The Iron Heel
Jack London · 1907 · 2 lists
- 29
Jazz
Toni Morrison · 1992 · 3 lists
- 30
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 31
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 32
Nothing Like the Sun
Anthony Burgess · 1964 · 1 list
- 33
Riddle of the Sands
Erksine Childers · 1 list
- 34
The Thinking Reed
Rebecca West · 1936 · 2 lists
- 35
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 36
Beat the Devil
Claud Cockburn · 1951 · 1 list
- 37
The Indian Lawyer
James Welch · 1990 · 1 list
- 38
The White Hotel
DM Thomas · 1981 · 1 list
- 39
Neuromancer
William Gibson · 1984 · 10 lists
- 40
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
Evelyn Waugh · 1955 · 1 list
- 41
Light Years
James Salter · 1975 · 2 lists
- 42
Almanac of the Dead
Leslie Marmon Silko · 1991 · 1 list
- 43
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen · 1938 · 5 lists
- 44
The Monkeywrench Gang
Edward Abbey · 1 list
- 45
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958 · 19 lists
- 46
Slaves of Solitude
Patrick Hamilton · 1947 · 1 list
- 47
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969 · 9 lists
- 48
Novel on Yellow Paper
Stevie Smith · 1937 · 1 list
- 49
A Feast of Snakes
Harry Crews · 1976 · 1 list
- 50
Vida
Marge Piercy · 1979 · 1 list
- 51
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick · 1962 · 4 lists
- 52
Naked Lunch
William Burroughs · 1959 · 8 lists
- 53
A Place of Greater Safety
Hilary Mantel · 1992 · 1 list
- 54
Voss
Patrick White · 1957 · 4 lists
- 55
Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone · 1973 · 4 lists
- 56
Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver · 1990 · 1 list
- 57
Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut · 1963 · 6 lists
- 58
Sometimes a Great Notion
Ken Kesey · 1964 · 4 lists
- 59
The Mask of Dimitrios
Eric Ambler · 1939 · 4 lists
- 60
The Known World
Edward P. Jones · 2003 · 11 lists
- 61
Written on the Body
Jeanette Winterson · 1992 · 2 lists
- 62
Disgrace
JM Coetzee · 1999 · 1 list
- 63
Call it Sleep
Henry Roth · 1934 · 6 lists
- 64
July’s People
Nadine Gordimer · 1981 · 2 lists
- 65
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler · 1939 · 13 lists
- 66
The Black Prince
Iris Murdoch · 1973 · 3 lists
- 67
Julian
Gore Vidal · 1964 · 1 list
- 68
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson · 1952 · 3 lists
- 69
An American Dream
Norman Mailer · 1965 · 1 list
- 70
If He Hollers Let Him Go
Chester Himes · 1945 · 2 lists
- 71
The Secret History
Donna Tartt · 1992 · 8 lists
- 72
Flaubert’s Parrot
Julian Barnes · 1984 · 3 lists
- 73
Matterhorn
Karl Marlantes · 2009 · 1 list
- 74
The Last Good Kiss
James Crumley · 1978 · 3 lists
- 75
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward · 2011 · 3 lists
- 76
Underworld
Don DeLillo · 1997 · 9 lists
- 77
The Radiant Way
Margaret Drabble · 1987 · 2 lists
- 78
Regeneration
Pat Barker · 1991 · 5 lists
- 79
Snow Crash
Neal Stevenson · 1 list
- 80
Ray
Barry Hannah · 1980 · 1 list
- 81
Tripmaster Monkey
Maxine Hong Kingston · 1989 · 1 list
- 82
The Golden Gate
Vikram Seth · 1986 · 2 lists
- 83
Lucky Jim
Kinglsey Amis · 1954 · 1 list
- 84
Day of the Locust
Nathaniel West · 1938 · 1 list
- 85
Gateway
Frederik Pohl · 1977 · 3 lists
- 86
Machine Dreams
Jayne Anne Phillips · 1984 · 1 list
- 87
Two Serious Ladies
Jane Bowles · 1943 · 1 list
- 88
Mr. American
George MacDonald Fraser · 1980 · 1 list
- 89
Zuleika Dobson
Max Beerbohm · 1911 · 3 lists
- 90
The Dogs of March
Ernest Hebert · 1979 · 1 list
- 91
The Deceivers
John Masters · 1952 · 1 list
- 92
Sleeping Beauty
Ross McDonald · 1 list
- 93
The King Must Die
Mary Renault · 1958 · 2 lists
- 94
Tree of Smoke
Denis Johnson · 2007 · 4 lists
- 95
House of Splendid Isolation
Edna O'Brien · 1994 · 1 list
- 96
Lucy
Jamaica Kinkaid · 1 list
- 97
Affliction
Russell Banks · 1989 · 2 lists
- 98
Gaudy Night
Dorothy L. Sayers · 1935 · 4 lists
- 99
Flicker
Theodore Roszak · 1991 · 2 lists
- 100
Greenmantle
John Buchan · 1916 · 2 lists