20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction
The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a list of the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century compiled by American literary critic Larry McCaffery. The list was created largely in response to the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery considered out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery wrote that he saw his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now".
- 1
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov · 1962 · 13 lists
- 2
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 3
Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon · 1973 · 12 lists
- 4
The Public Burning
Robert Coover · 1977 · 2 lists
- 6
Molloy
Samuel Beckett · 1951 · 4 lists
- 7
Malone Dies
Samuel Beckett · 1997 · 4 lists
- 8
The Unnamable
Samuel Beckett · 2014 · 3 lists
- 9
The Making of Americans
Gertrude Stein · 1925 · 2 lists
- 10
The Soft Machine
William S. Burroughs · 1961 · 1 list
- 11
Nova Express
William Burroughs · 1964 · 3 lists
- 12
The Ticket That Exploded
William S. Burroughs · 1962 · 1 list
- 13
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 14
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce · 1928 · 7 lists
- 15
Take It or Leave It
Raymond Federman · 1976 · 1 list
- 16
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 31 lists
- 17
Going Native
Stephen Wright · 1994 · 2 lists
- 18
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry · 1947 · 15 lists
- 19
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 20
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
William H. Gass · 1968 · 2 lists
- 21
JR
William Gaddis · 1975 · 5 lists
- 22
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 23
Underworld
Don DeLillo · 1997 · 9 lists
- 24
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 25
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · 1916 · 15 lists
- 26
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 43 lists
- 27
The Ambassadors
Henry James · 1903 · 8 lists
- 28
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence · 1920 · 9 lists
- 29
Sixty Stories
Donald Barthelme · 1981 · 2 lists
- 30
The Rifles
William T. Vollmann · 1994 · 1 list
- 31
The Recognitions
William Gaddis · 1955 · 6 lists
- 32
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899 · 29 lists
- 33
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 34
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 36 lists
- 35
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 36
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner · 1936 · 16 lists
- 37
Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany · 1975 · 1 list
- 38
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 39
The Stain
Rikki Ducornet · 1984 · 1 list
- 40
Entering Fire
Rikki Ducornet · 1986 · 1 list
- 41
The Fountains of Neptune
Rikki Ducornet · 1989 · 1 list
- 42
The Jade Cabinet
Rikki Ducornet · 1993 · 1 list
- 43
Neuromancer
William Gibson · 1984 · 10 lists
- 44
Count Zero
William Gibson · 1986 · 1 list
- 45
Mona Lisa Overdrive
William Gibson · 1988 · 1 list
- 46
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller · 1934 · 12 lists
- 47
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 48
Lookout cartridge
Joseph McElroy · 1974 · 1 list
- 49
Crash
J.G. Ballard · 1973 · 4 lists
- 50
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists
- 51
The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth · 1960 · 4 lists
- 52
Genoa
Paul C. Metcalf · 1965 · 1 list
- 53
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 54
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 55
Double Or Nothing
Raymond Federman · 1971 · 1 list
- 56
At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien · 1939 · 7 lists
- 57
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy · 1985 · 14 lists
- 58
The Cannibal
John Hawkes · 1949 · 1 list
- 59
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 60
The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West · 1939 · 6 lists
- 61
Nightwood
Djuna Barnes · 1936 · 3 lists
- 62
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson · 1980 · 10 lists
- 63
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969 · 19 lists
- 64
Libra
Don DeLillo · 1988 · 3 lists
- 65
Wise Blood
Flannery O'Connor · 1952 · 5 lists
- 66
Always Coming Home
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1985 · 1 list
- 67
U.S.A. Trilogy
John Dos Passos · 1960 · 6 lists
- 68
The Golden Notebook
Doris May Lessing · 1962 · 11 lists
- 69
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 70
Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett · 1929 · 9 lists
- 71
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Raymond Carver · 1981 · 4 lists
- 72
Dubliners
James Joyce · 1914 · 8 lists
- 73
Cane
Jean Toomer · 1923 · 5 lists
- 74
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton · 1905 · 8 lists
- 75
Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban · 1980 · 2 lists
- 76
Go in Beauty
William Eastlake · 1956 · 1 list
- 77
The Bronc People
William Eastlake · 1958 · 1 list
- 78
- 79
The Franchiser
Stanley Elkin · 1976 · 1 list
- 80
The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster · 1987 · 3 lists
- 81
Skinny Legs and All
Tom Robbins · 1990 · 1 list
- 82
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace · 1996 · 11 lists
- 83
The Age of Wire and String
Ben Marcus · 1995 · 1 list
- 84
Tlooth
Harry Mathews · 1966 · 1 list
- 85
Pricksongs and Descants
Robert Coover · 1969 · 2 lists
- 86
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick · 1962 · 4 lists
- 87
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis · 1991 · 4 lists
- 88
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
John Fowles · 1969 · 5 lists
- 90
The Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe · 1983 · 6 lists
- 91
The Sword of the Lictor
Gene Wolfe · 1982 · 1 list
- 92
The Citadel of the Autarch
Gene Wolfe · 1983 · 1 list
- 93
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 94
Legs
William Kennedy · 1975 · 1 list
- 95
Billy Phelan's Greatest Game
William Kennedy · 1978 · 1 list
- 96
Ironweed
William Kennedy · 1983 · 4 lists
- 97
The Tunnel
William H. Gass · 1955 · 3 lists
- 98
Omensetter's Luck
William H. Gass · 1960 · 1 list
- 99
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles · 1948 · 6 lists
- 100
Darconville's Cat
Alexander Theroux · 1981 · 1 list
- 101
Up
Ronald Sukenick · 1968 · 1 list
- 102
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
Ishmael Reed · 1969 · 1 list
- 103
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson · 1919 · 5 lists
- 104
You Bright and Risen Angels
William T. Vollmann · 1987 · 1 list
- 105
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer · 1948 · 8 lists
- 106
- 107
Creamy and Delicious
Steve Katz · 1970 · 1 list
- 108
Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee · 1980 · 4 lists
- 109
More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeon · 1953 · 2 lists
- 110
Mulligan Stew
Gilbert Sorrentino · 1979 · 1 list
- 111
Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe · 1929 · 8 lists
- 112
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser · 1900 · 9 lists
- 113
Easy Travel to Other Planets
Ted Mooney · 1981 · 1 list
- 114
Tours of the Black Clock
Steve Erickson · 1989 · 1 list
- 115
In Memoriam to Identity
Kathy Acker · 1990 · 1 list
- 116
Hogg
Samuel R. Delany · 1994 · 1 list
