The Times' Top 50, 1922-2022
50 books chosen by a panel of critics, and one chosen by The Times' readers.
- 1
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 43 lists
- 2
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 3
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists
- 4
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark · 1961 · 13 lists
- 5
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 31 lists
- 6
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 7
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 8
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 36 lists
- 9
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958 · 19 lists
- 10
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · 1925 · 20 lists
- 11
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 1956 · 8 lists
- 12
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 13
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 14
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson · 1980 · 10 lists
- 15
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · 11 lists
- 16
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989 · 14 lists
- 17
A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth · 1993 · 5 lists
- 18
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy · 1997 · 9 lists
- 19
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee · 1999 · 12 lists
- 20
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson · 2004 · 12 lists
- 21
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954 · 14 lists
- 22
The Blue Flower
Penelope Fitzgerald · 1902 · 4 lists
- 23
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul · 1961 · 10 lists
- 24
Atonement
Ian McEwan · 2001 · 18 lists
- 25
The Color Purple
Alice Walker · 1982 · 20 lists
- 26
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963 · 12 lists
- 27
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel · 2009 · 12 lists
- 28
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith · 1955 · 13 lists
- 29
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene · 1940 · 6 lists
- 30
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe · 1987 · 7 lists
- 31
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout · 2007 · 5 lists
- 32
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen · 1938 · 5 lists
- 33
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · 9 lists
- 34
Never Mind
Edward St Aubyn · 1992 · 3 lists
- 35
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 36
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy · 1985 · 14 lists
- 37
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence · 1900 · 8 lists
- 38
Nights at the Circus
Angela Carter · 1984 · 5 lists
- 39
The Golden Notebook
Doris May Lessing · 1962 · 11 lists
- 40
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 41
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 42
Regeneration
Pat Barker · 1991 · 5 lists
- 43
Rabbit, Run
John Updike · 1960 · 12 lists
- 44
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow · 1953 · 11 lists
- 45
A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry · 1995 · 7 lists
- 46
The Corner That Held Them
Sylvia Townsend Warner · 1948 · 1 list
- 47
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh · 1945 · 10 lists
- 48
White Noise
Don DeLillo · 1984 · 13 lists
- 49
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 50
A Fringe Of Leaves
Patrick White · 1977 · 1 list
- 51
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists