100 BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU DIE


1 1984 by George Orwell, England, (1903-1950)
2 A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906)
3 A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
4 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
5 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910)
6 The Aeneid by Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC)
7 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
8 Beloved by Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931)
9 Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957)
10 Blindness by Jose Saramago, Portugal, (1922-2010)


11 The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935)
12 The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC)
13 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
14 Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
15 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400)
16 The Castle by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
17 Children of Gebelawi by Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911)
18 Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986)
19 Complete Poems by Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837)
20 The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)


21 The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849)
22 Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928)
23 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
24 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852)
25 The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375)
27 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967)
28 Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936)
29 The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321)
30 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616)


31 Essays by Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592)
32 Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875)
33 Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832)
34 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553)
35 Gilgamesh Mesopotamia, (c 1800 BC)
36 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919)
37 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870)
38 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745)
39 Gypsy Ballads by Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936)
40 Hamlet by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)


41 History by Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985)
42 Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952)
43 The Idiot by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
44 The Iliad by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
45 Independent People by Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998)
46 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994)
47 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784)
48 Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961)
49 King Lear by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
50 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892)


51 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768)
52 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977)
53 Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
54 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
55 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
56 Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC)
57 The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942)
58 The Mathnawi by Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273)
59 Medea by Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC)
60 Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987)


61 Metamorphoses by Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC)
62 Middlemarch by George Eliot, England, (1819-1880)
63 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947)
64 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891)
65 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
66 Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300)
67 Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924)
68 The Odyssey by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
69 Oedipus the King Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC)
70 Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850)


71 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961)
72 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
73 The Orchard by Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292)
74 Othello by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
75 Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986)
76 Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002)
77 Poems by Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970)
78 The Possessed by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
79 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817)
80 The Ramayana by Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC)


81 The Recognition of Sakuntala by Kalidasa, India, (c. 400)
82 The Red and the Black by Stendhal, France, (1783-1842)
83 Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922)
84 Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929)
85 Selected Stories by Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904)
86 Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930)
87 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
88 The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972)
89 The Stranger by Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960)
90 The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (c 1000)


91 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930)
92 Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500)
93 The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927)
94 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
95 The Trial by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
96 Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989)
97 Ulysses by James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941)
98 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
99 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, England, (1818-1848)
100 Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957)