There are many problems with a list like this. It heavily favours white American males, and in its myopia manages to avoid mention of some of the 20th century’s best novelists while including other names which really shouldn’t be there.
The list was compiled by the editorial board of the Modern Library, which is a division of Random House Publishers.
Nevertheless, it is a list, and therefore, to me, irresistible.
1.
“Ulysses,” James Joyce
2.“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
3.“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce
4.“Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov
5.“Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley
6.“The Sound and the Fury,” William Faulkner
7.“Catch-22,” Joseph Heller
8. “Darkness at Noon,” Arthur Koestler
9.“Sons and Lovers,” D. H. Lawrence
10.“The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck
11.“Under the Volcano,” Malcolm Lowry
12. “The Way of All Flesh,” Samuel Butler
13.“1984,” George Orwell
14. “I, Claudius,” Robert Graves
15.“To the Lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf
16. “An American Tragedy,” Theodore Dreiser
17.“The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Carson McCullers
18.“Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut
19.“Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison
20. “Native Son,” Richard Wright
21.“Henderson the Rain King,” Saul Bellow
22. “Appointment in Samarra,” John O’ Hara
23. “U.S.A.” (trilogy), John Dos Passos
24. “Winesburg, Ohio,” Sherwood Anderson
25.“A Passage to India,” E. M. Forster
26. “The Wings of the Dove,” Henry James
27.“The Ambassadors,” Henry James
28.“Tender Is the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. “The Studs Lonigan Trilogy,” James T. Farrell
30.“The Good Soldier,” Ford Madox Ford
31.“Animal Farm,” George Orwell
32. “The Golden Bowl,” Henry James
33. “Sister Carrie,” Theodore Dreiser
34. “A Handful of Dust,” Evelyn Waugh
35.“As I Lay Dying,” William Faulkner
36. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren
37.“The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” Thornton Wilder
38.“Howards End,” E. M. Forster
39. “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” James Baldwin
40.“The Heart of the Matter,” Graham Greene
41.“Lord of the Flies,” William Golding
42. “Deliverance,” James Dickey
43.“A Dance to the Music of Time” (series), Anthony Powell
44. “Point Counter Point,” Aldous Huxley
45.“The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway
46.“The Secret Agent,” Joseph Conrad
47.“Nostromo,” Joseph Conrad
48.“The Rainbow,” D. H. Lawrence
49.“Women in Love,” D. H. Lawrence
50. “Tropic of Cancer,” Henry Miller
51.“The Naked and the Dead,” Norman Mailer
52.“Portnoy’s Complaint,” Philip Roth
53.“Pale Fire,” Vladimir Nabokov
54. “Light in August,” William Faulkner
55.“On the Road,” Jack Kerouac
56.“The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett
57. “Parade’s End,” Ford Madox Ford
58. “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton
59. “Zuleika Dobson,” Max Beerbohm
60. “The Moviegoer,” Walker Percy
61. “Death Comes to the Archbishop,” Willa Cather
62. “From Here to Eternity,” James Jones
63. “The Wapshot Chronicles,” John Cheever
64.“The Catcher in the Rye,” J. D. Salinger
65.“A Clockwork Orange,” Anthony Burgess
66.“Of Human Bondage,” W. Somerset Maugham
67.“Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad
68. “Main Street,” Sinclair Lewis
69. “The House of Mirth,” Edith Wharton
70.“The Alexandria Quartet,” Lawrence Durrell
71. “A High Wind in Jamaica,” Richard Hughes
72. “A House for Ms. Biswas,” V. S. Naipaul
73. “The Day of the Locust,” Nathaniel West
74.“A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway
75.“Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh
76.“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Muriel Spark
77. “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce
78. “Kim,” Rudyard Kipling
79.“A Room With a View,” E. M. Forster
80. “Brideshead Revisited,” Evelyn Waugh
81.“The Adventures of Augie March,” Saul Bellow
82. “Angle of Repose,” Wallace Stegner
83. “A Bend in the River,” V. S. Naipaul
84. “The Death of the Heart,” Elizabeth Bowen
85. “Lord Jim,” Joseph Conrad
86.“Ragtime,” E. L. Doctorow
87. “The Old Wives’ Tale,” Arnold Bennett
88. “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London
89. “Loving,” Henry Green
90.“Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie
91.“Tobacco Road,” Erskine Caldwell
92. “Ironweed,” William Kennedy
93.“The Magus,” John Fowles
94.“Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys
95. “Under the Net,” Iris Murdoch
96. “Sophie’s Choice,” William Styron
97. “The Sheltering Sky,” Paul Bowles
98.“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” James M. Cain
99.“The Ginger Man,” J. P. Donleavy
100. “The Magnificent Ambersons,” Booth Tarkington
Where is Hamsun? Camus? Marguerite Duras? Gide? Proust? Thomas Mann? Franz Kafka? Gunter Grass? Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Robert Musil? Beckett? Chinue Achebe? Pasternak? Bulgakov? Natalia Ginzburg? Margaret Atwood? Solzhenitsyn? Borges? Puig? Clarice Lispector?
And what is it about lists?
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Feb 10th, 2007 at 9:44 am
The titles you’ve struck through: because you’ve read them, reviewed them, or think they don’t belong on the list? Or something else?
jb says: Sorry, Lee. I’m a communicator.
I read the ones I struck out.
Feb 10th, 2007 at 11:58 am
“Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson was a revelation to me when I was a teenager. I’ve always been an avid reader of short stories and the many-faceted microcosm Anderson created in that collection I found endlessly fascinating.
jb says: I’ve never understood the reluctance of most publishers to the short story form. It is very different to the novel, but the best short-stories are endlessly fascinating. And the craft itself is much closer to poetry than to other forms of narrative.
Feb 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
While many would say it’s silly to put stock in lists, I think that such a list is a great guide for someone who really wants to read some of the best literature ever written. And these lists aren’t put together willy-nilly; there is a basis for why these have been selected. There are some missing in my opinion, and some that are there that wouldn’t make my list, but overall it’s a generalized agreement as to literary value.
You’ve read quite a large number of them! I’m working my way through a similar list, and have used some of these compiled lists to stock my library.
jb says: Almost any list will draw me. I can go through a drawer and find a shopping list from several years ago and read it from top to bottom. And I love it when novelists use lists within a narrative. Not just me, is it?
Feb 11th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Someone asked:
Where is Hamsun? Camus? Duras ? Gide? Proust? Thomas Mann? Franz Kafka? Gunter Grass? Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Robert Musil? Beckett? Pasternak? Bulgakov? Solzhenitsyn? Borges? Puig?
The compilers of list must have restricted their choices to novels written in English.
Feb 11th, 2007 at 8:21 am
If I could cross out the ones I have, but haven’t read (yet), I’d go a long way on this list. But I’m happy to say I did read I, Claudius. Surprisingly, it seems as if no one else ever has.
jb says: I didn’t read I, Claudius either. Once I thought I might do it, but I was wrong.
Feb 11th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
To Nila: I read I, Claudius, and liked it quite a lot.
My list would be different. (For one thing, Thomas Mann would be on it! For short and long fiction!) But presumably the list is limited to books written in English. Even with that restriction, though, my list would be somewhat different.
jb says: Hi Kelly. I think that with 100 titles, almost everyone’s list would be different. But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I think Andrew Noselli must surely be right that this list was restricted to English language books.
jb says: Yes, Andrew, I think so, too.
Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
A quick search yielded this confirmation:
‘In 1998 the Modern Library, a division of Random House, New York, released this list of “the 100 best novels written in the English language and published since 1900.” ‘
http://dreamwater.org/whittenword/100best.htm
jb says: It’s good to have these things cleared up.
Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Seeing as everyone does seem to love a list, how about compiling your own literature list, John?
jb says: Tempting. But it would be a long list, always missing something important. By this stage of the game I’ve read a lot of books and although they’re still there, there’s always the odd one or two which are in hiding.
Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
This is getting ridiculous but just to add, I love the quotes section of this site.
jb says: You might be the first one to have noticed it.
Mar 21st, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Would Celine make your list, John? Must re-read Journey to the End of the Night soon. He probably comes to mind for the comparisons one could make with Hamsun; Mysteries being one of my favourite novels.
jb says: Speak to the hand . . .
Mar 31st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Ah, they forgot Doctor Zhivago…How sad. And just where is the brilliant Kafka? I can’t seem to find him in anywhere of these lists. You’re right; what is it with lists? Sigh.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
For me the best of that list is Tropic of Cancer, as you said there are missing a lot of good authors including also Cortazar, Nin, Vargas Llosa, Pynchon, Kabawara and many more.
Jun 7th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Interestingly, one can not restrict oneself to the English language books even if tries. Lolita was written by Nabokov presumably in English first. However, the Russian translation seems to be written either simultaneously, or very soon after. Some of the word-play can only be understood in (or created specifically for) Russian version.
Nov 19th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
This is the list of the best 100 books written in english since 1900. that’s why Camus, kafka, proust, mann,… are not on the list even if they are some of the greatest writter ever.
jb says: Hi Robin, thanks for that. But Camus wasn’t born until 1913, so I guess most of his writings came after that. Kafka’s Metamorphosis was published in 1915, and his other novels later still. Proust published the first part of Remembrance of Things Past in 1913. And Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain appeared in 1924. So they do qualify for the list, but they still didn’t get on it.