The 50 Greatest Books of All Time: A Definitive List
8 min readJul 13, 2023
Literature has the power to transport us to different worlds, ignite our imagination, and inspire profound thoughts. Throughout history, countless books have left an indelible mark on readers, becoming timeless classics cherished by generations. In this article, we present a definitive list of the 50 greatest books of all time. These literary masterpieces have stood the test of time and continue to captivate readers with their exceptional storytelling, profound themes, and unforgettable characters. Join us as we embark on a journey through the realms of literary excellence.
1 . In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
2 . Ulysses by James Joyce
3 . Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4 . One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5 . The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6 . Moby Dick by Herman Melville
7 . War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
8 . Hamlet by William Shakespeare
9 . The Odyssey by Homer
10 . Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
11 . The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
12 . Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
13 . The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
14 . Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
15 . Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
16 . The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
17 . Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
18 . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
19 . Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
20 . Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
21 . The Iliad by Homer
22 . To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
23 . Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
24 . Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
25 . The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
26 . Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
27 . Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
28 . One Thousand and One Nights by India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt
29 . The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
30 . Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
31 . Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
32 . To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
33 . The Trial by Franz Kafka
34 . The Red and the Black by Stendhal
35 . Middlemarch by George Eliot
36 . Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
37 . Beloved by Toni Morrison
38 . Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
39 . The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
40 . The Stranger by Albert Camus
41 . Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
42 . The Aeneid by Virgil
43 . Collected Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
44 . The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
45 . David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
46 . Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
47 . Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
48 . The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
49 . A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
50 . Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
