What is the world's greatest reading?

Editor Eric's flagship list, The Greatest Literature of All Time, presents the world's greatest literary works from all countries, cultures and eras.

Further comprehensive lists delve into the world's greatest novels, stories, poems, plays, nonfiction and other literary forms, as well as the most popular genres, like historical fiction, crime and mystery, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, horror, romance, alternative history and philosophical fiction.

For those interested in great literature from around the planet, we've developed Greatest Literature lists for twenty-seven individual countries and regions.

Those who have asked for a more concise guide to the greatest literature get their wish with the ranked Top 99 Works of Literature. Meanwhile, for those aiming to explore the world's literature in greater breadth than offered in any of our other lists, The Really Long List of Great Literature has been created.

How was it done?

More than three decades of research have created—and continually updated—Editor Eric's lists of the greatest literature. This has involved studying how readers, writers, critics and scholars around the world appreciate the works of today and the past, as well as aggregating titles from more than three hundred best-of lists, anthologies, collections, academic curricula, reading guides and literary awards. See "Creating the Greatest Literature of All Time" for more about the painstaking process of handcrafting the lists from among the world's most revered literary works.

Plus, click the links to the more than a thousand critiques and other information on selected books, authors and adaptations of the world's greatest literature.

And keep reading.

Ten recent book and author critiques

Vengeance is ours

Separately the plays in Aeschylus's house of Atreus trilogy are skimpy. Or they may seem so to the modern reader or theatre-goer. In each instalment the narrative turns on a single great dramatic incident. In Agamemnon the king of the title returns home victorious from the ten-year Trojan War, only to be killed by.... Oresteia

A what-if and when-if classic

Bring the Jubilee is one of those modern works declared a classic within certain genres but, despite repeated reprinting, largely forgotten by the general reading public. Which is appropriate in this case perhaps, as Ward Moore's novel has to do with changing history. Did someone go back in time to remove copies of.... Bring the Jubilee

Going, going, gone flat

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, we had a spate of bestsellers with "girl" in the titles: Girl, Interrupted (1993), Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), The Windup Girl (2009), Gone Girl (2012), The Girl on the Train (2015), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005) and its similarly named sequels.... Gone Girl

Selling the good book for fun and profit

When they got around to making the movie of Elmer Gantry—more than three decades after the novel came out—they still felt compelled to preface it with a warning: We believe that certain aspects of Revivalism can bear examination—that the conduct of some revivalists makes a mockery of the traditional.... Elmer Gantry

Another not-so-different world

What is this? You could waste a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is. Some people have clearly decided. The science fiction community has claimed Michael Chabon's 2007 novel as one of its own, conferring on it a slew of accolades, including the prestigious.... The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Becoming more than human

The superman concept has had a steady run in science fiction. Since the genre's early days, great and mediocre writers have produced narratives around characters surpassing the natural limits constricting humanity—with or without the disturbing Nietzschean or fascist undertones. Readers have long been fascinated by.... A.E. van Vogt

Then and now in middling America

A century after its first publication, the story of George Babbitt can elicit reactions of both "This is so dated!" and "Just like today!" And often from the same readers. Sinclair Lewis's most influential novel, Babbitt, deftly satirizes the middle-class customs, political fashions and cultural artefacts of its time and place—namely.... Babbitt

What might have happened

A superior espionage novel can engage your sympathy with opposing characters. Although at the fantasy end of the thriller spectrum one can dreamily identify with a super-heroic agent, like James Bond, while cheering for the demise of a villainous mastermind out to destroy the world, the more sophisticated thriller.... Eye of the Needle

From Russia with love and death

After spending a good part of a summer living in and out of War and Peace, I was astounded to read that in his latter years Leo Tolstoy disdained it. The novel, whose title has become shorthand for monumentally great literature, was elitist, the author is supposed to have said. It presented a romantic.... War and Peace

In praise of running away—and back

John Updike is most known for Rabbit, Run but it's not his best or best-reviewed novel. It's not even his best or best-reviewed novel in the book series it kicks off. That would be the sequel, Rabbit Redux, the one critics have called a masterpiece. Or possibly the third or fourth book in the series, Rabbit Is Rich and.... Rabbit, Run

Index to all book critiques • Index to all author critiques

Features of note

How works were selected

Wondering what makes this list of great literature the most accurate and most comprehensive? What makes these books the best? Read Editor Eric's account of how the Greatest Literature of All Time list was researched, created, revised and recreated repeatedly over more than twenty years.

What's so great about these books?

Readers and critics can have widely diverging ideas about what makes a certain book good and another one not-so. How can we find agreement on which works are the greatest? What does "greatest" even mean? Can popular genre books be compared with literary masterpieces? How is a Greatest Literature of All Time list even possible?

Science fiction, scifi, speculative fiction or SF—what is it?

The story of the continuing struggle to define this genre and distinguish it from others. How Editor Eric settled on the criterion used for his greatest science fiction list.