The Top 99 Novels
Here's a stripped-down and ranked version of the longer and chronological The Greatest Novels and The Greatest Novellas lists combined.
You may also be interested in The Top 99 works of all literature and The Top 99 Stories.
The top 99 novels and novellas
Latest update: February 12, 2026
1. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, novel, 1605–1615
2. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust, France, novel, 1913–1927
3. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, France, novel, 1857
4. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, Russia, novel, 1865–1869
5. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1866
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia, novel, 1967
7. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, Russia, novel, 1878
8. Ulysses, James Joyce, Ireland, novel, 1922
9. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1880
10. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, England, novel, 1949
11. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, United States, novel, 1851
12. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Russia, novel, 1955
13. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, England, novel, 1813
14. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, England, novel, 1847
15. Beloved, Toni Morrison, United States, novel, 1987
16. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, England, novel, 1818
17. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, United States, novel, 1925
18. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, novel, 1958
19. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, United States, novel, 1884
20. Middlemarch, George Eliot, England, novel, 1872
21. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Canada, novel, 1985
22. Trial, Franz Kafka, Austria, novel, 1925
23. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Ireland, novel, 1726
24. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, England, novel, 1954–1955
25. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, England, novel, 1847
26. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne, England, novel, 1759–1767
27. The Red and the Black, Stendhal, France, novel, 1831
28. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, England, novel, 1865
29. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, France, novel, 1862
30. The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, Japan, novel, c.1020
31. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, United States, novel, 1929
32. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, India, novel, 1981
33. The Count of Monte-Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, France, novel, 1844–1846
34. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, United States, novel, 1960
35. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, United States, novel, 1952
36. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, Germany, novel, 1924
37. Dracula, Bram Stoker, Ireland, novel, 1897
38. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, England, novella, 1902
39. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, United States, novel, 1951
40. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, United States, novel, 1939
41. The Outsider, Albert Camus, Algeria, novella, 1942
42. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, England, novel, 1925
43. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, Austria, novella, 1916
44. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James, United States, novel, 1881
45. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, Ireland, novel, 1891
46. A Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert, France, novel, 1869
47. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1861
48. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, Italy, novel, 1980
49. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, England, novel, 1932
50. Candide, Voltaire, France, novella, 1759
51. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, Ireland, novel, 1916
52. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing, England, novel, 1959
53. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, Russia, novel, 1967
54. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque, Germany, novel, 1929
55. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, England, novel, 1927
56. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia, novel, 1985
57. Emma, Jane Austen, England, novel, 1815
58. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, France, novella, 1943
59. Animal Farm, George Orwell, England, novella, 1945
60. The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil, Austria, novel, 1930–1943
61. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, England, novel, 1719
62. Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar, Belgium, novel, 1951
63. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, United States, novel, 1940
64. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev, Russia, novel, 1862
65. The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais, France, novel, 1532–1564
66. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner, United States, novel, 1936
67. Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol, Ukraine, novel, 1842
68. The Leopard, Giusseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Italy, novel, 1958
69. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1850
70. Blindness, José Saramago, Portugal, novel, 1995
71. On the Road, Jack Kerouac, United States, novel, 1957
72. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, France, novel, 1844
73. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, United States, novel, 1920
74. Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Canada, novel, 2001
75. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, novel, 1774
76. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1874
77. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1859
78. The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal, France, novel, 1839
79. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, England, novel, 1947
80. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, United States, novel, 1936
81. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding, England, novel, 1749
82. Bleak House, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1853
83. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, Russia, novel, 1957
84. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray, England, novel, 1848
85. Journey to the End of the Night , Louis-Ferdinand Céline, France, novel, 1932
86. Lord of the Flies, William Golding, England, novel, 1954
87. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, England, novel, 1898
88. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster, England, novel, 1924
89. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, England, novel, 1966
90. Catch-23, Joseph Heller, United States, novel, 1961
91. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, England, novel, 1938
92. Hunger, Knut Hamsun, Norway, novel, 1899
93. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, England, novel, 1902
94. Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin, China, novel, 1791–1792
95. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, United States, novel, 1852
96. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland, novel, 1883
97. The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1872
98. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, United States, novel, 1969
99. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, United States, novel, 2003
Bonus reads
For your further reading pleasure, here are some highly ranked novels that didn't quite make it into this Top 99 this time:
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, United States, novel, 1955
The Tin Drum, Günter Grass, Germany, novel, 1959
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie, England, novel, 1939
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, United States, novel, 1930
The Road, Cormac McCarthy, United States, novel, 2006
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, England, novel, 1962
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, United States, novel, 1926
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy, Russia, novella, 1886
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, United States, novel, 1868–1869
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, Brazil, novel, 1988
Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre, France, novel, 1938
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, United States, novel, 1980
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, United States, novel, 1850
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann, Germany, novel, 1901
The Plague, Albert Camus, Algeria, novel, 1947
Perfume, Patrick Süskind, Germany, novel, 1985
Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo, Mexico, novella, 1955
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, United States, novel, 1939
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, United States, novel, 1937
