This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 664 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.
Here the first 21:
| # | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ulysses | James Joyce | 1922 | Irish | English |
| 2 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 | American | English |
| 3 | In Search of Lost Time | Marcel Proust | 1913 | French | French |
| 4 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | 1951 | American | English |
| 5 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | 1967 | Colombian | Spanish |
| 6 | Nineteen Eighty Four | George Orwell | 1949 | British | English |
| 7 | Moby-Dick | Herman Melville | 1851 | American | English |
| 8 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | 1929 | American | English |
| 9 | Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes | 1605 | Spanish | Spanish |
| 10 | Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | 1877 | Russian | Russian |
| 11 | Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky | 1866 | Russian | Russian |
| 12 | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | British | English |
| 13 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 | American | English |
| 14 | War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 1869 | Russian | Russian |
| 15 | Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | 1847 | British | English |
| 16 | The Lord of the Rings | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1954 | British | English |
| 17 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | 1960 | American | English |
| 18 | The Bible | Unknown | -1400 | Jewish | Hebrew, aramaic, greek |
| 19 | The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky | 1880 | Russian | Russian |
| 20 | The Trial | Franz Kafka | 1925 | Czech | German |
| 21 | The Stranger | Albert Camus | 1942 | French | French |