#006. The top 100 books of all time

Full list of the 100 best works of fiction, alphabetically by author, as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided.

Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger

Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz

Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories

Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking

Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart

Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy

Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers

Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook

Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales

Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985), History

Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights

Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea

Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea

Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads

Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet

Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel

Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle Bohemia

Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera

Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales

George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch

George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984

Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems

Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).

Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron

Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum

Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education

Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People

Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories

Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House

Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby Dick

Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey

Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot

Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno

Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273), Mathnawi

James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses

Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice

Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust (English) (German)

Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions

Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness

Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo

Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo

Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala (Abhijnanasakuntalam)

Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger (English) (Hebrew)

Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the Night

Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).

Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past

Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian

Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592), Essays

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote

Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi

Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls

Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek

Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).

Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses

Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970), Poems

Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man

Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities

Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children

Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292), The Orchard

Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji

Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King

Stendhal, France, (1783-1842), The Red and the Black

Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North

The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC).

Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain

Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).

Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved

Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana (online-link)

Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid

Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse

Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977), Lolita

Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass

William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom!; The Sound and the Fury

William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello

Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain

Source of the information: Guardian Unlimited