The 100 Best English Language Novels

This list was compiled by the editorial board of Random House's The Modern Library from novels published in English since 1900.

1. Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922

2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916

4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1958

5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley,1932

6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1924

7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961

8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1940

9. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence, 1913

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939

11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 1947

12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler, 1903

13. 1984, George Orwell, 1949

14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves, 1934

15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927

16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 1925

17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, 1940

18. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952

20. Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940

21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 1959

22. Appointment In Samarra, John O'Hara, 1934

23. USA (trilogy), John Dos Passos, 1930

24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson, 1919

25. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster, 1924

26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James, 1902

27. The Ambassadors, Henry James, 1903

28. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934

29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell, 1932

30. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford, 1915

31. Animal Farm, George Orwell, 1945

32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James, 1904

33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser, 1960

34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh, 1934

35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, 1930

36. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, 1946

37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder, 1927

38. Howards End, E.M. Forster, 1910

39. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin, 1953

40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene, 1948

41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding, 1954

42. Deliverance, James Dickey, 1970

43. A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell, 1951

44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley, 1928

45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926

46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad, 1907

47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad, 1904

48. The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence, 1915

49. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence, 1921

50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller, 1934

51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, 1948

52. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, 1969

53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962

54. Light in August, William Faulkner, 1932

55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957

56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930

57. Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford, 1924

58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 1920

59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm, 1911

60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy, 1961

61. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather, 1927

62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones, 1951

63. The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever, 1957

64. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951

65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962

66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham, 1915

67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902

68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis, 1920

69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905

70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durell, 1957

71. A High Wind in Jamacia, Richard Hughes, 1929

72. A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul, 1961

73. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West, 1939

74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway, 1929

75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh, 1938

76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961

77. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, 1939

78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 1901

79. A Room With a View, E.M. Forster, 1908

80. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945

81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow, 1953

82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner, 1971

83. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul, 1979

84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen, 1938

85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad, 1900

86. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow, 1975

87. The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett, 1908

88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903

89. Loving, Henry Green, 1945

90. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981

91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell, 1932

92. Ironweed, William Kennedy, 1987

93. The Magus, John Fowles, 1966

94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, 1966

95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch, 1954

96. Sophie's Choice, William Styron, 1979

97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles, 1948

98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain, 1934

99. The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy, 1955

100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington, 1918

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