All-Time Great Novel Rankings
A comprehensive, canon-inspired list of influential and critically acclaimed novels
Art & LiteratureTop 100
🌍 World Ranking
▲ Top 5
#1
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (1850)
+5
#2
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (1899)
+5
#3
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
+4
#4
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (1869)
+4
#5
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner (1930)
+3
▼ Bottom 5
#1
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (1890)
-5
#2
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (1984)
-5
#3
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (1862)
-4
#4
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1932)
-3
#5
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (1973)
-3
All Items (96)
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (1850)+5
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (1899)+5
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (1869)+4
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)+4
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)+3
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner (1930)+3
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922)+2
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)+2
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (1937)+1
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller (1961)+1
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (1605)—
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (1719)—
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)—
Tom Jones - Henry Fielding (1749)—
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (1813)—
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (1811)—
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (1847)—
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë (1847)—
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (1861)—
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1838)—
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (1859)—
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville (1851)—
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)—
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (1857)—
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1877)—
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)—
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1869)—
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (1844)—
Dracula - Bram Stoker (1897)—
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (1884)—
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain (1876)—
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (1915)—
The Trial - Franz Kafka (1925)—
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce (1916)—
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (1925)—
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927)—
Tender Is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)—
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (1949)—
Animal Farm - George Orwell (1945)—
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)—
East of Eden - John Steinbeck (1952)—
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1926)—
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway (1929)—
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (1940)—
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1952)—
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (1929)—
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner (1936)—
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1955)—
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1951)—
On the Road - Jack Kerouac (1957)—
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut (1969)—
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison (1952)—
Beloved - Toni Morrison (1987)—
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison (1977)—
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (1970)—
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (1958)—
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez (1967)—
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez (1985)—
The Stranger - Albert Camus (1942)—
The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)—
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (1980)—
If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino (1979)—
The Tin Drum - Günter Grass (1959)—
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (1981)—
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie (1988)—
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997)—
White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985)—
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (1996)—
The Road - Cormac McCarthy (2006)—
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (1985)—
All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy (1992)—
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (1985)—
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood (2003)—
Atonement - Ian McEwan (2001)—
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)—
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera (1979)—
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)—
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (1957)—
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami (1994)—
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami (2002)—
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (1987)—
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2001)—
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2001)—
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (2003)—
American Pastoral - Philip Roth (1997)—
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth (1969)—
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon (1966)—
Underworld - Don DeLillo (1997)-1
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (1988)-2
The Call of the Wild - Jack London (1903)-3
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (1932)-3
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (1962)-3
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon (1973)-3
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (1862)-4
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (1890)-5
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (1984)-5