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Best Classic Literature Books
Classic literature is the body of work that time has tested and culture has kept. These are the books that universities teach, translators revisit, and readers return to decade after decade because they continue to yield new meanings. The classics are not a fixed canon — they are an ongoing argument about which works matter and why, shaped by changing tastes, emerging voices, and the slow revision of received wisdom. From Homer and Dante to Austen, Melville, and Dostoevsky, the classics offer a conversation across centuries that no other cultural form can match.
50 titles ranked · Scored across 40+ editorial sources
#1
literary-fiction
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro· 1989
★Nobel Prize in Literature★Booker Prize
Editorial Score100/100
#2
literary-fiction
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass· 1999
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score98/100
#3
literary-fiction
Celestial Bodies
Jokha Alharthi· 2010
★Booker Prize
Editorial Score93/100
#4
literary-fiction
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck· 1962
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score90/100
#5
literary-fiction
Beloved
Toni Morrison· 1993
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score85/100
#6
literary-fiction
The Green House
Mario Vargas Llosa· 1966
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score84/100
#7
classic-literature
The Bridge on the Drina
Ivo Andrić· 1945
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score83/100
#8
literary-fiction
The Trial
Franz Kafka· 1963
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score80/100
#9
literary-fiction
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison· 1952
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score79/100
#10
literary-fiction
The Stranger
Albert Camus· 1957
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score79/100
#11
literary-fiction
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner· 1949
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score78/100
#12
literary-fiction
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf· 1925
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score78/100
#13
literary-fiction
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee· 1961
★Pulitzer Prize
Editorial Score78/100
#14
literary-fiction
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy· 1877
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#15
literary-fiction
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky· 1866
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#16
literary-fiction
The Human Comedy
William Saroyan· 1943
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#17
literary-fiction
Fatelessness
Imre Kertész· 1975
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#18
literary-fiction
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann· 1929
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score75/100
#19
literary-fiction
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse· 1946
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score74/100
#20
literary-fiction
Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata· 1968
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#21
literary-fiction
Growth of the Soil
Knut Hamsun· 1920
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#22
short-stories
Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges· 1944
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#23
literary-fiction
The Waves
Virginia Woolf· 1931
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#24
literary-fiction
Humboldt's Gift
Saul Bellow· 1976
★Pulitzer Prize
Editorial Score70/100
#25
literary-fiction
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow· 1954
★National Book Award
Editorial Score70/100
#26
literary-fiction
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy· 1869
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#27
literary-fiction
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky· 1880
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#28
literary-fiction
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez· 1985
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#29
literary-fiction
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez· 1982
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#30
literary-fiction
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov· 1967
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#31
literary-fiction
The Plague
Albert Camus· 1947
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#32
literary-fiction
The Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison· 1953
★National Book Award
Editorial Score69/100
#33
literary-fiction
Independent People
Halldór Laxness· 1955
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#34
literary-fiction
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse· 1922
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#35
literary-fiction
Narcissus and Goldmund
Hermann Hesse· 1930
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#36
historical-fiction
The Longest Memory
Fred D'Aguiar· 1994
★Costa Book Award
Editorial Score68/100
#37
literary-fiction
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway· 1954
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score67/100
#38
literary-fiction
Rabbit at Rest
John Updike· 1991
★Pulitzer Prize
Editorial Score67/100
#39
literary-fiction
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf· 1927
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#40
literary-fiction
Hunger
Knut Hamsun· 1890
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#41
literary-fiction
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Yukio Mishima· 1963
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#42
poetry
Omeros
Derek Walcott· 1990
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#43
literary-fiction
The Sea, The Sea
Iris Murdoch· 1978
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score65/100
#44
literary-fiction
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak· 1958
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score64/100
#45
philosophy
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Octavio Paz· 1950
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score64/100
#46
literary-fiction
The Family of Pascual Duarte
Camilo José Cela· 1942
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score63/100
#47
literary-fiction
The Hive
Camilo José Cela· 1951
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score63/100
#48
literary-fiction
The Color Purple
Alice Walker· 1983
★Pulitzer Prize
Editorial Score62/100
#49
literary-fiction
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren· 1947
★Pulitzer Prize
Editorial Score62/100
#50
short-stories
The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever· 1979
★National Book Award
Editorial Score61/100
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