100 Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries

Which Books Are on the Best Books of All Time List?

Gilgamesh: A New English VersionCan you guess which books are likely on this list of best books of all time? If you are familiar with this site, you know that I am on a quest to read broadly, which includes reading the world.

Following a global reading list allows me to broaden my perspective on life, and get a better understanding of other cultures. I first found the Bokklubben World Library on Wikipedia  nearly five years ago when I decided to read the world when my mother died.

I like the 100 best books of all time proposed by authors from around the world because the list consists of the classics. And I own quite a few of the books although I have not read most of them yet.

One of the problems I had with the list at the time I discovered it was that no Canadian books are on the list. I think that Anne of Green Gables should have been on the list, and I still believe that. Additionally, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood should also be on this list.

I am very conscious of the omission because I am Canadian. I notice that one of the authors they surveyed is Rohinton Mistry, who was born in India, but now lives in Canada.

Some of the books that are on the Bokklubben World Library List of Best Books of All Time are also on the List of Bestselling Books of All Time That Sold Over 10M Copies.

UPDATE: First Published August 2017

Have you read?

List of Bestselling Books of All Time That Sold More Than 10M Copies

List of 100 Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries

1. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
2. Fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen
3. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
4. Epic of Gilgamesh, Unknown
5. Book of Job, Unknown
6. One Thousand and One Nights, Unknown
7. Njál's Saga, Unknown
8. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
9. Le Père Goriot , Honoré de Balzac
10. Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett
11. The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
12. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
13. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
14. The Stranger, Albert Camus
15. Poems, Paul Celan
16. Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
17. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
18. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Stories, Anton Chekhov
20. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
21. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
22. Jacques the Fatalist, Denis Diderot
23. Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin
24. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
25. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
26. The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky
27. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
28. Middlemarch, George Eliot
29. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
30. Medea, Euripides
31. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
32. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
33. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
34. Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert
35. Gypsy Ballads, Federico García Lorca

36. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

37. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
38. Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
39. Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
40. The Tin Drum, Günter Grass
41. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, João Guimarães Rosa
42. Hunger, Knut Hamsun
43. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
44. Iliad, Homer
45. Odyssey, Homer
46. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
47. Ulysses, James Joyce
48. Stories, Franz Kafka
49. The Trial, Franz Kafka
50. The Castle, Franz Kafka
51. Shakuntala, Kālidāsa
52. The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata
53. Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
54. Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
55. Independent People, Halldór Laxness
56. Poems, Giacomo Leopardi
57. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
58. Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren
59. A Madman's Diary, Lu Xun
60. Children of Gebelawi, Naguib Mahfouz
61. Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
62. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
63. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
64. Essays, Michel de Montaigne
65. History, Elsa Morante
66. Beloved, Toni Morrison
67. The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
68. The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil
69. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
70. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
71. Metamorphoses, Ovid
72. The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
73. Tales, Edgar Allan Poe

74. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

75. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
76. Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo
77. Masnavi, Rumi
78. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
79. Bostan, Saadi
80. Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih
81. Blindness, José Saramago
82. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
83. King Lear, William Shakespeare
84. Othello, William Shakespeare
85. Oedipus the King, Sophocles
86. The Red and the Black, Stendhal
87. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
88. Confessions of Zeno, Italo Svevo
89. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
90. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
91. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
92. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy
93. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
94. Ramayana, Valmiki
95. Aeneid, Virgil
96. Mahabharata, Vyasa
97. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
98. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
99. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
100. Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar

Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries by Female Authors

There are 100 books on the Bokklubben World Library List. Four of the books the authors are unknown, 11 by female authors and 85 by male authors.

Reading Women: Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Wuthering Heights
3. Middlemarch
4. The Golden Notebook
5. Pippi Longstocking
6. History
7. Beloved
8. The Tale of Genji
9. Mrs Dalloway
10. To the Lighthouse
11. Memoirs of Hadrian

Authors with More Than One Book on the List

Franz Kafka

1. Stories
2. The Trial
3. The Castle

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1. Crime and Punishment
2. The Idiot
3. The Possessed
4. The Brothers Karamazov

Gabriel García Márquez

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude
2. Love in the Time of Cholera

Gustave Flaubert

1. Madame Bovary
2. Sentimental Education

Homer

1. Iliad
2. Odyssey

Leo Tolstoy

1. War and Peace
2. Anna Karenina
3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Thomas Mann

1. Buddenbrooks
2. The Magic Mountain

Virginia Woolf

1. Mrs Dalloway
2. To the Lighthouse

William Faulkner

1. Absalom, Absalom!
2. The Sound and the Fury

William Shakespeare

1. Hamlet
2. King Lear
3. Othello

Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries by Language

If you are thinking of reading the classics, give this global reading list a try. It does not contain most of the usual suspects which is great. If you want to elevate yourself mentally, you should not read what the majority of people are reading. The challenge is that most of the books on the list are not books that you can whip through, you have to be more thoughtful when reading and digesting the words on the page.

Best Books of All Time Proposed by 100 Authors from 54 Countries Avil Has Read

Have you read?

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a Book Review

Review – Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen – Book Review

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, Review #theclassics

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Book Review

1. Things Fall Apart
2. Fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen
3. Epic of Gilgamesh
4. Book of Job (I have read the Bible twice. I read it throughout last year)
5. One Thousand and One Nights
6. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
7. Wuthering Heights
8. Medea
9. Madame Bovary
10. Love in the Time of Cholera
11. Hunger , Knut Hamsun
12. The Old Man and the Sea
13. Odyssey
14. A Doll's House
15. The Trial
16. Zorba the Greek
17. Pippi Longstocking
18. Nineteen Eighty-Four
19. Hamlet
20. Oedipus the King
21. Gulliver's Travels
22. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
23. Mahabharata
24. Mrs Dalloway

Things Fall ApartHans Christian Andersen's Fairy TalesGilgamesh: A New English VersionThe Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (Modern Library Classics)FiccionesWuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)Medea (Dover Thrift Editions)Madame BovaryLove in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club)HungerA Doll's HouseOedipus the KingGulliver's Travels (Wordsworth Classics)Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMrs. Dalloway