The 100 best novels written in English: the full list

After two years of careful consideration, Robert McCrum has reached a

verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English.
Take a look at his list
 Robert McCrum reflects on his choices
 One in five doesn’t represent over 300 years of women in
literature: a response
 What is missing: readers’ alternative list
 The world’s 100 greatest novels of all time (2003)

Ten of the best ... Some of the titles in Robert McCrum’s list.
Mon 17 Aug 2015 10.11 BST
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1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and
beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.

2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had
enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-
famous novel is a complex literary confection, and it’s irresistible.

3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in
English

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4. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)
Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-
riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that
Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the
knowledge it displays of the human heart.”

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age
and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society
in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.

6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence

Sterne (1759)
Laurence Sterne’s vivid novel caused delight and consternation when it
first appeared and has lost little of its original bite.

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

Jane Austen’s Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early
books with a deep sensibility.

8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley’s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece of horror
and the macabre.

9. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)

The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired by Thomas
Love Peacock’s friendship with Shelley, lies in the delight the author
takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.
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10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan
Poe (1838)
Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel – a classic adventure story with
supernatural elements – has fascinated and influenced generations of
writers.

11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

The future prime minister displayed flashes of brilliance that equalled
the greatest Victorian novelists.

A whirlwind success … Jane Eyre.

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of
Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue
with the reader.

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Emily Brontë’s windswept masterpiece is notable not just for its wild
beauty but for its daring reinvention of the novel form itself.

14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura
performance by a writer at the top of his game.

15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great
entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker
masterpieces.

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16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism
and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe.

17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Wise, funny and gripping, Melville’s epic work continues to cast a long
shadow over American literature.

18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and
best loved in the English canon.

19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed by many as the greatest English
detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the
realistic.

20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female
market has iconic status in America and never been out of print.

21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the
great Victorian fictions.

22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and
dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as
Trollope’s masterpiece.
23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)
Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation
upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of
American literature.

24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and fascinating study of
the Scottish character, Kidnapped has lost none of its power.

25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)

Jerome K Jerome’s accidental classic about messing about on the
Thames remains a comic gem.

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26. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
Sherlock Holmes’s second outing sees Conan Doyle’s brilliant sleuth –
and his bluff sidekick Watson – come into their own.

Helmut Berger and Richard Todd in the 1970 adaptation of The Picture of
Dorian Gray.
27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
Wilde’s brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption
was greeted with howls of protest on publication.

28. New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

George Gissing’s portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as
relevant today as it was in the late 19th century.

29. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

Hardy exposed his deepest feelings in this bleak, angry novel and,
stung by the hostile response, he never wrote another.

30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

Stephen Crane’s account of a young man’s passage to manhood
through soldiery is a blueprint for the great American war novel.

31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story was very much of its time but still
resonates more than a century later.

32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)

Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about a life-changing journey in search of
Mr Kurtz has the simplicity of great myth.

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33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)
Theodore Dreiser was no stylist, but there’s a terrific momentum to his
unflinching novel about a country girl’s American dream.

34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

In Kipling’s classic boy’s own spy story, an orphan in British India
must make a choice between east and west.

35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

Jack London’s vivid adventures of a pet dog that goes back to nature
reveal an extraordinary style and consummate storytelling.

36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

American literature contains nothing else quite like Henry James’s
amazing, labyrinthine and claustrophobic novel.

37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)

This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who
becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by
DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.

38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

The evergreen tale from the riverbank and a powerful contribution to
the mythology of Edwardian England.

39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)

The choice is great, but Wells’s ironic portrait of a man very like
himself is the novel that stands out.

40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911)

The passage of time has conferred a dark power upon Beerbohm’s
ostensibly light and witty Edwardian satire.

41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the
facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to
this day.

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose,
is hard to put down.

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43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)
The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for
the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.

44. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham (1915)

Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s
savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.

45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce
indictment of a society estranged from culture.

46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering
work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.

47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s
America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.

48. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)

EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of
empire.

49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)

A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the
enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.

50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for
themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.

Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby’s film adaptation
by Baz Luhrmann.
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51. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Fitzgerald’s jazz age masterpiece has become a tantalising metaphor
for the eternal mystery of art.

52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this
original satire about England after the first world war.

53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Hemingway’s first and best novel makes an escape to 1920s Spain to
explore courage, cowardice and manly authenticity.

54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Dashiell Hammett’s crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade
influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carré.

55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi
rural life can be felt to this day.

56. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Aldous Huxley’s vision of a future human race controlled by global
capitalism is every bit as prescient as Orwell’s more famous dystopia.

57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-
Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent
generations.

58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)

The middle volume of John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy is revolutionary
in its intent, techniques and lasting impact.

59. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

The US novelist’s debut revelled in a Paris underworld of seedy sex and
changed the course of the novel – though not without a fight with the
censors.

60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and
memorable.

61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

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Samuel Beckett’s first published novel is an absurdist masterpiece, a
showcase for his uniquely comic voice.

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.

62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled debut brings to life the seedy LA
underworld – and Philip Marlowe, the archetypal fictional detective.

63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)

Set on the eve of war, this neglected modernist masterpiece centres on
a group of bright young revellers delayed by fog.

64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)

Labyrinthine and multilayered, Flann O’Brien’s humorous debut is
both a reflection on, and an exemplar of, the Irish novel.

65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn
apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US
society.

66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)

PG Wodehouse’s elegiac Jeeves novel, written during his disastrous
years in wartime Germany, remains his masterpiece.

67. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the
1930s in the American south.

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68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)
Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece about the last hours of an alcoholic ex-
diplomat in Mexico is set to the drumbeat of coming conflict.

69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

Elizabeth Bowen’s 1948 novel perfectly captures the atmosphere of
London during the blitz while providing brilliant insights into the
human heart.
Richard Burton and John Hurt in Nineteen Eighty-four.
70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
George Orwell’s dystopian classic cost its author dear but is arguably
the best-known novel in English of the 20th century.

71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Graham Greene’s moving tale of adultery and its aftermath ties
together several vital strands in his work.

72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

JD Salinger’s study of teenage rebellion remains one of the most
controversial and best-loved American novels of the 20th century.

73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

In the long-running hunt to identify the great American novel, Saul
Bellow’s picaresque third book frequently hits the mark.
74. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)
Dismissed at first as “rubbish & dull”, Golding’s brilliantly observed
dystopian desert island tale has since become a classic.

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75. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Nabokov’s tragicomic tour de force crosses the boundaries of good
taste with glee.

76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

The creative history of Kerouac’s beat-generation classic, fuelled by pea
soup and benzedrine, has become as famous as the novel itself.

77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)

A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the
outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to
shrug off the colonial past.

78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Her second novel finally arrived this summer, but Harper Lee’s first
did enough alone to secure her lasting fame, and remains a truly
popular classic.
79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)
Short and bittersweet, Muriel Spark’s tale of the downfall of a Scottish
schoolmistress is a masterpiece of narrative fiction.

80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

This acerbic anti-war novel was slow to fire the public imagination, but
is rightly regarded as a groundbreaking critique of military madness.

81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s,
this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and
political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.

Malcolm Macdowell in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange film.

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82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Anthony Burgess’s dystopian classic still continues to startle and
provoke, refusing to be outshone by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film
adaptation.

83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)

Christopher Isherwood’s story of a gay Englishman struggling with
bereavement in LA is a work of compressed brilliance.

84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, a true story of bloody murder in
rural Kansas, opens a window on the dark underbelly of postwar
America.

85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)

Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman
struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of
Anglo-American feminism.

86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession
with masturbation caused outrage on publication, but remains his most
dazzling work.
87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)
Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in
old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life
facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.

88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one
of America’s great literary protoganists, up there with Huck Finn and
Jay Gatsby.

89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her
name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience
in the 20th century.

90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)

VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence
saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece.

91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

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The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling,
game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very
moment of Indian independence.

92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)

Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in
a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to
Bret Easton Ellis.

Nick Frost as John Self Martin Amis’s Money.

93. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)
Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s
greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self.

94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan,
reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de
force of unreliable narration.

95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)

Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is
her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost
defies analysis.

96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)

Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage
displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American
speech to perfection.

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97. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)
This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the faultlines of Irish
patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world.

98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

A writer of “frightening perception”, Don DeLillo guides the reader in
an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture.

99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)

In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision
infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political
interpretation.

100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)

Peter Carey rounds off our list of literary milestones with a Booker
prize-winning tour-de-force examining the life and times of Australia’s
infamous antihero, Ned Kelly.
100 best novels: one in five doesn’t represent over 300 years of
women in literature
Where’s Carson McCullers, Patricia Highsmith, Erica Jong, and
Margaret Atwood? Rachel Cooke responds to Robert McCrum’s list of
great works of literature
 The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
 Robert McCrum reflects on his choices
 Quiz: How well do you know the 100 best novels?
 The 2003 list of greatest novels
Virginia Woolf, circa 1933. The author of Mrs Dalloway makes the 100 best
novels list, but many other great female writers are absent. Photograph:
Central Press/Getty Images

Rachel Cooke
@msrachelcooke
Sun 16 Aug 2015 09.00 BST
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“B est of” lists are strange and silly things, particularly

in the realm of books: as prize shortlists prove time and time again,
fiction is a most subjective art. But still, what fun they can be, and how
unwittingly revealing. Of Robert McCrum’s 100 Greatest Novels, just
21 are by women. Even allowing for the fact that his list takes in the
17th, 18th and 19th centuries, when women writers were relatively rare,
this seems extraordinary to me. Sixty-seven of his titles belong to the
20th century – his final book is Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly
Gang, which was published in 2000 – and yet, only 15 of these are by
women. How can this be? The last century offers up an embarrassment
of riches when it comes to the female imagination. Is it that Robert
thinks men write better, more important novels than women? Or is it
simply that he is less familiar with the female canon? I’m not sure.
Either way, here I am, eager to help. Let the reprogramming begin.
To take it from the top, I can’t disagree: Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein are masterpieces; so is Jane Eyre by Charlotte
Brontë, Wuthering Heights by her sister, Emily, and Middlemarch by
George Eliot. But to this quintet I might add Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary
Barton (1848), whose cast of working-class characters was then such an
innovation (Dickens was an admirer). Robert has included Mark
Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It’s a wonderful book, but
his neighbour Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
perhaps deserves to join it. A faulty novel, with a preposterous end, its
anti-slavery message nevertheless stirred up great public feeling; its
power should not be discounted.
The 100 best novels written in English – quiz

Read more

We now reach the 20th century. What strikes me first is how many
American writers Robert has chosen (28 of 67), and yet while Edith
Wharton, Harper Lee and even Anne Tyler are among their number, he
has no space for Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers or Willa Cather. The
panting Henry Miller over McCullers or Cather? I don’t think so. So far
as British authors go, he gives us no Ivy Compton-Burnett, no Olivia
Manning or Antonia White. Surely these writers are more deserving of
special attention than, say, stodgy old HG Wells? The two trilogies that
constitute Manning’s Fortunes of War series would certainly be on my
list, as would White’s autobiographical novel of convent school
life, Frost in May (1933). It also seems odd to include Sylvia Townsend
Warner’s witchy feminist tale Lolly Willowes (1926) – a good book, but
not a great one – and yet to exclude, say, Margaret Kennedy’s The
Constant Nymph, the bestseller of 1924, and an exquisite study of
jealousy. Naturally, I approve to the very toes of my blue stockings of
the fact that Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway makes his list. But I think a
case might also be made for Mollie Panter-Downes’s One Fine
Day (1947), in which, over the course of 24 hours, a woman comes to
terms with the changes the second world war has brought to her world.
It’s a less formally experimental novel than Mrs Dalloway, but the
writing, crystalline and true, is just as fine.
On the trail of John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps – books podcast

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Robert has John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps on his list, a novel I can
imagine very few women holding in such high regard. Patricia
Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) is better written and far more
thrilling, if we are to include a page turner, and has been more
influential to boot. Similarly, I favour Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of
Love (1945) or even EM Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady (1932)
over PG Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning. Both, to me, are just as funny.
A children’s novel? He goes for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the
Willows. I love it, too, and wouldn’t want to dislodge Ratty, Toad and
the others from their perch. But perhaps it could keep company
with The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the
healing power of nature saves a family from self-destruction. Mary
Lennox, spoilt and troubled, was the first heroine who really spoke to
me.
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In the second half of the century, I second Robert’s inclusion of Doris
Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping;
ditto The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen – one of the very finest
evocations of wartime London – and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by
Elizabeth Taylor, a brilliant novelist whose work is still too little known
(though I might have favoured Angel or A Game of Hide and Seek).
But Erica Jong’s sexual adventure Fear of Flying (1973) strikes me as a
glaring omission. As does Margaret Atwood’s (horribly prescient)
dystopian fable of 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale, for which Huxley’s Brave
New World or Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange could easily make
way (a bit much to have those and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four).
Others notable by their absence include Pat Barker, Angela Carter and
Carol Shields. Carter’s influence cannot be overstated: her allegorical,
taboo-breaking narratives have been genuinely influential. Barker and
Shields, meanwhile, have given us triumphantly good books in the
form of the Regeneration trilogy and the Pulitzer prize-winning The
Stone Diaries respectively.
What else? Two other names occur to me – only they belong to men. In
the end, I read as a human being, not as a woman, which is why close
to half of the books on Robert’s list would also be on mine. Next to Alan
Hollinghurst’s 1994 sensationally good The Folding Star, a story of
obsessional and rejected love and of the cruelty of beauty, most late
20th-century novels seem flimsy indeed, mere deckchairs to his
polished Chesterfield. And then there is JG Farrell, whose 1970
novel Troubles is, to me, perfection between soft covers: funny, tender
and wise. Set in a crumbling hotel in Ireland just after the first world
war, it is, as I’m always telling people, Fawlty Towers as written by
Evelyn Waugh.
Gender is important; we need to pay attention to it. But it’s not
everything. A great writer can take you anywhere, irrespective of his
sex – or, for that matter, of yours.

The best novels in English: readers' alternative list

After Robert McCrum finished his two-year-long project compiling the
best novels written in English, you had a lot to add. Here are the 15
books that received most votes to join the list
 The 100 best novels written in English: the full list
 Robert McCrum reflects on his choices
 One in five doesn’t represent over 300 years of women in
literature: a response
 The world’s 100 greatest novels of all time (2003)

Brilliant postcolonial novels, incredible explorations of caste systems,

feminist classics, fictional excavations of slavery and works that perfectly
measure the sadness of entire generations ... Your best novels in
English. Photograph: Guardian composite
Marta Bausells
@martabausells
Thu 3 Sep 2015 17.00 BST
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W hich are the 100 best novels ever written in the

English language? No list could possibly satisfy everyone, as is always

the case with listicles. When writer Robert McCrum completed his
own, after developing it over the course of two years, it was greeted
with a mix of enthusiasm and criticism. Most of the scepticism centred
on the lack of diversity, though many readers had their own favourite
omission. So we asked you to nominate the books you thought should
have made the list. Here are the novels that received the most
nominations, in no particular order – we have included all that
received a minimum of two votes.
1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
“It’s the ideal postcolonial novel. Its inventive idiomatic prose
highlights the malleability of the English language: no other writer (or
translator) has evoked the true essence of another language in English.
Period.” Steven Ikeme
“Brilliant, distinctive, thought-provoking and illuminating of a sense of
place and time. Also quite readable.” Ryan
“This book is a seminal piece of great story telling. Set in the advent of
colonialism and its implications for the native people, the clash of
cultures of two different worlds.A story of how a way of life was
replaced by another culture.” Kinnie Hindowah
“It’s an excellent example of black African writing in English of which I
felt your list was sadly lacking. Black African novelists are often sorely
under represented in literary criticism and lists of this kind. In Things
Fall Apart, Achebe explores the colonial experience by arguably using
the tools of colonialism itself, ie the English language. The story is told
from the African perspective and his use of African colloquialisms and
proverbs is genuinely subversive and innovative.” Nathan Loughran
2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997)
“As a non-native English speaker and someone who grew up in an
Asian culture, English as a language appears very articulate and clear
to me. And most well written English literature works, including
poems, embody such almost straightforward characters, both in their
wording and storytelling ... until I read Arundhati Roy’s The God of
Small Things. I still remember how struck I was to see the English
words be played in a way that’s mostly familiar to me in other Asian
literature. The gentle singsong wording and wave-like storytelling
combined with the vividness of English captured me like a dream. I’ve
read many more English novels since, some as captivating and clever,
but none carries the same magic.” Ling
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“The God of Small Things – though a fairly recent book – resonates
very strongly with me. It explores caste, sexism, colonialism and the
strange unspoken rules that tie Indian families together. Like in most
great novels, the prose itself is stunning, with imagery fresh and
original and at the same time, somehow familiar. I’m a girl from a
South Indian village and I was raised by a single mother and my
grandmother. Perhaps it is this coincidence that ties me so strongly to
the book, to see in tangible words the burden that history passes along
to Indian women.” Sita

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“I have never been so moved by a book as this one. Every character is

complete and completely human; the plot is intricate and perfectly
woven; the sentences sparkle with lapidary precision. When common
words fail, she creates her own lexicon (a device I usually loathe in
lesser hands) and creates poetry within the prose – ‘Furrywhirring,’
‘Sariflapping,’ ‘ OrangedrinkLemondrink Man’, ‘fatly baffled.’ The
description of the God of Small Things or mundane tragedies as a
flippant, skipping boy in short pants is as evocative as it is heart
breaking. Roy frames tragic personal stories within the context of the
greater tragedy of Indian social strictures and politics. And the ending
made me cry for two solid hours. I read the book four years ago and
writing this critique is making my throat tighten even now, such is its
incandescent power and brilliance.” Pam Norris
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
“Brutal, heartbreaking and beautiful.” Tanith
“Beloved is one of the greatest novels ever written – in any language or
culture, any genre or generation, any time or clime. It is a measure of
Morrison’s rare and remarkable gift as a writer that one can say of this
innovative novel: all humanity is here. It is the most extraordinary
excavation of the bones and ghosts of American history (slavery,
lynching, Jim Crow segregation), limned in a deeply haunting,
profoundly moving multi-layered epic tragedy. With compelling
candour, courage and conviction, Morrison’s imperishable masterpiece
distils an eerie evocation of mood, setting, landscape and atmosphere,
a complex, even complicated deployment of character and
characterisation, multiple points of view from an interlude of astutely
individuated voices. [...] Toni Morrison’s Beloved is, as TS Eliot wrote
of James Joyce’s Ulysses, ‘a book to which we are all indebted, and
from which none of us can escape.’” Idowu Omoyele
“This novel is important to English literature in three respects. Firstly,
it not only broaches a significant historical topic (American slavery),
but in many ways prescribes solutions to our treatment of slavery’s
history. The novel also uses a beautiful and poetic style to hone in its
themes. Lastly, Morrison utilises magical realism to enhance the
setting and the characters that occupy it. Morrison is one of the first
American authors to use magical realism as a primary stylistic
choice.” Sean Fortenberry

4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

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“Despite the passage of time, I have not forgotten how prescient The
Handmaid’s Tale was, and how prescient it felt. She described a future
that didn’t seem so far-fetched. Living in America gives you a sense,
sometimes, that the fundamentalist Christians, with their literalist
readings of the Bible, would be capable of reading the story of an
infertile woman who had her husband impregnate her handmaid and
see that as a solution to infertility in the modern age. And Atwood not
only gets the reading of the Bible correct, she also foresaw that we
would wreck the planet at the level of reproduction, too. Sometimes,
when another “crazy” thing comes to pass in American politics/culture,
I find myself thinking that we’re moving closer to Atwood’s nightmare
future. If you combine that prescience with Atwood’s deft handling of
language – she really is a prose virtuosa – and you have the making of
a classic.” Lorraine Berry

5. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)

“McCarthy is certainly one of the finest living authors in the world
today and this novel is his best ... A Texan, his dark descriptions of the
American West are second to none. His voice is unique and unmatched
in its originality. This is a novel which hypnotises, horrifies and leaves
the reader as dazed as man who has stood too close to freight-train as it
has roared by his head. Jolting and vividly spattered with blood, the
pages brand themselves deeply into the readers memory and
imagination: A true American masterpiece crafted by a true
master.” Mark Hall
“It is the best novel written in the twentieth century. It tells a
fascinating and complex story with incredible power. It demonstrates
McCarthy’s total mastery of both language and narrative. It has
arguably the greatest villain ever written. It shows the utter
superfluousness of punctuation. It evokes a little-known period in
American history with startling beauty and incredible
realism.” TheMarxOfProgress
“Mccarthy’s novel is a masterpiece with a nihilistic bent and lurid
prose. The Judge is one of the most sinister characters in the history of
literature.” Jay Tucker
6. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1995)
“This is the one book that whisked me away to India. It shows you a
world that you’ve maybe never thought about before, it makes you feel
empathy for the struggles of Indian beggars, it shows you what life was
like in the countryside and in the city. It’s a caleidoscope of people and
stories. It educates you about Indian politics and history. And it’s a
very moving book as well. It can bring tears into your eyes (not mine of
course, I’m talking about a friend...)” Isabelle Meyer
“A great and fluid command of the language, an achingly accurate
portrayal of the complexity of human choices, startling humour in
places you least expect, tender treatment of the tragedy that is the
human condition... This book takes you right into the drama of
ordinary, seemingly forgettable lives.” Vivian Ligo
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“It is a beautifully written, tragic tale of how four characters from
different backgrounds join together, but how their lives follow different
paths because of their caste. Even though it’s so very sad, there is so
much love and humour and the irony that it’s the ‘luckiest’ character
who is the most miserable!” Kim
7. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
“David Foster Wallace was a creative force that measured the
disillusion and sadness of a generation of people who felt emptiness
that took a shape that no-one could really identify or wrestle with.
Infinite Jest, his magnum opus, represents all of these feelings and
more. It is a work that confronts the substance of how happiness is
truly fleeting. A work over-brimming with intelligence, humour, pathos
and insight. I can think of few works that capture the mood of a time as
Infinite Jest does. It is prescient, chilling, hilarious, comforting, and all
of it simultaneously.” Ben James
“The best writer of his generation has to have a spot on the list. The
best novel of the past 20 years is hilarious, sad and absurd – often
within the same page. At over 1,000 pages you’ll struggle through bits
of it, and suddenly you’ll realise you’ve finished and want to
immediately start again.” Jay Tucker

8. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

“Slaughterhouse Five is an eclectic telling of a tragedy told by
Vonnegut, who was there during the Dresden bombing. It brings a
unique satire to an otherwise terrible event and it is told with
poignancy. Vonnegut’s anti-war story was a triumph of
literature.” Mario Velarde
“Such a short and easy to read book, it takes an interesting, quirky and
meaningful approach to a horrific event in our history. Very
imaginative, poignant and at times shocking, it has stayed with me for
a long time each time I’ve read it.” Ciara Dawson
9. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (1954 - 1955)
“Tolkien defined the Fantasy genre with his epic storytelling and world
building.” Gerd Duerner
“Setting up the genre for the next six decades, there is simply no other
work of literature this ambitious. Powerful, profound, poignant, and
linguistically pure.” Jorge
“It is an incredibly well written book by a very talented man. A
masterpiece that inspired many writers in the genre. To me, it was a
book that helped me through some dark times. It inspired me with the
beauty of the writing (Tolkien is a masterful writer), and the great
messages within the story.” Kim Anisi

10. I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan (2003)

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“It makes a protagonist of he who is literature’s all-time ultimate villain
and simultaneously the personification of all villainy. With this
character at the book’s heart, the author explores, amongst many other
themes, some of humanity’s darkest and most dreadful moral
transgressions. Duncan manages this with unflinching clarity,
intelligently devised detail and a craftsman’s weave of one-liners,
observational humour, hilarious characters and broadly applied satire.
To me, while first reading it, then returning immediately to the first
page for another go, it was clear that I may never enjoy a novel so much
again. That has stuck true for over ten years now.” David Pooley
“It manages to answer the primal questions about the relationship
between God & the Devil. A reasonably good theologian could probably
shoot it down in flames, but like Milton’s Satan, he is beautiful, bright
and flawed. Duncan writes like an angel and Lucifer ... well, you’ll just
have to read it.” Laura Andrus
11. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling (1997-2007)
“A good novel will leave you a different person than when you began it,
and I honestly don’t think there are any books that have changed so
many people’s lives like Harry Potter novels have. While perhaps not
the best written books when compared to other masterpieces on the
list, the detail of the Harry Potter universe and the engaging characters
and storylines are works of genius. Rowling captures the imagination
like no other author can, and that is why she deserves to be on the list
of greatest novels.” Andrew Thornbury
“I have chosen this series because it means something to me both as a
reader and a teacher. I have seen children that wouldn’t usually choose
reading as a way to pass the time become completely engrossed in
these books. It is also true to say that if you enjoy reading something as
a young person, there is a likelihood that you will also enjoy re-reading
the same text. As a child I very much enjoyed reading these, and I still
do today!” Charlotte Fox

12. Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray (1981)

“This is the key work in contemporary Scottish fiction, which initiates
the renaissance in Scottish writing. Its influence can also be detected
across the wider ‘postmodern’ context, by pushing the frontiers of the
novel. No Ali Smith, David Mitchell, Will Self et al without
Lanark.” Edmund Smyth
“The greatest Scottish novel of 20th century: personal and political,
parochial and universal, it strides across the realist and fantasy genres
with a playful but urgent post-modernism.” Grant Rintoul
13. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (1961)
“Why no sci-fi? Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein’s masterpiece,
transcends the genre, as it is as much a groundbreaking social,
political, religious, and sexual commentary on what it is to be human,
obliterating taboos of the era. It was way ahead of its time. As if that
wasn’t enough, Jubal Harshaw has to be one of the most memorable
characters in all of fiction.” Michael Yaros
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“This novel correctly defined ‘love’ for me, as ‘the state in which the
welfare and happiness of another become essential to your
own.’” Spider Robinson

14. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

“As a non-white, non-Western reader of English language fiction since
early childhood, I had begun to internalise the idea that good fiction
needed to meet the standards set by dead straight white men. Then
when I was 18 I read this novel and it blew my mind – the narrative
voice, characters and plot sensitised me to racism and sexism in ways
that I had never encountered (and have yet to encounter) in novels
authored by straight white men. And though I am not an African-
American woman, it validated and enlarged my existence, which is
what I think the best fiction is capable of.” Shanon Shah
“Any list of great books needs to include this, or is simply incomplete.
The Color Purple was the first book that truly touched me and really
forced me to think.” Denise Paradise

15. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy (1976)

“This was a life-changing work for me. It totally changed the way I
looked at time, gender, race, sanity, utopia and dystopia. I first read it
in my late teens and I’ve reread it frequently. I always find something
new, or interpret it slightly differently. It questions why we need
gender designation, offering a gender neutral ‘per’. It offers a three-
parent society. It contrasts sexism, racism and the chemical coshing of
a mental health patient with a utopia that doesn’t contain any of these
issues. It leaves us with the idea that, in interfering with the mind, as
the central character’s brain is operated on, we change the possible
future available to us. It touched on so many issues that matter in my
life, and in society generally, that the added question of what reality
means became academic.” Laura Albero
“The book is inspired and is aesthetically superb and socially
salvific.” The Revd Linda Isiorho
Do you have a book to add to the list? You can still take part by leaving a
comment below.