author on_both critics_best critics_titles readers_best readers_titles George Eliot yes 1 Middlemarch 2 Middlemarch JRR Tolkien 1 The Lord of the Rings Toni Morrison yes 2 Beloved; Song of Solomon; The Bluest Eye 20 Beloved James Joyce yes 3 Ulysses 10 Ulysses Jane Austen yes 9 Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Persuasion; Mansfield Park 3 Pride and Prejudice; Persuasion; Emma Virginia Woolf yes 4 To the Lighthouse; Mrs Dalloway; Orlando; The Waves; Jacob's Room 70 To the Lighthouse; Mrs Dalloway John Steinbeck 4 The Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden Marcel Proust yes 5 In Search of Lost Time 15 In Search of Lost Time Harper Lee 5 To Kill a Mockingbird Leo Tolstoy yes 6 Anna Karenina; War and Peace 6 War and Peace; Anna Karenina George Orwell yes 16 Nineteen Eighty-Four 7 Nineteen Eighty-Four; Animal Farm Charlotte Brontë 8 Jane Eyre Gabriel García Márquez yes 17 One Hundred Years of Solitude 8 One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera Joseph Heller yes 97 Catch-22 8 Catch-22 Gustave Flaubert yes 10 Madame Bovary; Sentimental Education 63 Madame Bovary F Scott Fitzgerald yes 11 The Great Gatsby 16 The Great Gatsby Herman Melville yes 15 Moby-Dick 12 Moby-Dick Charles Dickens yes 12 Bleak House; David Copperfield; Great Expectations; Our Mutual Friend 26 Bleak House; Great Expectations; A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield Hilary Mantel yes 34 Wolf Hall 14 Wolf Hall Emily Brontë yes 20 Wuthering Heights 14 Wuthering Heights Laurence Sterne yes 19 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 80 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Thomas Pynchon 19 Gravity’s Rainbow Henry James 21 The Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl; The Turn of the Screw Fyodor Dostoyevsky yes 28 The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment 21 The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment Kurt Vonnegut 21 Slaughterhouse-Five Chinua Achebe 22 Things Fall Apart Miguel de Cervantes yes 26 Don Quixote 23 Don Quixote Salman Rushdie yes 23 Midnight's Children 62 Midnight’s Children Kazuo Ishiguro yes 24 The Remains of the Day; Never Let Me Go 31 The Remains of the Day; Never Let Me Go Victor Hugo 24 Les Misérables Vladimir Nabokov yes 25 Lolita; Pale Fire 46 Lolita Charlotte Brontë 26 Jane Eyre Franz Kafka 27 The Trial; The Metamorphosis Cormac McCarthy yes 68 Blood Meridian; The Road 28 Blood Meridian; The Road Mark Twain 29 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mary Shelley yes 30 Frankenstein 39 Frankenstein David Foster Wallace 31 Infinite Jest Muriel Spark 31 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Barbara Kingsolver 31 The Poisonwood Bible; Demon Copperhead Mikhail Bulgakov yes 66 The Master and Margarita 31 The Master and Margarita Arundhati Roy yes 32 The God of Small Things 52 The God of Small Things John Kennedy Toole 35 A Confederacy of Dunces Margaret Atwood yes 36 The Handmaid's Tale 41 The Handmaid’s Tale Alexandre Dumas 36 The Count of Monte Cristo Ralph Ellison 37 Invisible Man John Irving 37 A Prayer for Owen Meany JD Salinger 37 The Catcher in the Rye Edith Wharton 38 The Age of Innocence John Williams 39 Stoner Zora Neale Hurston 39 Their Eyes Were Watching God Rohinton Mistry yes 49 A Fine Balance 41 A Fine Balance Donna Tartt 41 The Secret History Joseph Conrad yes 41 Heart of Darkness 41 Heart of Darkness Vikram Seth 41 A Suitable Boy Thomas Mann yes 42 The Magic Mountain; Buddenbrooks 52 The Magic Mountain Marilynne Robinson 43 Housekeeping James Baldwin 44 Giovanni's Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain Doris Lessing 45 The Golden Notebook Douglas Adams 46 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Richard Adams 46 Watership Down Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 46 The Leopard William Makepeace Thackeray 47 Vanity Fair Ian McEwan 49 Atonement Jean Rhys 50 Wide Sargasso Sea Elena Ferrante yes 51 My Brilliant Friend 63 Neapolitan Quartet Sebastian Faulks 52 Birdsong Larry McMurtry 52 Lonesome Dove Shirley Hazzard 53 The Transit of Venus William Faulkner yes 57 The Sound and the Fury 80 Absalom, Absalom! Roberto Bolaño 57 2666 David Mitchell 57 Cloud Atlas JM Coetzee 58 Disgrace Amor Towles 60 A Gentleman in Moscow AS Byatt 60 Possession EM Forster 60 Howards End WG Sebald 61 The Rings of Saturn; Austerlitz Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 62 Half of a Yellow Sun Daphne du Maurier yes 80 Rebecca 63 Rebecca Günter Grass 63 The Tin Drum Zadie Smith 63 White Teeth Émile Zola 63 Germinal Albert Camus 63 The Outsider; The Plague Ford Madox Ford 64 The Good Soldier Alice Walker 65 The Color Purple Robert Musil 67 The Man Without Qualities Susanna Clarke 70 Piranesi; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Thomas Hardy yes 70 Jude the Obscure; The Return of the Native 80 Tess of the d’Urbervilles Ursula K Le Guin yes 89 The Left Hand of Darkness 70 The Dispossessed Octavia E Butler 71 Kindred Jack Kerouac 73 On the Road Milan Kundera 73 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Tsitsi Dangarembga 74 Nervous Conditions Evelyn Waugh 75 Brideshead Revisited John le Carré 75 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Ernest Hemingway yes 83 A Farewell to Arms 75 The Old Man and the Sea; The Sun Also Rises; For Whom the Bell Tolls Aldous Huxley 75 Brave New World Bram Stoker 76 Dracula DH Lawrence 77 The Rainbow VS Naipaul 78 A House for Mr Biswas Frank Herbert 80 Dune Stendhal 80 The Red and the Black Oscar Wilde 80 The Picture of Dorian Gray Stephen King 80 The Stand Marguerite Yourcenar 80 Memoirs of Hadrian Umberto Eco 80 The Name of the Rose Graham Greene 82 The End of the Affair Patricia Highsmith 84 The Talented Mr Ripley Han Kang 85 The Vegetarian Alan Hollinghurst 87 The Line of Beauty EL Doctorow 88 Ragtime Vasily Grossman 91 Life and Fate William Somerset Maugham 93 Of Human Bondage Anthony Doerr 93 All the Light We Cannot See Hanya Yanagihara 93 A Little Life Italo Calvino 93 Invisible Cities John Fowles 93 The Magus Edward P Jones 94 The Known World Juan Rulfo 96 Pedro Páramo LP Hartley 99 The Go-Between Willa Cather 100 My Ántonia Anthony Powell 100 A Dance to the Music of Time