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All-Time Top Ten Lists

These lists are compiled from all the author lists – as we add new lists, they are subject to change. We awarded points for each selection – 10 points for a first place pick, nine points for a second place pick, and so on. We totaled all the points and ranked them accordingly. These are the books with the highest total in each category.

 

New List

Claire Messud

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813).
2. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913–27).
3. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881).
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857).
5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877).
6. The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872).
7. Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (1923).
8. A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (1961).
9. The Loser by Thomas Bernhard (1983).
10. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988).

Classic List

Arthur Phillips

1. The stories of Franz Kafka (1883–1924).
2. Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec (1978). See below).
3. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924).
4. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962).
5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1600).
6. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913–27).
7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869).
8. The stories of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).
9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844).
10. The Odyssey by Homer (ninth century b.c.e.?).