Die 100 besten Bücher des norwegischen Buchklubs

The World Library is a list of the 100 best books, as proposed by 100 writers from 54 different countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club. This list endeavours to reflect world literature, with books from all countries, cultures, and time periods. Eleven of the books included on the list are written by women, eighty-five are written by men and four have no known author.

Each writer had to select his own list of ten books

The 100 books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way; the organizers have stated that "they are all on an equal footing", with the exception of Things Fall Apart which was given the distinction "best literary work ever written" by Mandeep Sidhu. The following list organizes the works alphabetically by author.

List of the 100 Best Books of All Time

Title	Author	Year	Country	Language
Things Fall Apart	Vorlage:Sortname	1958	Nigeria	English
Fairy tales	Vorlage:Sortname	1835–1837	Denmark	Danish
The Divine Comedy	Vorlage:Sortname	1265-1321	Florence	Italian
Epic of Gilgamesh	Anonymous	18th or 17th century BC	Sumer and Akkadian Empire	Akkadian
Book of Job	Anonymous	6th — 4th century BCE	Achaemenid Empire	Hebrew
One Thousand and One Nights	Anonymous	700-1500	India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt	Arabic
Njál's Saga	Anonymous	13th century	Iceland	Old Norse
Pride and Prejudice	Vorlage:Sortname	1813	United Kingdom	English
Le Père Goriot	Vorlage:Sortname	1835	France	French
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, a trilogy	Vorlage:Sortname	1951–1953	Republic of Ireland	French, English
The Decameron	Vorlage:Sortname	1349–1353	Ravenna	Italian
Ficciones	Vorlage:Sortname	1944	Argentina	Spanish
Wuthering Heights	Vorlage:Sortname	1847	United Kingdom	English
The Stranger	Vorlage:Sortname	1942	Algeria, French Empire	French
Poems	Vorlage:Sortname	1952	Romania, France	German
Journey to the End of the Night	Vorlage:Sortname	1932	France	French
Don Quixote	Vorlage:Sortname	1605–1615	Spanish Empire	Spanish
The Canterbury Tales	Vorlage:Sortname	14th century	England	English
Stories	Vorlage:Sortname	1886	Russia	Russian
Nostromo	Vorlage:Sortname	1904	United Kingdom	English
Great Expectations	Vorlage:Sortname	1861	United Kingdom	English
Jacques the Fatalist	Vorlage:Sortname	1796	France	French
Berlin Alexanderplatz	Vorlage:Sortname	1929	Germany	German
Crime and Punishment	Vorlage:Sortname	1866	Russia	Russian
The Idiot	Vorlage:Sortname	1869	Russia	Russian
The Possessed	Vorlage:Sortname	1872	Russia	Russian
The Brothers Karamazov	Vorlage:Sortname	1880	Russia	Russian
Middlemarch	Vorlage:Sortname	1871	United Kingdom	English
Invisible Man	Vorlage:Sortname	1952	United States	English
Medea	Euripides	431 BC	Athens	Classical Greek
Absalom, Absalom!	Vorlage:Sortname	1936	United States	English
The Sound and the Fury	Vorlage:Sortname	1929	United States	English
Madame Bovary	Vorlage:Sortname	1857	France	French
Sentimental Education	Vorlage:Sortname	1869	France	French
Gypsy Ballads	Vorlage:Sortname	1928	Spain	Spanish
One Hundred Years of Solitude	Vorlage:Sortname	1967	Colombia	Spanish
Love in the Time of Cholera	Vorlage:Sortname	1985	Colombia	Spanish
Faust	Vorlage:Sortname	1832	Saxe-Weimar, Germany	German
Dead Souls	Vorlage:Sortname	1842	Russia	Russian
The Tin Drum	Vorlage:Sortname	1959	West Germany	German
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands	Vorlage:Sortname	1956	Brazil	Portuguese
Hunger	Vorlage:Sortname	1890	Norway	Norwegian
The Old Man and the Sea	Vorlage:Sortname	1952	United States	English
Iliad	Homer	850 – 750 BC	Possibly Smyrna	Classical Greek
Odyssey	Homer	8th century BC	Possibly Smyrna	Classical Greek
A Doll's House	Vorlage:Sortname	1879	Norway	Norwegian
Ulysses	Vorlage:Sortname	1922	Irish Free State	English
Stories	Vorlage:Sortname	1924	Austria	German
The Trial	Vorlage:Sortname	1925	Austria	German
The Castle	Vorlage:Sortname	1926	Austria	German
Shakuntala	Kālidāsa	1st century BC – 4th century AD	India	Sanskrit
The Sound of the Mountain	Vorlage:Sortname	1954	Japan	Japanese
Zorba the Greek	Vorlage:Sortname	1946	Greece	Greek
Sons and Lovers	Vorlage:Sortname	1913	United Kingdom	English
Independent People	Vorlage:Sortname	1934–1935	Iceland	Icelandic
Poems	Vorlage:Sortname	1818	Italy	Italian
The Golden Notebook	Vorlage:Sortname	1962	United Kingdom	English
Pippi Longstocking	Vorlage:Sortname	1945	Sweden	Swedish
A Madman's Diary	Vorlage:Sortname	1918	China	Chinese
Children of Gebelawi	Vorlage:Sortname	1959	Egypt	Arabic
Buddenbrooks	Vorlage:Sortname	1901	Germany	German
The Magic Mountain	Vorlage:Sortname	1924	Germany	German
Moby-Dick	Vorlage:Sortname	1851	United States	English
Essays	Vorlage:Sortname	1595	France	French
History	Vorlage:Sortname	1974	Italy	Italian
Beloved	Vorlage:Sortname	1987	United States	English
The Tale of Genji	Vorlage:Sortname	11th century	Japan	Japanese
The Man Without Qualities	Vorlage:Sortname	1930–1932	Austria	German
Lolita	Vorlage:Sortname	1955	United States	English
Nineteen Eighty-Four	Vorlage:Sortname	1949	United Kingdom	English
Metamorphoses	Ovid	1st century AD	Roman Empire	Classical Latin
The Book of Disquiet	Vorlage:Sortname	1928	Portugal	Portuguese
Tales	Vorlage:Sortname	19th century	United States	English
In Search of Lost Time	Vorlage:Sortname	1913–1927	France	French
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel	Vorlage:Sortname	1532–1534	France	French
Pedro Páramo	Vorlage:Sortname	1955	Mexico	Spanish
Masnavi	Rumi	1258–73	Persia, Mongol Empire	Persian
Midnight's Children	Vorlage:Sortname	1981	India	English
Bostan	Saadi	1257	Persia, Mongol Empire	Persian
Season of Migration to the North	Vorlage:Sortname	1971	Sudan	Arabic
Blindness	Vorlage:Sortname	1995	Portugal	Portuguese
Hamlet	Vorlage:Sortname	1603	England	English
King Lear	Vorlage:Sortname	1608	England	English
Othello	Vorlage:Sortname	1622	England	English
Oedipus the King	Sophocles	430 BC	Athens	Classical Greek
The Red and the Black	Stendhal	1830	France	French
Tristram Shandy	Vorlage:Sortname	1760	England	English
Confessions of Zeno	Vorlage:Sortname	1923	Italy	Italian
Gulliver's Travels	Vorlage:Sortname	1726	Ireland	English
War and Peace	Vorlage:Sortname	1865–1869	Russia	Russian
Anna Karenina	Vorlage:Sortname	1877	Russia	Russian
The Death of Ivan Ilyich	Vorlage:Sortname	1886	Russia	Russian
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Vorlage:Sortname	1884	United States	English
Ramayana	Valmiki	3rd century BC – 3rd century AD	India	Sanskrit
Aeneid	Virgil	29–19 BC	Roman Empire	Classical Latin
Mahabharata	Vyasa	4th century BC — 4th century AD	India	Sanskrit
Leaves of Grass	Vorlage:Sortname	1855	United States	English
Mrs Dalloway	Vorlage:Sortname	1925	United Kingdom	English
To the Lighthouse	Vorlage:Sortname	1927	United Kingdom	English
Memoirs of Hadrian	Vorlage:Sortname	1951	France	French

See also

• Modern Library 100 Best Novels
• Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction
• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
• Western canon
• Banned Books

External links

• Official site Vorlage:Fr
• The Guardian