Modern Library 100 Best Novels

Updated 11 days ago
100 Books
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The editors of The Modern Library were privileged to have the assistance of a distinguished Board made up of celebrated authors, historians, critics, and publishing luminaries. In 1998 and 1999, members of the Modern Library Board participated in the “100 Best” project, voting on the 100 Best Novels and 100 Best Non-fiction works, respectively.

Position	Details	Rating	Readers Count
#1	Ulysses James Joyce	3.8	203 reads
#2	The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald	3.73	3,122 reads
#3	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce	3.59	245 reads
#4	Lolita Vladimir Nabokov	3.88	950 reads
#5	Brave New World Aldous Huxley	3.88	2,271 reads
#6	The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner	3.73	192 reads
#7	Catch-22 Joseph Heller	4	846 reads
#8	Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler Daphne Hardy (Translator)	4.11	42 reads
#9	Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence	3.81	38 reads
#10	The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck	3.8	736 reads
#11	Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry	3.83	21 reads
#12	The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler	4.33	4 reads
#13	1984 George Orwell	4.21	4,788 reads
#14	I, Claudius Robert Graves Stephen Alcorn	4.13	86 reads
#15	To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf	3.74	259 reads
#16	An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser	3.76	32 reads
#17	The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers	3.75	96 reads
#18	Slaughterhouse 5 Kurt Vonnegut	4.08	1,762 reads
#19	Invisible Man Ralph Ellison	3.8	229 reads
#20	Native Son Richard Wright	4.03	97 reads
#21	Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow	3.82	15 reads
#22	Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara	3.7	15 reads
#23	U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money John Dos Passos	3.8	5 reads
#24	Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson	4.07	41 reads
#25	A Passage to India E.M. Forster	3.45	84 reads
#26	The Wings of the Dove Henry James John Bayley Patricia Crick	4	8 reads
#27	The Ambassadors Henry James	3.67	6 reads
#28	Tender is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald	3.55	107 reads
#29	Studs Lonigan Trilogy: Young Lonigan/The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan/Judgment Day James T. Farrell	5	2 reads
#30	The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford	3.34	35 reads
#31	Animal Farm George Orwell Boris Grabnar (Translator) Celâl Üster (Translator) Celâl Üstüner (Translator)	4.04	3,744 reads
#32	The Golden Bowl Henry James	3.5	4 reads
#33	Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser	3.64	28 reads
#34	A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh	3.88	35 reads
#35	As I Lay Dying William Faulkner	3.6	214 reads
#36	All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren Noel Polk	3.99	64 reads
#37	The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder	3.78	45 reads
#38	Howards End E.M. Forster	3.52	45 reads
#39	Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin	3.96	95 reads
#40	The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene	3.79	30 reads
#41	Lord of the Flies William Golding	3.56	2,304 reads
#42	Deliverance James Dickey	4.11	34 reads
#43	A Question of Upbringing Anthony Powell	4	11 reads
#44	Point Counter Point Aldous Huxley Mîna Urgan (Translator)	4.2	16 reads
#45	The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway	3.64	456 reads
#46	The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad	3.25	34 reads
#47	Conrad: Nostromo Ian P. Watt	3.17	8 reads
#48	The Rainbow D.H. Lawrence	3.42	17 reads
#49	Women in Love D.H. Lawrence	3.6	31 reads
#50	Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller	3.27	75 reads
#51	The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer	4	25 reads
#52	Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth	3.4	65 reads
#53	Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov	4.31	117 reads
#54	Light In August William Faulkner	3.89	60 reads
#55	On the Road Jack Kerouac	3.34	519 reads
#56	The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett	3.78	157 reads
#57	Parade's End Ford Madox Ford	3.67	4 reads
#58	The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton	3.99	128 reads
#59	Zuleika Dobson Max Beerbohm	3.5	3 reads
#60	The Moviegoer Walker Percy	3.29	40 reads
#61	Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather	4.17	32 reads
#62	From Here to Eternity James Jones	4.83	9 reads
#63	The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever	3.75	6 reads
#64	The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger	3.59	2,381 reads
#65	A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess	3.93	817 reads
#66	Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham	4.21	53 reads
#67	Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad	3.32	725 reads
#68	Main Street / Babbitt Sinclair Lewis	3.77	15 reads
#69	The House of Mirth Edith Wharton	3.81	71 reads
#70	The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet #1-4) Lawrence Durrell	3.67	5 reads
#71	A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes	3.29	9 reads
#72	A House for Mr Biswas V.S. Naipaul	3.75	20 reads
#73	The Day of the Locust Nathanael West	3.54	34 reads
#74	A Farewell To Arms Ernest Hemingway	3.72	355 reads
#75	Scoop Evelyn Waugh	3.74	24 reads
#76	The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark	3.64	70 reads
#77	Finnegans Wake James Joyce	4	29 reads
#78	Kim Rudyard Kipling	3.35	44 reads
#79	A Room With a View E.M. Forster	3.65	137 reads
#80	Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh	3.76	101 reads
#81	The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow	3.86	18 reads
#82	Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner	4.27	39 reads
#83	A Bend in the River V.S. Naipaul	3.73	13 reads
#84	The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen	3.67	8 reads
#85	Lord Jim Joseph Conrad	3.6	38 reads
#86	Ragtime E.L. Doctorow	3.9	58 reads
#87	The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett	4.5	4 reads
#88	The Call of the Wild Jack London	3.65	486 reads
#89	Loving Henry Green	4.5	3 reads
#90	Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie	4.02	161 reads
#91	Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell	3.83	10 reads
#92	Ironweed William Kennedy	3.68	17 reads
#93	The Magus John Fowles	3.77	84 reads
#94	Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys	3.44	143 reads
#95	Under the net Iris Murdoch	3.57	17 reads
#96	Sophie's Choice William Styron	3.56	46 reads
#97	The Sheltering Sky / Let It Come Down / The Spider's House Paul Bowles	3.59	27 reads
#98	The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain	3.68	66 reads
#99	The Ginger Man J.P. Donleavy	3.25	7 reads
#100	The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington	3.93	19 reads