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Series of classical books
Bokklubben World Library (Norwegian : Verdensbiblioteket ) is a series of classical books, mostly novels, published by the Norwegian Book Clubs [no ] since 2002. It is based on a list of the hundred best books, as proposed by one hundred writers from fifty-four countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Book Club.[ 1] This list endeavors to reflect world literature, with books from all countries, cultures, and time periods.
Each writer had to select his or her own list of ten books. The 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 Don Quixote which was given the distinction "best literary work ever written."[ 2]
Fyodor Dostoevsky is the author with the most books on the list, with four. William Shakespeare , Franz Kafka , and Leo Tolstoy each have three.
Breakdown of voters and list [ edit ]
The writers surveyed included 69 men and 31 women. 85 of the books included on the list are written by men, 11 are written by women, and four have unknown authors. 26 of the 100 voting writers had English as their first language,[ 3] which may be a factor in the list having so many (29) books written in English.
Title
Author
Year
Country
Language
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
1958
Nigeria
English
Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Andersen
1835–37
Denmark
Danish
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri
1308–21
Italy
Italian
Epic of Gilgamesh
Unknown
18th – 17th century BCE
Sumer / Akkadian Empire
Akkadian
Book of Job
Unknown
7th – 4th century BCE
Achaemenid Empire
Biblical Hebrew
One Thousand and One Nights
Various
700–1500
Iraq /Iran /India /Syria /Egypt /Tajikistan
Arabic
Njál's Saga
Unknown, possibly Sæmundr fróði
13th century
Iceland
Old Norse
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
1813
United Kingdom
English
Le Père Goriot
Honoré de Balzac
1835
France
French
Trilogy: Molloy , Malone Dies , The Unnamable
Samuel Beckett
1951–53
Republic of Ireland
French, English
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio
1349–53
Italy
Italian
Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges
1944–86
Argentina
Spanish
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
1847
United Kingdom
English
The Stranger
Albert Camus
1942
Algeria , French Empire
French
Poems
Paul Celan
1952
Romania , USSR , France
German
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
1932
France
French
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
1605 (part 1), 1615 (part 2)
Spain
Spanish
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
1380s–1400
England
English
Stories
Anton Chekhov
1886
Russia
Russian
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad
1904
United Kingdom
English
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
1861
United Kingdom
English
Jacques the Fatalist
Denis Diderot
1796
France
French
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Alfred Döblin
1929
Germany
German
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1866
Russia
Russian
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1869
Russia
Russian
Demons
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1872
Russia
Russian
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1880
Russia
Russian
Middlemarch
George Eliot
1871
United Kingdom
English
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison
1952
United States
English
Medea
Euripides
431 BCE
Greece
Ancient Greek
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner
1936
United States
English
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner
1929
United States
English
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
1857
France
French
Sentimental Education
Gustave Flaubert
1869
France
French
Gypsy Ballads
Federico García Lorca
1928
Spain
Spanish
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez
1967
Colombia
Spanish
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez
1985
Colombia
Spanish
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1832
Saxe-Weimar
German
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol
1842
Russia
Russian
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
1959
Germany
German
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
João Guimarães Rosa
1956
Brazil
Portuguese
Hunger
Knut Hamsun
1890
Norway
Norwegian
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
1952
United States
English
Iliad
Homer
760–710 BCE
Greece
Ancient Greek
Odyssey
Homer
8th century BCE
Greece
Ancient Greek
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen
1879
Norway
Norwegian
Ulysses
James Joyce
1922
Irish Free State
English
Stories
Franz Kafka
1924
Czechoslovakia
German
The Trial
Franz Kafka
1925
Czechoslovakia
German
The Castle
Franz Kafka
1926
Czechoslovakia
German
Shakuntala
Kālidāsa
1st century BCE – 4th century CE
India
Sanskrit
The Sound of the Mountain
Yasunari Kawabata
1954
Japan
Japanese
Zorba the Greek
Nikos Kazantzakis
1946
Greece
Greek
Sons and Lovers
D. H. Lawrence
1913
United Kingdom
English
Independent People
Halldór Laxness
1934–35
Iceland
Icelandic
Complete Poems
Giacomo Leopardi
1818-1835
Italy
Italian
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
1962
United Kingdom
English
Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren
1945
Sweden
Swedish
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Lu Xun
1918
China
Chinese
Children of Gebelawi
Naguib Mahfouz
1959
Egypt
Arabic
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann
1901
Germany
German
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
1924
Germany
German
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
1851
United States
English
Essays
Michel de Montaigne
1595
France
French
History
Elsa Morante
1974
Italy
Italian
Beloved
Toni Morrison
1987
United States
English
The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
1000–12
Japan
Japanese
The Man Without Qualities
Robert Musil
1930–32
Austria
German
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
1955
Russia/United States
English
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
1949
United Kingdom
English
Metamorphoses
Ovid
1st century CE
Roman Empire
Classical Latin
The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
1928
Portugal
Portuguese
Tales
Edgar Allan Poe
1832–49
United States
English
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust
1913–27
France
French
Gargantua and Pantagruel
François Rabelais
1532–34
France
French
Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo
1955
Mexico
Spanish
Masnavi
Rumi
1258–73
Sultanate of Rum (Persia )
Persian
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie
1981
United Kingdom, India
English
Bostan
Saadi
1257
Persia
Persian
Season of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih
1966
Sudan
Arabic
Blindness
José Saramago
1995
Portugal
Portuguese
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
1603
England
English
King Lear
William Shakespeare
1608
England
English
Othello
William Shakespeare
1609
England
English
Oedipus the King
Sophocles
430 BCE
Greece
Ancient Greek
The Red and the Black
Stendhal
1830
France
French
Tristram Shandy
Laurence Sterne
1760
Ireland
English
Confessions of Zeno
Italo Svevo
1923
Italy
Italian
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
1726
Ireland
English
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
1865–69
Russia
Russian
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
1877
Russia
Russian
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
1886
Russia
Russian
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
1884
United States
English
Ramayana
Valmiki
5th – 4th century BCE
India
Sanskrit
Aeneid
Virgil
29–19 BCE
Roman Empire
Classical Latin
Mahabharata
Vyasa
9th – 5th century BCE
India
Sanskrit
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
1855
United States
English
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
1925
United Kingdom
English
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
1927
United Kingdom
English
Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar
1951
France /Belgium
French
List of authors surveyed [ edit ]