Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

The 100 Books of the Century () is a list of the hundred most memorable books of the 20th century, regardless of language, according to a poll performed during the spring of 1999 by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde. Overview Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?) As Le Monde journalist Josyane Savigneau aptly clarified in her article, the list is not meant to encompass the 100 most distinguished French literary works of the 20th century, but rather to reflect the emotional connections of the French populace.

The list includes both classic novels and genre fiction (Tolkien, Agatha Christie, A. C. Doyle), as well as poetry, drama and nonfiction literature (Freud's essays and the diary of Anne Frank). There are also comic books on the list, one volume from each of these five Francophone or Italian series: Asterix, Tintin, Blake and Mortimer, Gaston and Corto Maltese.

The large number of French novels on the list is due to the demographics of the surveyed group. Likewise, comparable lists by English-language entities—such as the two lists of Modern Library's 100 Best Novels published in 1998, one by the Board of the Modern Library and the other by readers who responded—disproportionately favor British and American authors. Only English-language works were eligible for the two Modern Library lists.

List No.TitleAuthorYearLanguage 1The StrangerThe OutsiderAlbert Camus1942French 2In Search of Lost TimeRemembrance of Things PastMarcel Proust1913–27French 3The TrialFranz Kafka1925German 4The Little PrinceAntoine de Saint-Exupéry1943French 5Man's FateAndré Malraux1933French 6Journey to the End of the NightLouis-Ferdinand Céline1932French 7The Grapes of WrathJohn Steinbeck1939English 8For Whom the Bell TollsErnest Hemingway1940English 9Le Grand MeaulnesAlain-Fournier1913French 10Froth on the DaydreamBoris Vian1947French 11The Second SexSimone de Beauvoir1949French 12Waiting for GodotSamuel Beckett1952French 13Being and NothingnessJean-Paul Sartre1943French 14The Name of the RoseUmberto Eco1980Italian 15The Gulag ArchipelagoAleksandr Solzhenitsyn1973Russian 16ParolesJacques Prévert1946French 17AlcoolsGuillaume Apollinaire1913French 18The Blue LotusHergé1936French 19The Diary of a Young GirlAnne Frank1947Dutch 20Tristes TropiquesClaude Lévi-Strauss1955French 21Brave New WorldAldous Huxley1932English 22Nineteen Eighty-FourGeorge Orwell1949English 23Asterix the GaulRené Goscinny and Albert Uderzo1959French 24The Bald SopranoEugène Ionesco1952French 25Three Essays on the Theory of SexualitySigmund Freud1905German 26The AbyssZeno of BrugesMarguerite Yourcenar1968French 27LolitaVladimir Nabokov1955English 28UlyssesJames Joyce1922English 29The Tartar SteppeDino Buzzati1940Italian 30The CounterfeitersAndré Gide1925French 31The Horseman on the RoofJean Giono1951French 32Belle du SeigneurAlbert Cohen1968French 33One Hundred Years of SolitudeGabriel García Márquez1967Spanish 34The Sound and the FuryWilliam Faulkner1929English 35Thérèse DesqueyrouxFrançois Mauriac1927French 36Zazie in the MetroRaymond Queneau1959French 37Confusion of FeelingsStefan Zweig1927German 38Gone with the WindMargaret Mitchell1936English 39Lady Chatterley's LoverD. H. Lawrence1928English 40The Magic MountainThomas Mann1924German 41Bonjour TristesseFrançoise Sagan1954French 42Le Silence de la merVercors1942French 43Life: A User's ManualGeorges Perec1978French 44The Hound of the BaskervillesArthur Conan Doyle1901–02English 45Under the Sun of SatanGeorges Bernanos1926French 46The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald1925English 47The JokeMilan Kundera1967Czech 48Contempt/A Ghost at NoonAlberto Moravia1954Italian 49The Murder of Roger AckroydAgatha Christie1926English 50NadjaAndré Breton1928French 51AurélienLouis Aragon1944French 52The Satin SlipperPaul Claudel1929French 53Six Characters in Search of an AuthorLuigi Pirandello1921Italian 54The Resistible Rise of Arturo UiBertolt Brecht1941German 55FridayMichel Tournier1967French 56The War of the WorldsH. G. Wells1898English 57 If This Is a Man Se questo è un uomo, Survival in AuschwitzPrimo Levi1947Italian 58The Lord of the RingsJ.R.R. Tolkien1954–55English 59The Tendrils of the VineColette1908French 60Capital of PainPaul Éluard1926French 61Martin EdenJack London1909English 62The Ballad of the Salty SeaHugo Pratt1967Italian 63Writing Degree ZeroRoland Barthes1953French 64The Lost Honour of Katharina BlumHeinrich Böll1974German 65The Opposing ShoreJulien Gracq1951French 66The Order of ThingsMichel Foucault1966French 67On the RoadJack Kerouac1957English 68The Wonderful Adventures of NilsSelma Lagerlöf1906–07Swedish 69A Room of One's OwnVirginia Woolf1929English 70The Martian ChroniclesRay Bradbury1950English 71The Ravishing of Lol SteinMarguerite Duras1964French 72The InterrogationJ. M. G. Le Clézio1963French 73TropismsNathalie Sarraute1939French 74Journal, 1887–1910Jules Renard1925French 75Lord JimJoseph Conrad1900English 76ÉcritsJacques Lacan1966French 77The Theatre and Its DoubleAntonin Artaud1938French 78Manhattan TransferJohn Dos Passos1925English 79FiccionesJorge Luis Borges1944Spanish 80MoravagineBlaise Cendrars1926French 81The General of the Dead ArmyIsmail Kadare1963Albanian 82Sophie's ChoiceWilliam Styron1979English 83Gypsy BalladsFederico García Lorca1928Spanish 84The Strange Case of Peter the LettGeorges Simenon1931French 85Our Lady of the FlowersJean Genet1944French 86The Man Without QualitiesRobert Musil1930–42German 87Furor and MysteryRené Char1948French 88The Catcher in the RyeJ. D. Salinger1951English 89No Orchids For Miss BlandishJames Hadley Chase1939English 90Blake and MortimerEdgar P. Jacobs1950French 91The Notebooks of Malte Laurids BriggeRainer Maria Rilke1910German 92Second ThoughtsMichel Butor1957French 93The Origins of TotalitarianismThe Burden of Our TimeHannah Arendt1951English 94The Master and MargaritaMikhail Bulgakov1967Russian 95The Rosy CrucifixionHenry Miller1949–60English 96The Big SleepRaymond Chandler1939English 97AmersSaint-John Perse1957French 98GastonGomer GoofAndré Franquin1957French 99Under the VolcanoMalcolm Lowry1947English 100Midnight's ChildrenSalman Rushdie1981English Note: Classified by the language of the book's first publication, which might not be the author's principal language.

See also Bokklubben World Library (Norway) List of Nobel laureates in Literature (Sweden) – including Camus, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Beckett, Sartre, Solzhenitsyn, Gide, García Márquez, Faulkner, Mauriac, Mann, Pirandello, Böll, Lagerlöf, Le Clézio, and Perse List of recipients of the Grand Prize of the Académie française (France) – including de Saint-Exupéry, Cohen, Mauriac, Bernanos, and Tournier List of recipients of the Prix Goncourt (France) – including Proust, Malraux, de Beauvoir, Tournier, Gracq, and Duras List of recipients of the Prix Renaudot (France) – including Céline, Perec, Aragon, Le Clézio, and Beigbeder List of recipients of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (France) – including Kundera, Borges, Kadare, and Styron List of recipients of the Prix Médicis (France) – including Eco, Perec, and Kundera List of recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (US) – including Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Mitchell, and Styron List of recipients of the Neustadt Prize for Literature (US) – including García Márquez and Kadare List of recipients of the European Literary Award (Austria) – including de Beauvoir, Eco, Ionesco, Kundera, Duras, and Rushdie List of recipients of the Jerusalem Prize (Israel) – including de Beauvoir, Ionesco, Kundera, Borges, and Kadare List of recipients of the Strega Prize (Italy) – including Eco, Buzzati, Moravia, and Levi List of recipients of the Prince of Asturias Award (Spain) – including Kadare List of recipients of the Cervantes Prize (Spain) – including Borges Western canon Great Books of the Western World Modern Library's 100 Best Novels (US) – all were first published in English The Big Read (UK)

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References

External links Newsweek's Top 100 Books Books o' the Ages: A Millennial/Centennial/Decennial/Annual Reassessment, overview of Best of Century lists