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Ultimate Best Books

List: 100 Greatest Novels of All Time by The Guardian

The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody

George Grossmith

2.67 (3)

My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway -- a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour.

#418
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1,040
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The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

4.56 (18)

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor.

#69
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10,861
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The Pilgrim's Progress

The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan

3.67 (6)

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.(Introduction to the Penguin edition by Roger Sharrock) -- The Pilgrim's Progress is a book which in the three hundred years of its existence has crossed most of the barriers of race and culture that usually serve to limit the communicative power of a classic.

#193
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3,784
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Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Salman Rushdie

3.5 (4)

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name.

#446
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906
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Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison

4.14 (7)

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.

#166
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4,574
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An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.5 (2)

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees.

#478
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706
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The Trial

The Trial

Franz Kafka

3.7 (10)

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.

#114
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7,268
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Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee

3.5 (2)

I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?

#425
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1,019
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The Plague

The Plague

Albert Camus

3.57 (7)

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran.Les curieux événements qui font le sujet de cette chronique se sont produits en 194., à Oran.Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier.

#186
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The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

3.58 (45)

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want the truth."

#5
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