List :: 100 Greatest Novels of All Time by The Guardian

  • An Artist of the Floating World

    #91

    An Artist of the Floating World

    by Kazuo Ishiguro

    (2 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 579

    10 points

    "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..."

  • Oscar and Lucinda

    #92

    Oscar and Lucinda

    by Peter Carey

    (2 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 265

    80 points

    "If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea."

  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

    #93

    The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

    by Milan Kundera

    (4 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 589

    8 points

    "In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square."

  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories

    #94

    Haroun and the Sea of Stories

    by Salman Rushdie

    (4 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 448

    38 points

    "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."

  • L. A. Confidential

    #95

    L. A. Confidential

    by James Ellroy

    (2 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 595

    6 points

    "An abandoned auto court in the San Berdoo foothills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninety-four thousand dollars, eighteen pounds of high-grade heroin, a 10-gauge pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic..."

  • Wise Children

    #96

    Wise Children

    by Angela Carter

    (4 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 601

    5 points

    "Q. Why is London like Budapest? A. Because it is two cities divided by a river."

  • Atonement

    #97

    Atonement

    by Ian McEwan

    (10 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 111

    176 points

    "The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was..."

  • His Dark Materials

    #98

    His Dark Materials

    by Philip Pullman

    (13 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 63

    277 points

    "Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. (Northern lights)Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..."..."

  • American Pastoral

    #99

    American Pastoral

    by Philip Roth

    (3 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 389

    52 points

    "The swede."

  • Austerlitz

    #100

    Austerlitz

    by W.G. Sebald

    (3 Reviews)

    Overall Rank: 201

    97 points

    "In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just..."