I have seen quite a few lists about North American literature but not many about European ones. So, I searched the web and found this list at Goodreads. Quite a few that I've read, others that are still on my wishlist, some that I probably won't read, ever. But still, a good list to choose from if you are looking for European literature.
Best books written by European Authors
1 Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty Four" - 1949
2 Austen, Jane "Pride & Prejudice" - 1813
3 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine "The Little Prince" (French:. Le Petit Prince)
4 Hugo, Victor "Les Misérables" (French: Les Misérables) - 1862
5 Shakespeare, William "Hamlet" - 1603
6 Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847
7 Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings" - 1954
8 Shakespeare, William "Macbeth" - 1606
9 Homer "Odyssey" (Greek: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
10 Alighieri, Dante "The Divine Comedy" (Italian: Divina Commedia) - 1321
11 Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote" (Spanish: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/1615
12 Orwell, George "Animal Farm" - 1945
13 Kundera, Milan "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) - 1984
14 Huxley, Aldous "Brave New World" - 1931
15 Carroll, Lewis "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" - 1865/71
16 Tolstoy, Leo "Anna Karenina" (Russian: Анна Каренина/Anna Karenina) - 1877
17 Dumas, Alexandre "The Count of Monte Cristo" (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) - 1845
18 Süskind, Patrick "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" (German: Das Parfum) - 1985
19 Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (Italian: Il nome della rosa) - 1980
20 Shelley, Mary "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" - 1818
21 Shakespeare, William "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - 1596
22 Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain " (German: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
23 Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Russian: Преступление и наказание/ Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) - 1866
24 Kafka, Franz "The Metamorphosis" (German: Die Verwandlung) - 1912
25 Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890
26 Chaucer, Geoffrey "The Canterbury Tales" - 14th century
26 Molière "Tartuffe or the Imposter" (French: Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur) - 1682
28 Wilde, Oscar "The Importance of Being Earnest" - 1895
29 Bulgakov, Mikhail "The Master and Margarita" (Russian: Ма́стер и Маргари́та) - 1940/67
30 Remarque, Erich Maria "All Quiet on the Western Front" (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) - 1929
31 Stoker, Bram "Dracula" - 1897
32 Conrad, Joseph "Heart of Darkness" - 1902
33 Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" (Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, Oidipous Tyrannos) - 429 BC
34 Voltaire "Candide, ou l'Optimisme" (Candide, or Optimism) - 1759
35 Homer "The Iliad" (Greek: Ιλιάδα) - 8th century BC
36 Sophocles "Antigone" (Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) - 441 BC
37 Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
37 Austen, Jane "Emma" - 1816
39 Shakespeare, William "Othello" - 1603
40 Turgenev, Ivan "Fathers and Sons" (Russian: Отцы и дети/Otcy i Deti) - 1862
41 Swift, Jonathan "Gulliver's Travels" - 1726
42 Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Shadow of the Wind" (Spanish: La sombra del viento) - 2001
43 Woolf, Virginia "Mrs. Dalloway" - 1925
44 Dickens, Charles "David Copperfield" - 1850
45 Shakespeare, William "The Complete Works" - 1616
46 Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
47 Hugo, Victor "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) - 1831
48 Camus, Albert "The Stranger" (French: L’Etranger) – 1942
49 Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (French: Madame Bovary) - 1857
50 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Faust" (First Part) (German: Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil) - 1808
51 Hardy, Thomas "Jude the Obscure" - 1895
52 Unknown "Beowulf: A New Verse Translation" - 8th to 11th century
53 Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953
54 Proust, Marcel "Remembrance of Things: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove" (French: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) - 1919
55 Dickens, Charles "Great Expectations" - 1861
56 Machiavelli, Niccolò "The Prince" (Italian: Il Principe) - 1532
56 Tolstoy, Lew Nikolajewitsch (Толстой, Лев Николаевич) "War and Peace" (Russian: Война и мир = Woina i mir) – 1868/69
58 Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan) "A Room with a View" - 1908
59 Camus, Albert "The Plague" (French: La Peste) - 1947
60 Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights" - 1847
61 Hašek, Jaroslav "The Good Soldier Svejk: His Fortunes in the World War" (Czech: Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války) - 1923
63 Dickens, Charles "Bleak House" - 1853
64 Eliot, T.S. "The Complete Poems and Plays" - 1965
65 White, T.H. "The Once and Future King" - 1958
66 Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
67 Hodgson Burnett, Frances "The Secret Garden" - 1909
68 Stendhal "The Red and the Black" (French: Le Rouge et le Noir, intégral) - 1830
69 Dickens, Charles "A Tale of Two Cities" - 1859
70 Shakespeare, William "The Tempest" - 1611
71 Zola, Émile "Germinal (French: Les Rougon-Macquart, #13) - 1885
72 Camus, Albert "The Fall" (French: La Chute) - 1956
73 Dickens, Charles "A Christmas Carol" - 1843
74 Rostand, Edmond "Cyrano De Bergerac" (French: Cyrano de Bergerac) - 1897
75 Wiesel, Elie "Night" (French: La Nuit) – 1958
76 Dickens, Charles "Oliver Twist" - 1837
77 Ibsen, Henrik "A Doll's House" (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem) - 1897
78 Kafka, Franz "The Trial" (German: Der Prozess) - 1914
79 Levi, Primo "If This Is a Man/The Truce" (Italian: Se questo è un uomo/La Tregua) - 1947/63
80 Shakespeare, William "King Lear" - 1608
81 Beckett, Samuel "Waiting for Godot" - 1953
82 Dumas, Alexandre "The Three Musketeers" (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) - 1844
83 Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The Prospector" (French: Le Chercheur d'or) - 1985
84 Calvino, Italo "Invisible Cities" (Italian: Le città invisibili) - 1972
85 Proust, Marcel "Swann's Way" (In Search Lost Time, #1) (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) - 1913-27
86 Stoppard, Tom "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" - 1966
87 Waugh, Evelyn "Brideshead Revisited" - 1945
88 Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre "The Dangerous Liaisons" (French: Les Liaisons Dangereuses) - 1782
89 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Played with Fire" (Millennium, #2) (Swedish: Flickan som lekte med elden) - 2006
90 Herodotus "The Histories" (Greek) - 440BC
91 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Millennium, #1) (Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor) - 2005
92 Calvino, Italo "The Baron in the Trees" (Italian: Il Barone Rampante) - 1957
93 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" (Millennium, #3) (Swedish: Luftslottet som sprängde) - 2007
94 Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962
95 Pamuk, Orhan "My Name is Red" (Turkish: Benim Adım Kırmızı) – 1998
96 Christie, Agatha "And Then There Were None" - 1939
97 Yeats, W.B. "The Collected Poems" - 1939
98 de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis "The Persian Letters" (French: Lettres persanes) - 1721Best books written by European Authors
1 Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty Four" - 1949
2 Austen, Jane "Pride & Prejudice" - 1813
3 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine "The Little Prince" (French:. Le Petit Prince)
4 Hugo, Victor "Les Misérables" (French: Les Misérables) - 1862
5 Shakespeare, William "Hamlet" - 1603
6 Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847
7 Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings" - 1954
8 Shakespeare, William "Macbeth" - 1606
9 Homer "Odyssey" (Greek: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
10 Alighieri, Dante "The Divine Comedy" (Italian: Divina Commedia) - 1321
11 Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote" (Spanish: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/1615
12 Orwell, George "Animal Farm" - 1945
13 Kundera, Milan "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) - 1984
14 Huxley, Aldous "Brave New World" - 1931
15 Carroll, Lewis "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" - 1865/71
16 Tolstoy, Leo "Anna Karenina" (Russian: Анна Каренина/Anna Karenina) - 1877
17 Dumas, Alexandre "The Count of Monte Cristo" (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) - 1845
18 Süskind, Patrick "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" (German: Das Parfum) - 1985
19 Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (Italian: Il nome della rosa) - 1980
20 Shelley, Mary "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" - 1818
21 Shakespeare, William "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - 1596
22 Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain " (German: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
23 Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Russian: Преступление и наказание/ Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) - 1866
24 Kafka, Franz "The Metamorphosis" (German: Die Verwandlung) - 1912
25 Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890
26 Chaucer, Geoffrey "The Canterbury Tales" - 14th century
26 Molière "Tartuffe or the Imposter" (French: Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur) - 1682
28 Wilde, Oscar "The Importance of Being Earnest" - 1895
29 Bulgakov, Mikhail "The Master and Margarita" (Russian: Ма́стер и Маргари́та) - 1940/67
30 Remarque, Erich Maria "All Quiet on the Western Front" (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) - 1929
31 Stoker, Bram "Dracula" - 1897
32 Conrad, Joseph "Heart of Darkness" - 1902
33 Sophocles "Oedipus Rex" (Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, Oidipous Tyrannos) - 429 BC
34 Voltaire "Candide, ou l'Optimisme" (Candide, or Optimism) - 1759
35 Homer "The Iliad" (Greek: Ιλιάδα) - 8th century BC
36 Sophocles "Antigone" (Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) - 441 BC
37 Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719
37 Austen, Jane "Emma" - 1816
39 Shakespeare, William "Othello" - 1603
40 Turgenev, Ivan "Fathers and Sons" (Russian: Отцы и дети/Otcy i Deti) - 1862
41 Swift, Jonathan "Gulliver's Travels" - 1726
42 Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Shadow of the Wind" (Spanish: La sombra del viento) - 2001
43 Woolf, Virginia "Mrs. Dalloway" - 1925
44 Dickens, Charles "David Copperfield" - 1850
45 Shakespeare, William "The Complete Works" - 1616
46 Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
47 Hugo, Victor "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) - 1831
48 Camus, Albert "The Stranger" (French: L’Etranger) – 1942
49 Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (French: Madame Bovary) - 1857
50 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Faust" (First Part) (German: Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil) - 1808
51 Hardy, Thomas "Jude the Obscure" - 1895
52 Unknown "Beowulf: A New Verse Translation" - 8th to 11th century
53 Bradbury, Ray "Fahrenheit 451" - 1953
54 Proust, Marcel "Remembrance of Things: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove" (French: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) - 1919
55 Dickens, Charles "Great Expectations" - 1861
56 Machiavelli, Niccolò "The Prince" (Italian: Il Principe) - 1532
56 Tolstoy, Lew Nikolajewitsch (Толстой, Лев Николаевич) "War and Peace" (Russian: Война и мир = Woina i mir) – 1868/69
58 Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan) "A Room with a View" - 1908
59 Camus, Albert "The Plague" (French: La Peste) - 1947
60 Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights" - 1847
61 Hašek, Jaroslav "The Good Soldier Svejk: His Fortunes in the World War" (Czech: Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války) - 1923
63 Dickens, Charles "Bleak House" - 1853
64 Eliot, T.S. "The Complete Poems and Plays" - 1965
65 White, T.H. "The Once and Future King" - 1958
66 Golding, William "Lord of the Flies" - 1954
67 Hodgson Burnett, Frances "The Secret Garden" - 1909
68 Stendhal "The Red and the Black" (French: Le Rouge et le Noir, intégral) - 1830
69 Dickens, Charles "A Tale of Two Cities" - 1859
70 Shakespeare, William "The Tempest" - 1611
71 Zola, Émile "Germinal (French: Les Rougon-Macquart, #13) - 1885
72 Camus, Albert "The Fall" (French: La Chute) - 1956
73 Dickens, Charles "A Christmas Carol" - 1843
74 Rostand, Edmond "Cyrano De Bergerac" (French: Cyrano de Bergerac) - 1897
75 Wiesel, Elie "Night" (French: La Nuit) – 1958
76 Dickens, Charles "Oliver Twist" - 1837
77 Ibsen, Henrik "A Doll's House" (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem) - 1897
78 Kafka, Franz "The Trial" (German: Der Prozess) - 1914
79 Levi, Primo "If This Is a Man/The Truce" (Italian: Se questo è un uomo/La Tregua) - 1947/63
80 Shakespeare, William "King Lear" - 1608
81 Beckett, Samuel "Waiting for Godot" - 1953
82 Dumas, Alexandre "The Three Musketeers" (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires) - 1844
83 Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The Prospector" (French: Le Chercheur d'or) - 1985
84 Calvino, Italo "Invisible Cities" (Italian: Le città invisibili) - 1972
85 Proust, Marcel "Swann's Way" (In Search Lost Time, #1) (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) - 1913-27
86 Stoppard, Tom "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" - 1966
87 Waugh, Evelyn "Brideshead Revisited" - 1945
88 Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre "The Dangerous Liaisons" (French: Les Liaisons Dangereuses) - 1782
89 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Played with Fire" (Millennium, #2) (Swedish: Flickan som lekte med elden) - 2006
90 Herodotus "The Histories" (Greek) - 440BC
91 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (Millennium, #1) (Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor) - 2005
92 Calvino, Italo "The Baron in the Trees" (Italian: Il Barone Rampante) - 1957
93 Larsson, Stieg "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" (Millennium, #3) (Swedish: Luftslottet som sprängde) - 2007
94 Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962
95 Pamuk, Orhan "My Name is Red" (Turkish: Benim Adım Kırmızı) – 1998
96 Christie, Agatha "And Then There Were None" - 1939
97 Yeats, W.B. "The Collected Poems" - 1939
99 Unknown "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" - 14th century
100 Shakespeare, William "Henry V" - 1599
56 so far. Still more English language novels and plays than any others - but it's a start.
I can't resist a list! I'll spend some time with this one.
ReplyDeleteI came by to find your European Reading Challenge post but can't find it. I saw that you signed up for the challenge, but can you please direct me to your sign up post? Welcome!
Rose City Reader
Haha, Gilion, neither can I, you've obviously come to the right place. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes, I did sign up for the challenge but haven't posted about it, yet. First, I was thinking to create my own "favourite European novels" list but I think I will start just with one about the challenge. I'll post the link as soon as I wrote the entry. As I said, I've already read 25 European novels this year, so it takes a tad longer ... Still, thanks for reminding me.
I love your blog, I'm looking forward to a vivid exchange.