Word Painting

Modern Library’s Choices

This list of 100 novels was drawn up by the editorial board of Modern Library. Where possible, book titles have been linked to either the original New York Times review or a later article about the book.

Note: I’ve put a star by the books I’ve read and an exclamation mark by the ones I want to read.

1. “Ulysses,” James Joyce !

2. “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald *

3. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce

4. “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov*

5. “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley*

6. “The Sound and the Fury,” William Faulkner !

7. “Catch-22,” Joseph Heller !

8. “Darkness at Noon,” Arthur Koestler

9. “Sons and Lovers,” D. H. Lawrence

10. “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck*

11. “Under the Volcano,” Malcolm Lowry

12. “The Way of All Flesh,” Samuel Butler

13. “1984,” George Orwell*

14. “I, Claudius,” Robert Graves

15. “To the Lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf*

16. “An American Tragedy,” Theodore Dreiser

17. “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Carson McCullers !

18. “Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut*

19. “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison !

20. “Native Son,” Richard Wright

21. “Henderson the Rain King,” Saul Bellow

22. “Appointment in Samarra,” John O’ Hara

23. “U.S.A.” (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. “Winesburg, Ohio,” Sherwood Anderson

25. “A Passage to India,” E. M. Forster

26. “The Wings of the Dove,” Henry James

27. “The Ambassadors,” Henry James

28. “Tender Is the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. “The Studs Lonigan Trilogy,” James T. Farrell

30. “The Good Soldier,” Ford Madox Ford

31. “Animal Farm,” George Orwell !

32. “The Golden Bowl,” Henry James

33. “Sister Carrie,” Theodore Dreiser

34. “A Handful of Dust,” Evelyn Waugh

35. “As I Lay Dying,” William Faulkner

36. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren !

37. “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” Thornton Wilder

38. “Howards End,” E. M. Forster

39. “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” James Baldwin

40. “The Heart of the Matter,” Graham Greene*

41. “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding*

42. “Deliverance,” James Dickey

43. “A Dance to the Music of Time” (series), Anthony Powell

44. “Point Counter Point,” Aldous Huxley

45. “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway*

46. “The Secret Agent,” Joseph Conrad

47. “Nostromo,” Joseph Conrad

48. “The Rainbow,” D. H. Lawrence

49. “Women in Love,” D. H. Lawrence

50. “Tropic of Cancer,” Henry Miller

51. “The Naked and the Dead,” Norman Mailer !

52. “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Philip Roth !

53. “Pale Fire,” Vladimir Nabokov !

54. “Light in August,” William Faulkner

55. “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac !

56. “The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett

57. “Parade’s End,” Ford Madox Ford

58. “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton

59. “Zuleika Dobson,” Max Beerbohm

60. “The Moviegoer,” Walker Percy

61. “Death Comes to the Archbishop,” Willa Cather

62. “From Here to Eternity,” James Jones

63. “The Wapshot Chronicles,” John Cheever

64. “The Catcher in the Rye,” J. D. Salinger*

65. “A Clockwork Orange,” Anthony Burgess !

66. “Of Human Bondage,” W. Somerset Maugham

67. “Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad

68. “Main Street,” Sinclair Lewis

69. “The House of Mirth,” Edith Wharton

70. “The Alexandria Quartet,” Lawrence Durrell

71. “A High Wind in Jamaica,” Richard Hughes

72. “A House for Ms. Biswas,” V. S. Naipaul

73. “The Day of the Locust,” Nathaniel West

74. “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway*

75. “Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh

76. “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Muriel Spark

77. “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce

78. “Kim,” Rudyard Kipling*

79. “A Room With a View,” E. M. Forster

80. “Brideshead Revisited,” Evelyn Waugh

81. “The Adventures of Augie March,” Saul Bellow

82. “Angle of Repose,” Wallace Stegner

83. “A Bend in the River,” V. S. Naipaul

84. “The Death of the Heart,” Elizabeth Bowen

85. “Lord Jim,” Joseph Conrad

86. “Ragtime,” E. L. Doctorow !

87. “The Old Wives’ Tale,” Arnold Bennett

88. “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London*

89. “Loving,” Henry Green

90. “Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie

91. “Tobacco Road,” Erskine Caldwell

92. “Ironweed,” William Kennedy !

93. “The Magus,” John Fowles

94. “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys

95. “Under the Net,” Iris Murdoch !

96. “Sophie’s Choice,” William Styron !

97. “The Sheltering Sky,” Paul Bowles

98. “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” James M. Cain

99. “The Ginger Man,” J. P. Donleavy

100. “The Magnificent Ambersons,” Booth Tarkington