There are the best 50 Books of the Century, from Le Monde’s “100 Books of the Century” list. It blends revolutionary novels, philosophical milestones, and unforgettable stories that shaped modern thought and taste. From Camus to Orwell, these are the titles that defined a century.
Ranked from 1-50 (highest to lowest)
The Stranger
Albert Camus · 1989
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff · 2020
The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text (The Schocken Kafka Library), Book Cover May Vary
Franz Kafka · 1999
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · 2000
Man's Fate
Andre Malraux · 1990
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline · 2006
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 2006
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1995
The Lost Estate (Pocket Penguins)
Henri Alain-Fournier · 2016
Froth on the daydream
Boris Vian · 2015
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir · 2012
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (Beckett, Samuel)
Samuel Beckett · 2011
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre · 2021
The Name Of The Rose
Umberto Eco · 2014
The Gulag Archipelago
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN · 2018
Paroles
Jacques Prévert · 2017
Alcools
Guillaume Apollinaire · 2016
The Blue Lotus
Hergé · 2008
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank · 2010
Tristes Tropiques
Claude Levi-Strauss · 2012
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 2006
Nineteen Eighty-four
George Orwell · 2017
Asterix the Gaul
René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo · 2004
The Bald Soprano & Other Plays
Eugène Ionesco · 2020
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
Sigmund Freud · 2000
The Abyss
Marguerite Yourcenar · 1976
Lolita (Vintage International)
Vladimir Nabokov · 2010
Ulysses
James Joyce · 2022
The Tartar Steppe
Dino Buzzati · 2018
Counterfeiters With Journal Of The Counterfeiters
Gide, Andre
The Horseman on the Roof
Jean Giono · 1982
Modern Classics Her Lover (belle Du Seigneur) (Penguin Modern Classics)
Albert Cohen, David Coward · 2005
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 2006
The Sound and the Fury: SeaWolf Press Classic
William Faulkner · 2025
Thérèse Desqueyroux
François Mauriac · 1979
Zazie in the Metro (Penguin Classics)
Raymond Queneau · 2001
Confusion
Stefan Zweig · 2002
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell · 2011
Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Unexpurgated edition
D. H. Lawrence · 2015
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann · 1996
Bonjour tristesse
Françoise Sagan
The Silence Of The Sea,
Vercors
Life A User's Manual
Georges Perec · 2025
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle · 2001
Under Satan's Sun
Georges Bernanos · 2001
The Great Gatsby
Francis Scott Fitzgerald · 2022
The Joke (Definitive Version)
Milan Kundera · 1993
A Ghost at Noon
Alberto Moravia · 1976
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (The Hercule Poirot Mysteries Book 4)
Agatha Christie · 2022
Nadja
André Breton · 1994
Le Monde’s Best 50 Books of the Century by Hypelist - Hypelist
