The 100 books of the century by Le Monde

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The 100 Books of the Century is a listing of the books rated as the hundred best of the twentieth century . The list was drawn up in the spring of 1999 following an opinion poll carried out by the French retail chain Fnac and the Paris daily Le Monde .

From a list of 200 titles compiled by bookstores and journalists , 17,000 French people chose by answering the question, “Which books have stuck in your mind?” (“Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?”).

The list mixes great novels with poetry , plays, and comics . The first fifty works were the subject of an essay by Frédéric Beigbeder , Dernier inventaire avant liquidation , in which he referred in particular to the French character of the list.

The 100 books of the century

No. title author year
1 The stranger Albert Camus 1942
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 - 1927
3 The process Franz Kafka 1925
4th The little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery 1943
5 This is how man lives André Malraux 1933
6th Journey to the end of the night Louis-Ferdinand Celine 1932
7th Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939
8th Whom the hour strikes Ernest Hemingway 1940
9 The great Meaulnes Alain-Fournier 1913
10 The foam of the days Boris Vian 1947
11 The opposite sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949
12 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1952
13 Being and nothing Jean-Paul Sartre 1943
14th The name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980
15th The Gulag archipelago Alexander Solzhenitsyn 1973
16 Paroles Jacques Prévert 1946
17th alcohol Guillaume Apollinaire 1913
18th The blue lotus Hergé 1936
19th Anne Frank's diary Anne Frank 1947
20th Sad tropics Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955
21st Beautiful new world Aldous Huxley 1932
22nd 1984 George Orwell 1949
23 Asterix the Gaul René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo 1959
24 The bald singer Eugène Ionesco 1952
25th Three Essays on Sexual Theory Sigmund Freud 1905
26th The black flame Marguerite Yourcenar 1968
27 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955
28 Ulysses James Joyce 1922
29 The Tatar desert Dino Buzzati 1940
30th The counterfeiters André Gide 1925
31 The hussar on the roof Jean Giono 1951
32 The beauty of the Lord Albert Cohen 1968
33 A hundred years of solitude Gabriel García Marquez 1967
34 Madness and madness William Faulkner 1929
35 The deed of Thérèse Desqueyroux François Mauriac 1927
36 Zazie in the metro Raymond Queneau 1959
37 Confusion of feelings Stefan Zweig 1927
38 Blown by the wind Margaret Mitchell 1936
39 Lady Chatterley's lover DH Lawrence 1928
40 The magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924
41 Bonjour sadness Françoise Sagan 1954
42 The silence of the sea Vercors 1942
43 Life instruction manual Georges Perec 1978
44 The Baskerville Dog Arthur Conan Doyle 1901 - 1902
45 Satan's sun Georges Bernanos 1926
46 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925
47 The joke Milan Kundera 1967
48 The contempt Alberto Moravia 1954
49 alibi Agatha Christie 1926
50 Nadja André Breton 1928
51 Aurélien Louis Aragon 1944
52 The silk shoe Paul Claudel 1929
53 Six people are looking for an author Luigi Pirandello 1921
54 The resilient rise of Arturo Ui Bertolt Brecht 1959
55 Friday or In the Lap of the Pacific Michel Tournier 1967
56 The war of the worlds HG Wells 1898
57 Is that a human Primo Levi 1947
58 Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien 1954-1955
59 Les vrilles de la vigne Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette 1908
60 Capital of pain Paul Éluard 1926
61 Martin Eden Jack London 1909
62 South Sea Ballad Hugo Pratt 1967
63 At the zero point of literature Roland Barthes 1953
64 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Heinrich Boell 1974
65 The bank of the Syrten Julien Gracq 1951
66 The order of things Michel Foucault 1966
67 On road Jack Kerouac 1957
68 The wonderful journey of little Nils Holgersson Selma Lagerlöf 1906 -1907
69 A room to yourself Virginia Woolf 1929
70 The Mars Chronicles Ray Bradbury 1950
71 The rapture of Lol V. Stein Marguerite Duras 1964
72 The protocol Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio 1963
73 Tropisms Nathalie Sarraute 1939
74 Diaries 1887-1910 Jules Renard 1925
75 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900
76 Fonts Jacques Lacan 1966
77 The theater and its double Antonin Artaud 1938
78 Manhattan transfer John Dos Passos 1925
79 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944
80 Moloch. The life of the Moravagine Blaise Cendrars 1926
81 The general of the dead army Ismail Kadare 1963
82 Sophie's decision William Styron 1979
83 Gypsy romances Federico García Lorca 1928
84 Maigret and Pietr the Latvian Georges Simenon 1931
85 Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs Jean Genet 1944
86 The man without qualities Robert Musil 1930-1932
87 Fureur et mystère René Char 1948
88 The catcher in the rye JD Salinger 1951
89 No orchids for Mrs. Blandish James Hadley Chase 1939
90 The adventures of Blake and Mortimer Edgar P. Jacobs 1950
91 The notes of Malte Laurids Brigge Rainer Maria Rilke 1910
92 Paris-Rome or The Modification Michel Butor 1957
93 Elements and origins of total domination Hannah Arendt 1951
94 The master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967
95 Trilogy: Sexus , Plexus and Nexus Henry Miller 1949-1960
96 The great sleep Raymond Chandler 1939
97 Nautical marks Saint John Perse 1957
98 Gaston André Franquin 1957
99 Under the volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947
100 Midnight children Salman Rushdie 1981

See also

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  1. ↑ Écrivains et choix sentimentaux , Josyane Savigneau , Le Monde , October 15, 1999. (French)