Time selection of the best 100 English-language novels from 1923 to 2005

The time selection of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 is an unordered list on the importance of works by literary critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo American US magazine Time was compiled in the year of 2005. The starting date of 1923 was chosen because Time first appeared in that year. For this reason, some works are missing, such as Ulysses , which, according to the overwhelming majority, are among the literary masterpieces of the 20th century. The second criterion had to be a work written in English.

The two Nobel Prize winners for literature, Saul Bellow and William Faulkner, as well as the authors Graham Greene , Vladimir Nabokov , George Orwell , Philip Roth , Thomas Pynchon , Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf are represented with two works each . One of Pynchon's two selected novels, the National Book Award- winning novel The Ends of the Parable , was selected by the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 . The award committee did not want to endorse this decision, however, as it considered the novel obscene and illegible, so that the prize was ultimately not awarded that year. With Kingsley and Martin Amis a father and his son are represented in the selection. A comic was also honored with the election of Watchmen .

100 lists are published regularly by Time. The magazine is best known for the annual election of the 100 most influential personalities of the year, the so-called Time 100 .

The selection

Original title	German title	author	Publishing year	Awards and Notes
1984	1984	George Orwell	1949
The Adventures of Augie March	The Adventures of Augie March	Saul Bellow	1953	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
All the King's Men	The game of power	Robert Penn Warren	1946
American pastoral	American idyll	Philip Roth	1997
An American Tragedy	An American tragedy	Theodore Dreiser	1925
Animal Farm	Animal farm	George Orwell	1945
Appointment in Samara	Meeting in Samarra	John O'Hara	1934
Are You There God? It's me, Margaret	Are you there god It's me, Margaret	Judy flower	1970
The Assistant	The assistant	Bernard Malamud	1957
Atonement	Apology	Ian McEwan	2001	National Book Critics Circle Award WH Smith Literary Award
At Swim Two-Birds	On swimming-two-birds	Flann O'Brien	1939
Beloved	human child	Toni Morrison	1987	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
The Berlin Stories	Mr. Norris goes up goodbye, Berlin	Christopher Isherwood	1935 1939
The Big Sleep	The great sleep	Raymond Chandler	1939
The Blind Assassin	The blind killer	Margaret Atwood	2000	Booker Prize
Blood meridian	The sunset in the west	Cormac McCarthy	1985
Brideshead Revisited	Goodbye to Brideshead	Evelyn Waugh	1944
The Bridge of San Luis Rey	The San Luis Rey Bridge	Thornton Wilder	1927	Pulitzer Prize
Call it Sleep	Call it sleep	Henry Roth	1934
Catch-22	Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961	Was nominated for the National Book Award in 1962, but was defeated by the novel Der Kinogeher, also listed here
The catcher in the rye	The catcher in the rye	JD Salinger	1951
A clockwork orange	Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	1962
The Confessions of Nat Turner	Nat Turner's Confessions	William Styron	1967	Pulitzer Prize William Dean Howells Medal Prix ​​mondial Cino Del Duca for life's work
The Corrections	The corrections	Jonathan Franzen	2001	National Book Award James Tait Black Memorial Prize
The Crying of Lot 49	The auction of No. 49	Thomas Pynchon	1966
A Dance to the Music of Time		Anthony Powell	1951-1975	A twelve-volume series of novels, only partially translated into German
The Day of the Locust	Day of the Locust	Nathanael West	1939
Death comes for the Archbishop	Death comes to the archbishop	Willa Cather	1927	William Dean Howell's Medal
A Death in the Family	A death in the family	James Agee	1957	Pulitzer Prize
The death of the heart	Cold hearts	Elizabeth Bowen	1936
Deliverance	River trip	James Dickey	1970
Dog Soldiers		Robert Stone	1974	National Book Award
Falconer	Welcome to Falconer	John Cheever	1977	American Academy of Arts and Letters National Medal for Lifetime Achievement
The French Lieutenant's Woman	The mistress of the French lieutenant	John Fowles	1969
The Golden Notebook	The golden notebook	Doris Lessing	1962	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
Gone with the Wind	Blown by the wind	Margaret Mitchell	1936	Pulitzer Prize
Go tell it on the mountain	Go and announce it from the mountain	James Baldwin	1953
The Grapes of Wrath	Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck	1939	Pulitzer Prize Nobel Prize in Literature for the author
Gravity's Rainbow	The ends of the parabola	Thomas Pynchon	1973	National Book Award
The Great Gatsby	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925
A handful of dust	A handful of dust	Evelyn Waugh	1934
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter	The heart is a lonely hunter	Carson McCullers	1940
The Heart of the Matter	The heart of all things	Graham Greene	1948
duke	duke	Saul Bellow	1964	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
A house for Mr Biswas	A house for Mr Biswas	VS Naipaul	1961	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
Housekeeping	House without a stop	Marilynne Robinson	1980	Hemingway Foundation PEN Award
I, Claudius	Me, Claudius, Kaiser and God	Robert Graves	1934
Infinite Jest	Endless fun	David Foster Wallace	1996
Invisible Man	The invisible man	Ralph Ellison	1952	National Book Award
Light in August	Light in August	William Faulkner	1932	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	The king of Narnia	CS Lewis	1950
Lolita	Lolita	Vladimir Nabokov	1955
Lord of the Flies	Lord of the flies	William Golding	1954	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
The Lord of the Rings	Lord of the rings	JRR Tolkien	1954-1955
Loving	The Butler	Henry Green	1945
Lucky Jim	Lucky for Jim	Kingsley Amis	1954	Somerset Maugham Award
The man who loved children	The man who loved his children	Christina Stead	1940
Midnight's Children	Midnight children	Salman Rushdie	1980	Booker Prize
Money: A Suicide Note	Greedy	Martin Amis	1984
The Moviegoer	The cinema-goer	Walker Percy	1960	National Book Award
Mrs. Dalloway	Mrs. Dalloway	Virginia Woolf	1925
Naked lunch	Naked lunch	William S. Burroughs	1959
Native Son	Native Son. Son of this country	Richard Wright	1940
Neuromancer	Neuromancer	William Gibson	1984
Never Let Me Go	Everything we had to give	Kazuo Ishiguro	2005
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	One flew over the cuckoo's nest	Ken Kesey	1962
On the road	On road	Jack Kerouac	1957
The Painted Bird	The painted bird	Jerzy Kosinski	1965
Pale Fire	Pale fire	Vladimir Nabokov	1962
A Passage to India	In search of India	EM Forster	1924
Play It As It Lays	Play your game	Joan Didion	1970
Portnoy's Complaint	Portnoy's complaints	Philip Roth	1969
Possession	Obsessed	AS Byatt	1990
The Power and the Glory	The power and the glory	Graham Greene	1940
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	The heyday of Miss Jean Brodie	Muriel Spark	1962
Rabbit, Run	Rabbit heart	John Updike	1960
ragtime	ragtime	EL Doctorow	1975	National Book Critics Circle Award Doctorow won this award a second time for Billy Bathgate in 1989
The Recognitions	The fake of the world	William Gaddis	1955
Red Harvest	Red harvest	Dashiell Hammett	1927
Revolutionary Road	Times of turmoil	Richard Yates	1961	Was nominated for the National Book Award in 1962, but was defeated by the novel Der Kinogeher, also listed here
The Sheltering Sky	Sky over the desert	Paul Bowles	1949
Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade	Slaughterhouse 5 or the Children's Crusade	Kurt Vonnegut	1969
Snow crash	Snow crash	Neal Stephenson	1991
The Sot-Weed Factor	The tobacco dealer	John Barth	1960
The Sound and the Fury	Madness and madness	William Faulkner	1929	Nobel Prize for Literature for the author
The Sportswriter	The sports reporter	Richard Ford	1986
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold	The spy who came in from the cold	John le Carré	1963	CWA Gold Dagger Somerset Maugham Award Edgar Allan Poe Award Goethe Medal for the literary life's work
The Sun Also Rises	Fiesta	Ernest Hemingway	1926
Their Eyes Were Watching God	They saw God before their eyes	Zora Neale Hurston	1937
Things Fall Apart	Okonkwo or The Old Falls	Chinua Achebe	1958
To kill a mockingbird	Who disturbs the nightingale	Harper Lee	1960	Pulitzer Prize
To the lighthouse	The ride to the lighthouse	Virginia Woolf	1927
Tropic of Cancer	Tropic of Cancer	Henry Miller	1934
Ubik	Ubik	Philip K. Dick	1969
Under the Net	Under the net	Iris Murdoch	1954
Under the volcano	Under the volcano	Malcolm Lowry	1947
Watchmen	Watchmen	Alan Moore (text) Dave Gibbons (drawings)	1986-1987	Kirby Award Eisner Award Hugo Award Max and Moritz Prize
White noise	White noise	Don DeLillo	1984	National Book Award
White Teeth	show teeth	Zadie Smith	2000
Wide Sargasso Sea	Sargasso Sea	Jean Rhys	1966

See also

• The 100 books of the century by Le Monde
• ZEIT library of 100 books
• List of works in the book of 1000 books
• BBC Big Read
• BBC selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014
• BBC selection of the top 100 British novels
• Great Books of the Western World
• Thirteen Classics (Classical Chinese Canon)
• Dutch literary canon
• Canon of literature
• Time selection of the best 100 films from 1923 to 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Kelly, Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo: Time's List of the 100 Best Novels (1923-2005) . In: Time . October 16, 2005. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
2. ↑ theguardian: Thomas Pynchon (Tuesday 22 July 2008 15:39) .