The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must ReadFamily and Self

Given by The Guardian

Other Names: 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, Guardian 1000
146 Works 914,596 Books 15,885 Reviews ½ 3.9
The Guardian is a UK newspaper which, with its sister Sunday paper The Observer, published this list as a set of supplements over a one-week period early in 2009. As described by the Guardian: show more "This list… includes only novels —no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems — from any decade in any language."

The list actually contains only 998 books. show less
Categories:
All, Comedy (149), Crime (147), Family and Self (146), Love (141), Science Fiction and Fantasy (149), State of the Nation (134), War and Travel (132)
Year Awarded:
2009
Work
The Face of Another (1966) by Kōbō Abe
Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott
Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995) by Kate Atkinson
Cat's Eye (1988) by Margaret Atwood
Room Temperature (1990) by Nicholson Baker
Eugénie Grandet (1833) by Honoré de Balzac
Old Goriot (1835) by Honoré de Balzac
The Crow Road (1992) by Iain Banks
The L-Shaped Room (1960) by Lynne Reid Banks
Epileptic (2005) by David B.
The Mandarins (1956) by Simone de Beauvoir
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) by Alison Bechdel
Malone Dies (1951) by Samuel Beckett
A Legacy (1956) by Sybille Bedford
Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
Humboldt's Gift (1973) by Saul Bellow
The Old Wives' Tale (1908) by Arnold Bennett
G. (1972) by John Berger
Extinction (1986) by Thomas Bernhard
Two Serious Ladies (1943) by Jane Bowles
Any Human Heart (2002) by William Boyd
The Death of Virgil (1945) by Hermann Broch
Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney
The Way of All Flesh (1903) by Samuel Butler
The Sound of My Voice (1987) by Ron Butlin
The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus
Wise Children (1991) by Angela Carter
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) by John Cheever
The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
The Holy Terrors (1929) by Jean Cocteau
The Vagabond (1910) by Colette
Manservant and Maidservant (1947) by Ivy Compton-Burnett
Being Dead (1999) by Jim Crace
Quarantine (1997) by Jim Crace
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) by Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
My New York Diary (1999) by Julie Doucet
The Millstone (1965) by Margaret Drabble
My Family and Other Animals (1953) by Gerald Durrell
Silence (1966) by Shūsaku Endō
The Gathering (2007) by Anne Enright
Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey Eugenides
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
The Sportswriter (1986) by Richard Ford
Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster
Spies (2002) by Michael Frayn
Hideous Kinky (1992) by Esther Freud
The Man of Property (1906) by John Galsworthy
Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Immoralist (1902) by André Gide
The Vatican Cellars (1914) by André Gide
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) by Oliver Goldsmith
The Power and the Glory (1940) by Graham Greene
Hunger (1890) by Knut Hamsun
The Shrimp and the Anemone (1945) by L. P. Hartley
The Old Man and the Sea (1950) by Ernest Hemingway
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) by Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf (1927) by Hermann Hesse
The Three Paradoxes (2007) by Paul Hornschemeier
Tom Brown's School Days (1857) by Thomas Hughes
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving
The Ambassadors (1903) by Henry James
Washington Square (1880) by Henry James
The Tortoise and the Hare (1954) by Elizabeth Jenkins
The Unfortunates (1969) by B. S. Johnson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
Good Behaviour (1981) by Molly Keane
Memed, My Hawk (1955) by Yaşar Kemal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) by Hanif Kureishi
Sons and Lovers (1913) by D. H. Lawrence
Cider with Rosie (1959) by Laurie Lee
Invitation to the Waltz (1932) by Rosamond Lehmann
The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing
How Green Was My Valley (1939) by Richard Llewellyn
Martin Eden (1909) by Jack London
Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
Palace Walk (1956) by Naguib Mahfouz
The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1924) by Thomas Mann
The Chateau (1961) by William Maxwell
The Rector's Daughter (1924) by F. M. Mayor
The Member of the Wedding (1946) by Carson McCullers
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) by George Meredith
Family Matters (2002) by Rohinton Mistry
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) by Brian Moore
The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon (1977) by Toni Morrison
Sour Sweet (1982) by Timothy Mo
The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (1977) by Alice Munro
The Black Prince (1973) by Iris Murdoch
The Man Without Qualities (1930) by Robert Musil
A House for Mr Biswas (1961) by V. S. Naipaul
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) by Flann O'Brien
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels (1969) by Kenzaburō Ōe
The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy
The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath
My Name Is Asher Lev (1972) by Chaim Potok
The Good Companions (1929) by J. B. Priestley
The Shipping News (1993) by E. Annie Proulx
In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust
Married Man (1979) by Piers Paul Read
Pointed Roofs (1915) by Dorothy Miller Richardson
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917) by Henry Handel Richardson
Call It Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth
Julie, or, The New Héloise (1761) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger
Alberta and Jacob (1926) by Cora Sandel
A Suitable Boy (1993) by Vikram Seth
Unless (2002) by Carol Shields
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) by Lionel Shriver
The Three Sisters (1914) by May Sinclair
The Family Moskat (1950) by Isaac Bashevis Singer
A Thousand Acres (1991) by Jane Smiley
On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith
The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck
Ballet Shoes (1936) by Noel Streatfeild
Zeno's Conscience (1930) by Italo Svevo
The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) by Booth Tarkington
Angel (1957) by Elizabeth Taylor
Lark Rise to Candleford (1945) by Flora Thompson
The Blackwater Lightship (1999) by Colm Tóibín
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (1982) by Sue Townsend
Death in Summer (1998) by William Trevor
Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev
Peace in War (1897) by Miguel de Unamuno
A Rabbit Omnibus (1991) by John Updike
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) by Chris Ware
Morvern Callar (1995) by Alan Warner
The History of Mr. Polly (1910) by H. G. Wells
The Fountain Overflows (1956) by Rebecca West
Frost in May (1933) by Antonia White
The Tree of Man (1955) by Patrick White
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) by Jeanette Winterson
I'll Go to Bed at Noon (2004) by Gerard Woodward
Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) by Johann David Wyss

Descriptions

The Guardian is a UK newspaper which, with its sister Sunday paper The Observer, published this list as a set of supplements over a one-week period early in 2009. As described by the Guardian: "This list… includes only novels —no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems — from any decade in any language."

The list actually contains only 998 books.

(English, Member-written)

The list actually contains only 998 books: 149 Comedy, 147 Crime, 146 Family and self, 141 Love, 149 Science fiction and fantasy, 134 State of the nation, 132 War and travel.

(English, Technical/disambiguation notice)
URL: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

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