The greatest reading of all times, places and genres

Editor Eric's flagship list The Greatest Literature of All Time and dozens of more specialized literary lists present the world's most important and engaging reading of the past four thousand years. (Read how the lists have been created and updated over three decades of research.)

To access any list, click on the panels at the top of any page or on the overview below. Link from the lists to critiques and other information on selected books, authors and adaptations of the world's greatest literature.

And keep reading!

Lists overview

All literature:

• The Greatest Literature of All Time

• The Top 99 Works of Literature

Literary forms:

• The Greatest Novels • The Greatest Novel Series • The Greatest Novellas • The Greatest Plays • The Greatest Stories • The Greatest Story Collections • The Greatest Poems • The Greatest Long Poems • The Greatest Poetry Collections • The Greatest Nonfiction

• The Top 99 Novels

• The Really Long List

Fictional genres:

• The Greatest Historical Fiction • The Greatest Crime and Mystery Fiction • The Greatest Science Fiction • The Greatest Fantasy Fiction • The Greatest Romance Fiction • The Greatest Thrillers • The Greatest Horror Fiction and many more genre works, stories, series and collections

Nonfiction genres:

• The Greatest Biographies • The Greatest Histories • The Greatest Memoirs • The Greatest Works on Philosophy • The Greatest Works on Science • The Greatest Works on Travel • The Greatest Works of True Crime and many more nonfiction genres

Countries and regions:

• The Greatest African Literature • The Greatest American Literature • The Greatest Australian Literature • The Greatest British Literature • The Greatest Canadian Literature • The Greatest Latin American Literature • The Greatest Russian Literature and literature from dozens more countries and regions

Thirteen recent book and author critiques

Collective action, individual meaning

Despite focusing on a specific event, place and time in Chinese history—the Communist uprising in Shanghai and its brutal suppression by the Kuomintang over a few days in 1927—Man's Fate reads more like a French philosophical novel. Which it is. Yes, it is sympathetic with the Chinese revolutionary cause.... Man's Fate

From scientific curiosity to disgust

It's tempting to deride "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" as an earlier century's curiosity that no one would take as a factual report now. Hypnotizing the dying. Talking to the dead. Gruesome physical transformation. Yet think of all the really bizarre paranormal and pseudoscientific accounts that millions.... The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The ideas and the romance

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878) are usually both among the books competing for the title of "greatest of all time". They often take turns at the top spot. A Tolstoy fan though may resent a ranking that places either one of his two greatest books below the other. It's tough to choose. So here's.... Anna Karenina

The hoe of justice

Austin Clarke's best-known and most awarded novel can divide readers, if not critics. Stylistically The Polished Hoe falls into the category of the poetic novel. There it joins the works of many other acclaimed novelists but especially, it sometimes seems, Canadian authors. Fellow Giller Prize winners Michael Ondaatje and.... The Polished Hoe

Detecting in the real world

It may be difficult to see what is so groundbreaking about this series of ten detective novels published from 1965 to 1975. Crime writers have copied and built upon its innovations ever since, making them commonplace today. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö have been credited with having created the police procedural.... Martin Beck series

The future that once was

Finding a copy of Hugo Gernsback's science fiction novel Ralph 124C 41+ has been a cause of both delight and disappointment. Delight because this strangely titled book is said to be a semi-rare classic, by one of the genre's most influential writers and editors, sometimes called the "father of science fiction" whose.... Ralph 124C 41+

Vengeance is ours

Separately the plays in Aeschylus's house of Atreus trilogy are skimpy. Or they may seem so to the modern reader or theatregoer. In each instalment the narrative turns on a single great dramatic incident. In Agamemnon the king of the title returns home victorious from the ten-year Trojan War, only to be killed by.... Oresteia

A what-if and when-if classic

Bring the Jubilee is one of those modern works declared a classic within certain genres but, despite repeated reprinting, largely forgotten by the general reading public. Which is appropriate in this case perhaps, as Ward Moore's novel has to do with changing history. Did someone go back in time to remove copies of.... Bring the Jubilee

Going, going, gone flat

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, we had a spate of bestsellers with "girl" in the titles: Girl, Interrupted (1993), Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999), The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), The Windup Girl (2009), Gone Girl (2012), The Girl on the Train (2015), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005) and its similarly named.... Gone Girl

Selling the good book for fun and profit

When they got around to making the movie of Elmer Gantry—more than three decades after the novel came out—they still felt compelled to preface it with a warning: We believe that certain aspects of Revivalism can bear examination—that the conduct of some revivalists makes a mockery of the traditional.... Elmer Gantry

Another not-so-different world

What is this? You could waste a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is. Some people have clearly decided. The science fiction community has claimed Michael Chabon's 2007 novel as one of its own, conferring on it a slew of accolades, including the prestigious.... The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Becoming more than human

The superman concept has had a steady run in science fiction. Since the genre's early days, great and mediocre writers have produced narratives around characters surpassing the natural limits constricting humanity—with or without the disturbing Nietzschean or fascist undertones. Readers have long been fascinated.... A.E. van Vogt

Then and now in middling America

A century after its first publication, the story of George Babbitt can elicit reactions of both "This is so dated!" and "Just like today!" And often from the same readers. Sinclair Lewis's most influential novel, Babbitt, deftly satirizes the middle-class customs, political fashions and cultural artefacts of its time and place—namely.... Babbitt

Index to all book critiques • Index to all author critiques

Features of note

How works were selected

What makes this list of great literature the most accurate, reliable and comprehensive? More than three decades of research have created—and continually updated—Editor Eric's lists of the greatest literature. See "Creating the Greatest Literature of All Time" for more about the whole, painstaking process.

What's so great about these books?

Readers and critics can have widely diverging ideas about what makes a certain book good and another one not-so. How can we find agreement on which works are the greatest? Can popular genre books be compared with literary masterpieces? How is a Greatest Literature of All Time list even possible? See "What does 'Greatest' even mean?"

Call it science fiction, scifi, speculative fiction or SF—but what is it?

The story of the continuing struggle to define this genre and distinguish it from others. How Editor Eric settled on the criterion used for his greatest science fiction list. See "What is science fiction?"

Finding the best translations

Much of what you read in English was not written in English. Does it matter? Short answer: Yes. See the long answer in "Does it matter which translation you read?"