The Modern Library Top 200 is the list of the 200 best novels in English published since 1950, selected by Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin.
Reading score: 101/200
† Yet to read.
| Rank | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Adventures of Augie March | Saul Bellow |
| 2 | Anecdotes of Destiny | Karen Blixen |
| 3 | Angel | Elizabeth Taylor |
| 4 | The Ballad of the Sad Café | Carson McCullers |
| 5 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger |
| 6 | A Dance to the Music of Time | Anthony Powell |
| 7 | December Bride | Sam Hanna Bell |
| 8 | East of Eden | John Steinbeck |
| 9 | The Echoing Grove | Rosamond Lehmann |
| 10 | The Financial Expert | R. K. Narayan |
| 11 | The Flint Anchor † | Sylvia Townsend Warner |
| 12 | The Fountain Overflows | Rebecca West |
| 13 | From the Terrace † | John O’Hara |
| 14 | Go Tell It on the Mountain | James Baldwin |
| 15 | The Go-Between | L. P. Hartley |
| 16 | The Grand Sophy † | Georgette Heyer |
| 17 | A Heritage and its History † | Ivy Compton-Burnett |
| 18 | Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison |
| 19 | A Legacy † | Sybille Bedford |
| 20 | The Little Disturbances of Man : Stories of Women and Men at Love † |
Grace Paley |
| 21 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov |
| 22 | The Long Goodbye | Raymond Chandler |
| 23 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| 24 | Lucky Jim | Kingsley Amis |
| 25 | Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable † | Samuel Beckett |
| 26 | A Murder Is Announced | Agatha Christie |
| 27 | My Cousin Rachel | Daphne du Maurier |
| 28 | Naked Lunch | William S. Burroughs |
| 29 | The Natural † | Bernard Malamud |
| 30 | Nothing † | Henry Green |
| 31 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway |
| 32 | On the Road | Jack Kerouac |
| 33 | Owls Do Cry † | Janet Frame |
| 34 | The Palm-wine Drinkard † | Amos Tutuola |
| 35 | Power Without Glory † | Frank Hardy |
| 36 | Private Life of an Indian Prince † | Mulk Raj Anand |
| 37 | The Recognitions | William Gaddis |
| 38 | Saturday Night and Sunday Morning † | Alan Sillitoe |
| 39 | The Sword of Honour Trilogy † | Evelyn Waugh |
| 40 | The Talented Mr. Ripley | Patricia Highsmith |
| 41 | Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe |
| 42 | The Tortoise and the Hare † | Elizabeth Jenkins |
| 43 | Train to Pakistan | Khushwant Singh |
| 44 | The West Pier † | Patrick Hamilton |
| 45 | Wise Blood | Flannery O’Connor |
| 46 | The Balkan Trilogy † | Olivia Manning |
| 47 | The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath |
| 48 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller |
| 49 | The Confessions of Nat Turner | William Styron |
| 50 | Cotter’s England † | Christina Stead |
| 51 | Girl with Green Eyes † | Edna O’Brien |
| 52 | The Godfather | Mario Puzo |
| 53 | The Golden Notebook | Doris Lessing |
| 54 | A Grain of Wheat † | Ngûgî wa Thiong’o |
| 55 | The Group † | Mary McCarthy |
| 56 | Happiness, and other stories † | Mary Lavin |
| 57 | Heartland † | Wilson Harris |
| 58 | Herzog | Saul Bellow |
| 59 | A House for Mr. Biswas | V. S. Naipaul |
| 60 | In the Heart of the
Country & Other Stories † |
William H. Gass |
| 61 | The Interpreters † | Wole Soyinka |
| 62 | Jeeves in the Offing | P. G. Wodehouse |
| 63 | A Jest of God | Margaret Laurence |
| 64 | The Jewel in the Crown | Paul Scott |
| 65 | Last Exit to Brooklyn | Hubert Selby, Jr. |
| 66 | The Little Girls † | Elizabeth Bowen |
| 67 | The Magus | John Fowles |
| 68 | Memoirs of a Peon † | Frank Sargeson |
| 69 | The Nice and the Good † | Iris Murdoch |
| 70 | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Muriel Spark |
| 71 | Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetrology † | John Updike |
| 72 | The Reivers | William Faulkner |
| 73 | Riders in the Chariot † | Patrick White |
| 74 | Ship of Fools † | Katherine Anne Porter |
| 75 | The Spy Who Came in From the Cold | John le Carré |
| 76 | That’s How It Was † | Maureen Duffy |
| 77 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| 78 | The Unfortunates † | B. S. Johnson |
| 79 | Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys |
| 80 | A Bend in the River | V. S. Naipaul |
| 81 | Black List, Section H † | Francis Stuart |
| 82 | A Book of Common Prayer | Joan Didion |
| 83 | Burger’s Daughter † | Nadine Gordimer |
| 84 | The Cement Garden | Ian McEwan |
| 85 | Changing Places | David Lodge |
| 86 | The Day of the Jackal | Frederick Forsyth |
| 87 | The Executioner’s Song † | Norman Mailer |
| 88 | Falconer | John Cheever |
| 89 | Fifth Business † | Robertson Davies |
| 90 | From the Fifteenth District † | Mavis Gallant |
| 91 | Gravity’s Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon |
| 92 | Heat and Dust | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala |
| 93 | The Human Factor | Graham Greene |
| 94 | The Ice Age † | Margaret Drabble |
| 95 | Injury Time | Beryl Bainbridge |
| 96 | Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice |
| 97 | The Lost Salt Gift of Blood † | Alistair MacLeod |
| 98 | Master and Commander | Patrick O’Brian |
| 99 | The Murderer † | Roy A. K. Heath |
| 100 | The Optimist’s Daughter | Eudora Welty |
| 101 | Plumb † | Maurice Gee |
| 102 | Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow |
| 103 | Saville | David Storey |
| 104 | The Siege of Krishnapur | J. G. Farrell |
| 105 | Sleepless Nights † | Elizabeth Hardwick |
| 106 | St. Urbain’s Horseman † | Mordecai Richler |
| 107 | Tirra Lirra by the River † | Jessica Anderson |
| 108 | The Year of the French † | Thomas Flanagan |
| 109 | An Artist of the Floating World | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| 110 | Beloved | Toni Morrison |
| 111 | Black Robe | Brian Moore |
| 112 | Blood Meridian | Cormac McCarthy |
| 113 | The Bonfire of the Vanities | Tom Wolfe |
| 114 | The Book of Evidence † | John Banville |
| 115 | A Boy’s Own Story † | Edmund White |
| 116 | Breathing Lessons | Anne Tyler |
| 117 | The Color Purple | Alice Walker |
| 118 | A Confederacy of Dunces † | John Kennedy Toole |
| 119 | Cracking India † | Bapsi Sidhwa |
| 120 | A Dark-Adapted Eye | Barbara Vine |
| 121 | Double Whammy | Carl Hiaasen |
| 122 | Earthly Powers † | Anthony Burgess |
| 123 | Ellen Foster † | Kaye Gibbons |
| 124 | Empire of the Sun | J. G. Ballard |
| 125 | A Flag for Sunrise † | Robert Stone |
| 126 | Flaubert’s Parrot | Julian Barnes |
| 127 | Forty-seventeen † | Frank Moorhouse |
| 128 | Housekeeping | Marilynne Robinson |
| 129 | In Custody | Anita Desai |
| 130 | In the Skin of a Lion † | Michael Ondaatje |
| 131 | The Joy Luck Club | Amy Tan |
| 132 | Lamb † | Bernard MacLaverty |
| 133 | Lanark † | Alasdair Gray |
| 134 | Lonesome Dove † | Larry McMurtry |
| 135 | Machine Dreams † | Jayne Anne Phillips |
| 136 | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love † | Oscar Hijuelos |
| 137 | Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie |
| 138 | Misery | Stephen King |
| 139 | Money | Martin Amis |
| 140 | Nation of Fools: Scenes from Indian Life † | Balraj Khanna |
| 141 | On the Black Hill | Bruce Chatwin |
| 142 | Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit | Jeanette Winterson |
| 143 | Oscar and Lucinda | Peter Carey |
| 144 | The Other Garden † | Francis Wyndham |
| 145 | Paris Trout | Pete Dexter |
| 146 | Puffball † | Fay Weldon |
| 147 | Red Dragon | Thomas Harris |
| 148 | Riddley Walker † | Russell Hoban |
| 149 | Schindler’s Ark | Thomas Keneally |
| 150 | So Long, See You Tomorrow † | William Maxwell |
| 151 | The Sportswriter | Richard Ford |
| 152 | The Sugar Mother † | Elizabeth Jolley |
| 153 | A Summons to Memphis † | Peter Taylor |
| 154 | The Transit of Venus † | Shirley Hazzard |
| 155 | Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories |
Raymond Carver |
| 156 | Age of Iron † | J.M. Coetzee |
| 157 | Alias Grace † | Margaret Atwood |
| 158 | American Pastoral | Philip Roth |
| 159 | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis |
| 160 | Amongst Women | John McGahern |
| 161 | Asylum † | Patrick McGrath |
| 162 | Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks |
| 163 | The Blue Flower † | Penelope Fitzgerald |
| 164 | The Butcher Boy † | Patrick McCabe |
| 165 | Captain Corelli’s Mandolin | Louis de Bernières |
| 166 | Cloudstreet † | Tim Winton |
| 167 | Cold Mountain | Charles Frazier |
| 168 | Death and Nightingales † | Eugene McCabe |
| 169 | Downriver † | Iain Sinclair |
| 170 | A Fine Balance † | Rohinton Mistry |
| 171 | The Folding Star † | Alan Hollinghurst |
| 172 | Freedom Song: Three Novels † | Amit Chaudhuri |
| 173 | Friend of My Youth: Stories † | Alice Munro |
| 174 | Get Shorty | Elmore Leonard |
| 175 | The Great World † | David Malouf |
| 176 | A Home at the End of the World † | Michael Cunningham |
| 177 | How Late It Was, How Late | James Kelman |
| 178 | The Lady from Guatemala † | V. S. Pritchett |
| 179 | Last Orders | Graham Swift |
| 180 | Mating † | Norman Rush |
| 181 | My Idea of Fun † | Will Self |
| 182 | The Night in Question † | Tobias Wolff |
| 183 | Original Sin † | P. D. James |
| 184 | Possession | A. S. Byatt |
| 185 | Quarantine † | Jim Crace |
| 186 | Reading Turgenev † | William Trevor |
| 187 | The Redundancy of Courage † | Timothy Mo |
| 188 | The Regeneration Trilogy † | Pat Barker |
| 189 | A River Sutra † | Gita Mehta |
| 190 | The Secret History † | Donna Tartt |
| 191 | The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx |
| 192 | The Snapper † | Roddy Doyle |
| 193 | A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth |
| 194 | A Thousand Acres | Jane Smiley |
| 195 | The Tortilla Curtain | T. Coraghessan Boyle |
| 196 | Trainspotting † | Irvine Welsh |
| 197 | Underworld † | Don DeLillo |
| 198 | The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides |
| 199 | What a Carve Up! † | Jonathan Coe |
| 200 | Wise Children † | Angela Carter |


