THE 50 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME

As always, it’s my pleasure being here, writing this. During the course of my research, I came across this list of the 50 greatest books of all time on greatestbooks.organd decided it would be a good idea sharing it here on my blog. I must confess that I haven’t read most of the books in this list and there are even some titles I’ve never come across. I never even knew Moby Dick was the real title of a real book!

But this list contains some of the ‘classics’ like Gulliver’s Travels, Don Quixote, 1984 and Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. I was particularly proud (but not so surprised) to see my fellow Nigerian and role model, Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) on the list. It just gets me wondering how many years it’s going to be before my novel appears on the list of 50 greatest books of all time (as always, drink to that!).

Do follow the links provided if you’re interested and want to find out more about a particular book. So, here goes.

1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

                Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes that... follow up

2. Ulysses by James Joyce

                Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey... follow up

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

                The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged Humbert.  Humbert becomes obsessed and... follow up

4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

                Revered by all of the town's children and dreaded by all of its mothers, Huckleberry Finn is indisputably the most appealing child-hero in American literature. Unlike the tall-tale, idyllic world... follow up

5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age". Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roar... follow up

6. 1984 by George Orwell

The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of perpetuating the regime's propaganda by falsifying records and political literature... follow up

 7. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

                Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of fi... follow up

8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

                Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run through the entire work. The narrative...  follow up

9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

                Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure... follow up

10. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

                For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks... follow up

11. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

                Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers, is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered... follow up

12. Middlemarch by George Eliot

                Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final... follow up

 13. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

                One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning car... follow up

14. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

                The Sound and the Fury is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their fa... follow up

15. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

                The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marx... follow up

16. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

                The Catcher in the Rye is a 1945 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world...  follow up

17. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

                A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporality and psychology... follow up

18. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

On the Road is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the post... follow up

 19. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

                From the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, a great classic recounting the four remarkable journeys of ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver. For children it remains an enchanting fantasy;... follow up

20. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

                Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a ... follow up

21. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

                First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white... follow up

 22. Beloved by Toni Morrison

                Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. The novel, her fifth, is loosely based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner, about whom Morrison...  follow up

23. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

                The story centres on Isabel Archer, an attractive American whom circumstances have brought to Europe. Isabel refuses the offer of marriage to an English peer and to a bulldog-like New Englander, to... follow up

24. The Iliad by Homer

                The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and ... follow up

25. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

                Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during,... follow up

To be continued…