The top 10 can be found at the bottom of this web page. But before getting there, we invite you to browse 90 other books – masterpieces – which have marked the history of literature and, through it, our society. The first to enter this list? It is…
100. Ants – Bernard Werber – 1991
99. Windows Of The World – Frédéric Beigbeder – 2003
98. Orlando – Jacques Harpman – 1996
97. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre – 1938
96. The perfume – Patrick Süskind – 1985
95. Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins – 2008
94. Return to Reims – Didier Eribon – 2009
93. a big family – Camille Kouchner – 2021
92. Unknown at this address – Kressmann Taylor – 1999
91. Nothing stands in the way of the night – Delphine de Vigan – 2011
90. The hours – Michael Cunningham – 1998
89. The anomaly – Hervé Le Tellier – 2020
88. Le mage du Kremlin – Giuliano da Empoli – 2022
87. Consent – Vanessa Springora – 2020
86. The world according to Garp – John Irving – 1978
85. Witches – Mona Chollet – 2018
84. Incest – Christine Angot – 1999
83. Their children after them – Nicolas Mathieu – 2018
82. The bathroom – Jean-Philippe Toussaint – 1985
81. 1Q84 – Haruki Murakami
80. The godfather – Mario Puzzo – 1969
79. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates – 2000
78. Goodbye up there – Pierre Lemaitre – 2013
77. Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo – 2003
76. 37°2 in the morning – Philippe Djian – 1985
75. Last Exit To Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr. – 1964
74. Thirty years and dust – Jay McInerney – 1992
73. A French life – Jean-Paul Dubois – 2004
72. If on a winter night a traveler – Italo Calvino – 1979
71. The pillars of the earth – Ken Follett – 1990
70. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides – 2002
69. The flap – Philippe Lançon – 2018
68. Put an end to Eddy Bellegueule – Édouard Louis – 2014
67. Autumn legends – Jim Harrison – 1979
66. Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead – 2016
65. The master of illusions – Donna Tartt – 1992
64. The map and the territory – Michel Houellebecq – 2010
63. The opponent – Emmanuel Carrère – 2000
62. A room of one’s own – Virginia Woolf – 1929
61. The event – Annie Ernaux – 2000
60. Contempt – Alberto Moravia – 1954
59. The executioner’s song – Norman Mailer – 1979
58. The gulag archipelago – Alexander Solzhenitsyn – 1973
57. Corrections – Jonathan Franzen – 2001
56. Confessions of a Mask – Yukio Mishima – 1949
55. Stupor and tremors – Amélie Nothomb – 1999
54. The Iron Throne – George R.R. Martin – 1996
53. The Tartar Desert – Dino Buzzati – 1940
52. The wonderful friend – Elsa Ferrante – 2011
51. The silence of the lambs – Thomas Harris – 1988
50. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J.K. Rowling – 1997
49. The old man and the sea – Ernest Hemingway – 1952
48. Don’t Shoot the Mockingbird – Harper Lee – 1960
47. Things – Georges Perec – 1965
46. The name of the rose – Umberto Eco – 1980
45. The foam of the days – Boris Vian – 1947
44. Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – 2003
43. The sound and the fury – William Faulkner – 1929
42. Shining – Stephen King – 1977
41. The best of all worlds – Aldous Huxley – 1931
40. On the road – Jack Kerouac – 1957
39. Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien – 1954
38. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell – 1936
37. Vernon Subutex – Virginie Despentes – 2015
36. The Scarlet Maid – Margaret Atwood – 1985
35. To the fish – Albert Camus – 1947
34. The second sex – Simone de Beauvoir – 1949
33. Journey to the end of the night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline – 1932
32. The little prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – 1943
31. If it’s a man – Primo Levi – 1947
30. The Great Gatsby – Francis Scott Fitzgerald – 1925
29. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence – 1928
28. Bandini – John Fante – 1938
27. Street of dark shops – Patrick Modiano – 1978
26. City of Glass – Paul Auster – 1985
25. Millennium: Men who didn’t like women – Stieg Larsson – 2005
24. The black dahlia – James Ellroy – 1988
23. The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank – 1947
22. The lover – Marguerite Duras – 1984
21. The unbearable lightness of being – Milan Kundera – 1984
20. The trial – Franz Kafka – 1925
19. The chess player – Stefan Zweig – 1943
18. The road – Cormac McCarthy – 2006
17. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – 1955
16. The pyre of the vanities – Tom Wolfe – 1987
15. 1984 – George Orwell – 1949
14. A hundred years of solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 1967
13. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger – 1951
12. Mister Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
11. High fidelity – Nick Hornby – 1995
TOP 10
10. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar – 1951
Emperor Hadrian’s long letter to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. He tells the story of his life, narrating the great chapters of an existence dedicated to war, but also to meditation, beauty and love – the most sensitive place of these confidences being located in the evocation of his relationship with Antinous. A huge success upon its publication, the book – demanding and erudite – is also the modern matrix of the historical novel.
9. The world of yesterday – Stefan Zweig – 1943
Subtitled “Remembrance of a European”, this masterpiece of world literature unfolds the trajectory of Zweig, star of letters of the time, intellectual engaged in the observation of the political landscape. The picture of Vienna, the European capital of ideas, precedes that of the collapse of a world, thrown into the ground by war and the rise of Nazism.
8. Hello sadness – Françoise Sagan – 1954
The cruel story – violent and sunny – of a young girl who discovers the pleasures of the body under the gaze of a father more preoccupied with experiencing his own rediscovery of desire. When it was published, this book shook up the norms of decorum and inaugurated a work of false lightness and true elegance.
7. Just Kids – Patti Smith – 2010
The journey of two young artists in the bohemian New York of the 60s and 70s, the mirror of two ambitions – those of Patti Smith, poet who became a rock icon and Robert Mapplethorpe who pushed back all the limits of aesthetics of the photo. Without doubt one of the most beautiful autobiographical texts of recent years
6. King Kong Theory – Virginie Despentes – 2006
“I write from among the ugly,” is how this essay opens, both brutal and jubilant, around the feminist positions of an author, who has become a model of identification for the generation preceding the #MeToo wave. A phenomenon book that is exchanged in playgrounds…
Version 1.0.0
5. The stain – Philip Roth – 2000
A great novel by a great writer who summons here a university professor accused of racism for a well-spoken and poorly understood word… The book questions the excesses of “political correctness” in an America confronted with the sexual scandal which will push President Clinton on the edge of the political abyss.
4. The sang-froid – Truman Capote – 1966
By investigating the murder of a family by two young delinquents, Truman Capote reconstructs a world and sets the rules of a genre – non-fiction – which has invaded everything today. The masterpiece of new American journalism.
3. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – 1939
The most poignant and well-documented testimony to the years of the Great Depression in the United States. The odyssey of a family to the survival camp where all the rejects of the system find themselves – victims of the crisis, chased by the banks and economic vagabonds.
2. American Psycho – Brett Easton Ellis – 1991
The book scandal that overturned the table of literature in front of everyone, causing anxiety attacks and screams. The detailed account of the misdeeds of a serial killer – a trader by day in New York, filthy trash by night. Merciless picture of a society madly in love with money and self-portrait of a pure product of economic liberalism.
1. The stranger – Albert Camus – 1942
The story of a man who shot another man – he doesn’t know why – and was treated at his trial as undesirable since he showed no emotion at his mother’s funeral. A flagship novel in the history of French literature whose influence is felt today (hello The Cure and the first single “Killing In An Arab”).
