# The best German-language novels

The novels that keep appearing in Marcel Reich-Ranicki's canon, the Literaturhaus poll of the best German novels of the 20th century and the major classics lists.

- 2 votes · 20 items
- Aug 27, 2020 · Johanna Winkler
- https://even.best/en/l/304/the-best-german-language-novels

## Top 20

1. **Berlin Alexanderplatz** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Alfred Döblin, 1929. Franz Biberkopf after prison in Weimar-era Berlin.
2. **The Tin Drum** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Günter Grass, 1959. Oskar Matzerath stops growing at three; Danzig from the 1920s to the war.
3. **The Magic Mountain** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Thomas Mann, 1924. Hans Castorp visits his cousin at a Davos sanatorium and stays seven years.
4. **The Trial** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Franz Kafka, 1925. Josef K. is arrested one morning without knowing why.
5. **Buddenbrooks** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Thomas Mann, 1901. The decline of a Lübeck merchant family; the basis of his Nobel Prize.
6. **The Man Without Qualities** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Robert Musil, 1930–1943. Ulrich in 1913 Vienna; unfinished and monumental.
7. **Effi Briest** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Theodor Fontane, 1896. A young woman, a loveless marriage and a duel over old letters.
8. **The Sorrows of Young Werther** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774. Werther's unhappy love for Lotte; it sparked a 'Werther fever'.
9. **The Castle** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Franz Kafka, 1926. The land surveyor K. tries in vain to reach the Castle.
10. **All Quiet on the Western Front** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Erich Maria Remarque, 1928. World War I through the eyes of young soldier Paul Bäumer.
11. **Steppenwolf** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Hermann Hesse, 1927. Harry Haller between bourgeois life and the 'magic theatre'.
12. **Perfume** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Patrick Süskind, 1985. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a murderer with no scent of his own in 18th-century France.
13. **Anniversaries** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Uwe Johnson, 1970–1983. Gesine Cresspahl tells her daughter about Mecklenburg for a year in New York.
14. **Man of Straw** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Heinrich Mann, 1918. Diederich Hessling, the prototype of the servile Wilhelmine subject.
15. **Siddhartha** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Hermann Hesse, 1922. A young Brahmin's search for enlightenment.
16. **Elective Affinities** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1809. Two couples and the chemistry of attraction.
17. **Green Henry** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Gottfried Keller, 1855. A young painter from Zurich seeks his path; a great coming-of-age novel.
18. **The Aesthetics of Resistance** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Peter Weiss, 1975–1981. Young workers in the anti-fascist resistance and their engagement with art.
19. **Homo Faber** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Max Frisch, 1957. An engineer who believes in technology and chance, and a journey that changes everything.
20. **The Reader** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Bernhard Schlink, 1995. A boy, an older woman and a Nazi trial; the first German novel to top the New York Times best-seller list.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.