Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century: the top 50
The top 3 according to 21 votes from people: The Stranger · For Whom the Bell Tolls · In Search of Lost Time. (Updated Jun 1, 2024.)
Camus's The Stranger on top, ahead of In Search of Lost Time and The Trial: the first 50 of the "100 books of the century", the ranking drawn up in 1999 by Fnac and Le Monde from the votes of 17,000 readers, with author, year and original language.
Automatically translated (original in Français). See the original
Top 50
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1
The Stranger
Albert Camus, 1942 (French).
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2
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway, 1940 (English).
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3
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust, 1913–27 (French).
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4
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943 (French).
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5
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1932 (French).
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6
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck, 1939 (English).
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7
Le Grand Meaulnes
Alain-Fournier, 1913 (French).
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8
Froth on the Daydream
Boris Vian, 1947 (French).
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9
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 (French).
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10
Paroles
Jacques Prévert, 1946 (French).
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11
Tristes Tropiques
Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955 (French).
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12
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell, 1949 (English).
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13
Zazie in the Metro
Raymond Queneau, 1959 (French).
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14
Under the Sun of Satan
Georges Bernanos, 1926 (French).
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15
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (English).
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16
Contempt
Alberto Moravia, 1954 (Italian).
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17
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett, 1952 (French).
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18
The Trial
Franz Kafka, 1925 (German).
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19
Man's Fate
André Malraux, 1933 (French).
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20
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943 (French).
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21
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco, 1980 (Italian).
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22
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973 (Russian).
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23
Alcools
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913 (French).
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24
The Blue Lotus
Hergé, 1936 (French).
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25
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank, 1947 (Dutch).
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26
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley, 1932 (English).
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27
Asterix the Gaul
René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, 1959 (French).
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28
The Bald Soprano
Eugène Ionesco, 1952 (French).
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29
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Sigmund Freud, 1905 (German).
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30
The Abyss
Marguerite Yourcenar, 1968 (French).
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31
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 (English).
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32
Ulysses
James Joyce, 1922 (English).
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33
The Tartar Steppe
Dino Buzzati, 1940 (Italian).
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34
The Counterfeiters
André Gide, 1925 (French).
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35
The Horseman on the Roof
Jean Giono, 1951 (French).
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36
Belle du Seigneur
Albert Cohen, 1968 (French).
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37
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez, 1967 (Spanish).
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38
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, 1929 (English).
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39
Thérèse Desqueyroux
François Mauriac, 1927 (French).
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40
Confusion of Feelings
Stefan Zweig, 1927 (German).
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41
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell, 1936 (English).
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42
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D. H. Lawrence, 1928 (English).
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43
Bonjour Tristesse
Françoise Sagan, 1954 (French).
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44
Le Silence de la mer
Vercors, 1942 (French).
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45
Life: A User's Manual
Georges Perec, 1978 (French).
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46
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1901–02 (English).
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47
The Joke
Milan Kundera, 1967 (Czech).
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48
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie, 1926 (English).
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49
Nadja
André Breton, 1928 (French).
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50
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann, 1924 (German).
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.
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