Llista publicada per The Guardian ja fa força temps (l’any 2002). Són els cent millors llibres publicats arreu del món, segons les votacions d’una cinquantena d’escriptors. Els títols s’ofereixen en ordre alfabètic segons l’autor.

L’únic llibre destacat, en ser el que va rebre més vots, és el “Quijote” de Miguel de Cervantes.

• Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart
• Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805−1875), Fairy Tales and Stories
• Jane Austen, England, (1775−1817), Pride and Prejudice
• Honore de Balzac, France, (1799−1850), Old Goriot
• Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906−1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
• Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313−1375), Decameron
• Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899−1986), Collected Fictions
• Emily Bronte, England, (1818−1848), Wuthering Heights
• Albert Camus, France, (1913−1960), The Stranger
• Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920−1970), Poems.
• Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894−1961), Journey to the End of the Night
• Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547−1616), Don Quixote
• Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340−1400), Canterbury Tales
• Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860−1904), Selected Stories
• Joseph Conrad, England,(1857–1924), Nostromo
• Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265−1321), The Divine Comedy
• Charles Dickens, England, (1812−1870), Great Expectations
• Denis Diderot, France, (1713−1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
• Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878−1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz
• Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821−1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov
• George Eliot, England, (1819−1880), Middlemarch
• Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914−1994), Invisible Man
• Euripides, Greece, (c 480–406 BC), Medea
• William Faulkner, United States, (1897−1962), Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury
• Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821−1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education
• Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898−1936), Gypsy Ballads
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera
• Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749−1832), Faust
• Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809−1852), Dead Souls
• Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum
• Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880−1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
• Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859−1952), Hunger.
• Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899−1961), The Old Man and the Sea
• Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey
• Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828−1906), A Doll’s House
• The Book of Job, Israel. (600−400 BC).
• James Joyce, Ireland, (1882−1941), Ulysses
• Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883−1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle Bohemia
• Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
• Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899−1972), The Sound of the Mountain
• Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883−1957), Zorba the Greek
• DH Lawrence, England, (1885−1930), Sons and Lovers
• Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902−1998), Independent People
• Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798−1837), Complete Poems
• Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook
• Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907−2002), Pippi Longstocking
• Lu Xun, China, (1881−1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
• Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).
• Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi
• Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875−1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain
• Herman Melville, United States, (1819−1891), Moby Dick
• Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533−1592), Essays.
• Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918−1985), History
• Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved
• Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji
• Robert Musil, Austria, (1880−1942), The Man Without Qualities
• Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899−1977), Lolita
• Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).
• George Orwell, England, (1903−1950), 1984
• Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses
• Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888−1935), The Book of Disquiet
• Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809−1849), The Complete Tales
• Marcel Proust, France, (1871−1922), Remembrance of Things Past
• Francois Rabelais, France, (1495−1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
• Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918−1986), Pedro Paramo
• Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207−1273), Mathnawi
• Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight’s Children
• Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200–1292), The Orchard
• Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North
• Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness
• William Shakespeare, England, (1564−1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello
• Sophocles, Greece, (496−406 BC), Oedipus the King
• Stendhal, France, (1783−1842), The Red and the Black
• Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713−1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
• Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861−1928), Confessions of Zeno
• Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667−1745), Gulliver’s Travels
• Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828−1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
• Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700−1500).
• Mark Twain, United States, (1835−1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana
• Virgil, Italy, (70−19 BC), The Aeneid
• Walt Whitman, United States, (1819−1892), Leaves of Grass
• Virginia Woolf, England, (1882−1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse
• Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903−1987), Memoirs of Hadrian

A diferència de moltes llistes publicades per diaris anglesos, hi ha força abundància d’autors d’altres països.

D’altra banda, m’he de reconèixer com un absolut ignorant de la majoria dels títols inclosos a la llista. De memòria només he llegit les “Aventures de Huckleberry Finn”.