Top 10 Greatest Books of all Time
1) In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust
"In Search of Lost Time" is a novel in seven volumes. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
2) Ulysses
by James Joyce
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“Love Loves to Love Love.”
June 16, 1904; Dublin.
As the day begins, Stephen Dedalus is displeased with his friend and remains aloof. A little later, he teaches history at Garrett Deasy’s boys’ school.
Leopold Bloom begins his day by preparing breakfast for his wife, Molly Bloom. He serves it to her in bed along with the mail.
As their day unfolds, Joyce paints for us a picture of not only what’s happening outside but also what’s happening inside their minds.
Drawing on the characters, motifs and symbols of Homer’s Odyssey, James Joyce’s Ulysses is a remarkable modernist novel. It has lived through various criticisms and controversies and has undergone several theatre, film and television adaptations. It continues to remain a literary masterpiece.
3) Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together, the aging Quixote's fancy leads them wildly astray, tilting at windmills, fighting with friars, and distorting the rural Spanish landscape into a fantasy of impenetrable fortresses and wicked sorcerers. At the same time the relationship between the two men grows in fascinating subtlety. Often considered to be the first modern novel, Don Quixote is a wonderful burlesque of the popular literature its disordered protagonist is obsessed with.
4) The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
It's the Roaring Twenties and New York City is the place to be. Everything can be purchased, everyone can be bought. But, can you make money erase your past?
As more and more people lose themselves to the lure of money, ironically the only person who remains unaffected is Jay Gatsby, the enigmatic host of the most extravagant parties.
In this definitive tale on American culture, Fitzgerald pits a chaste dream against the corrupting influences of wealth and comes up with an epic story that can only be defined as 'a Great American novel'.
5) One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is an absolute master piece. It manages to capture the various phases and glories of the human history. The book has had a major impact on young minds that have taken up literature as a subject. The book is engaging and intense that reminiscenses of how history repeats itself with the collapse and creation of a new Macondo within a span of a century.
The fall and rise of the Buendia family is captured in the backdrop of all the strife that Latin American societies have witnessed. In this novel one will come across this family name spreading out over seven generations.
The book was originally written in Spannish but has been translated into thirty seven languages and till date has sold over thirty million copies.
The theme of this book is about two families that witness various stages of life over the period of a century. How the protagonist try to come to grips with their past and how this obsessiveness brings about the doom of the family is captured in the novel.
In this book Macondo portrays the new world of United Sates, which appeared more like the Promised Land to so many at one time. But over the course of history it came to be accepted as another illusion.
6) Moby Dick
by Herman Melville
Moby Dick was written by Herman Melville whose writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor. This novel is a travel experience of Ishmael along with Ahab, in the hunt of a savage whale called Moby dick, which has ripped apart Ahab’s one leg. With some sinister crewmembers in their midst and the hazardous conditions of the sea, the expedition becomes increasingly dangerous the closer it gets to its end. One of the greatest sea story ever told Moby Dick epically combines rip-roaring adventure, a meticulously realistic portrayal of the whaling trade and a profound philosophical disquisition on the nature of good and evil.
7) War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy created a sweeping epic in War and Peace enfolding together huge events in history and politics with the emotional lives of individuals in the backdrop of Napoleonic invasions across Europe and Russia. The vast and sprawling War and Peace tells the story of survival during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Among its many unforgettable characters are Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, and the novel's most memorable heroine, Natasha. Both an intimate study of individual passions and an epic history of Russia and its people, War and Peace is a complete portrait of human existence. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual's place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: “To read him... is to find one's way home... to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.
8) Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The story is a bit controversial which revolves around Humbert Humbert. He is in love with a 12 year old girl named Dolores Haze and calls her privately Lolita. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged professor going through mid-life crisis, who falls for the daughter of his landlady. He has become very possessive about her and can do anything to have her. So over possessive he is that he can commit any crime in order to get her. Is this love or a level of insanity? Is he a frustrated soul or a monster? This book is a stunning work of art of today’s times. Lolita will keep you glued to your chairs till the very end. It involves elements of comedy and is very expressive in its approach.
Lolita is also to a large extent shocking in its approach as it is passionate and comic at the same time. It’s a modern-day fiction work written beautifully by Vladimir Nabokov.
9) Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
What happens when Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, encounters his father’s ghost which reveals to him the secrets of his father’s murder, laying upon him the duty of revenge?
Unconvinced and indecisive, Hamlet—the Prince of Demark, re-enacts the murder to find the truth. Will he be able to unmask and avenge the brutal and cold-blooded murder of his father? Will his inner struggle between taking a revenge and his propensity to delay thwart his desires to act?
A typical Elizabethan Revenge Play, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play and one of the most quoted works in English language. it is described as “the world’s most filmed story after Cinderella”.
10) The Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. Salinger
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