Top 10 20th Century Novels
There were wars, there was technological advancement, there was social upheaval… And there were some seriously good reads! Join as we count down our picks for the Top 10 20th Century Novels! Click here to subscribe: or visit our channel page here: Also, check out our interactive Suggestion Tool at 🙂
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Stranger in a Strange Land. A Handmaid's Tale. The Martian Chronicles. The Color Purple. The Invisible Man (by Ellison, not Wells).
Everyone's bitching about LoTR not being higher while David Foster Wallace gets zero mention
the list is based loosely on Americans and their society …. seems like no room for other countries …. only few are mentioned maybe when the power of the world will change hahahha l prefer the american just imagine China hahahha it l will all be abouy the little red book
I didnt know Americans could read
What about Fahrenheit 451 – it should have at least appeared on the honorable mentions list
Yet another list about books by WatchMojo which I find offensive! Shameful.
L'etranger
i love 1984, and I adore Orwell, but it's hardly a literary masterpiece. He wrote it on his deathbed. He literally died i believe a day after he finished the final edition for print, and his rush to finish translates to the page. Animal Farm is by far better, though less deep and a less immersive and three dimensional world. His non-fictional works are clearly his stronger points. He was better at social commentary than translating said commentary into fiction and metaphor.
Just an edit: That BBC clip of Orwell is not Orwell. It's an actor imitating him. Just in case anyone doesn't know, there's no film not recording of his voice. And the instrumental finishing part of that quote: "Every line of serious work that i have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as i understand it."
HitchHikers guild to the Galaxy?
Blood Meridian
where the hell is the metamorphosis or the stranger
The 20th century contains the years 1901 through 2000. Of all the things wrong with this list, the fact that you don't even know the correct timespan of the century you're discussing makes total fucking sense. Die!!! Die!!! Die!!!
Actually the 20th century ends in the year 2000.
The 21st century starts until 2001.
I know it sounds weird but search it and you will find out.
Just came over this shitty list. At least you should have named it "20th century novels originally published in English. And you should have left out Marquez in 10th (!) place. It`s ridiculous, you only mentioned him to hide your arrogant attitude or your lack of knowledge about foreign literature.
lord of the flies is only an honourable mention?! I don't think that's fair at all the book was incredible and showed the fall of civilization and humanity during WW II, very clever and really makes you think.
That's not George Orwell being interviewed , it's an actor.
HARRY POTTER IS NUMBER ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wrong: I'm Latin, and 100 Years of Solitude was one of the worst novels I had ever read. 1/10.
What the actual fuck did the europeans read in that book to make it win a Nobel Prize?
I know of a great book that takes place in ancient Rome.
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Roger_Belusa_The_House_of_Optimus_DvX?id=jUfCDgAAQBAJ
Top 10 Japanese authors, please.
A lot of nerds in the comment section…
Gone With The Wind??????
1. Blood Meridian
A
Dear WatchMojo:
Please retitle this video to "Our best novels of the 20th century"
I like Tolkiens writing and detail, and I reread parts of The Hobbit and LOTR from time to time. And I know LOTR won an Academy Award as best movie of the year. It's just strange to see it at all on a top best books list.
In The Great Gatsby, I keep expecting Toby to change into Spiderman. 🙂
Literature and value of lives USA zero
how the fuck is all quiet on the western front not even mentioned
… that book is a masterpiece and underappreciated to the point of insanity.
I am not sorry i do not like To Kill a Mocking bird.
Including 9 English language novels to represent the world, literature is not fair, when there is Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, African, French Latin American and much more. Let me pick 10 and another 10 for honourable mentions.
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
3 Ulysses by James Joyce
4 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
6 Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
7 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
8 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
9 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
10 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
11 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
12 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
13 The Trial by Franz Kafka
14 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
15 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
16 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
17 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera
18 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
19 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20 Animal Farm by George Orwell
And sadly Dostoevsky and Tolstoy belong to 19th century.
How abt non-Eng. novels? Chinese and Russian should at least be included.
Come on, you just listed the books that were made into movies. The books that weren't made into movies went ignored.I can't believe that this list doesn't contain books like Blood Meridian, To the lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, In search of lost time, The sound and the fury, White noise, Under the volcano and The trial… This is the first video of watchmojo I didn't like…