Don Quixote Named Best Work Of Fiction

OSLO (voa) – A world panel of writers has chosen Don Quixote, the tale of a hopeless quest, as the best book in history.

A group of 100 well known writers from 54 countries ranked the 10 best books ever published, in effect compiling a list of the 100 greatest works of fiction.

With more votes than any other, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote, published in Spain during the early 1600s, emerged as the clear winner. Four books by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky made the list, which also included three works each by Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare, and Leo Tolstoy.

American William Faulkner, Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ancient Greece’s Homer, Thomas Mann of Germany and British author Virginia Woolf made the list with two books each.

The club did not rank or give vote counts for the other books that made the list.

Among the writers who took part in the survey were John Irving, Salman Rushdie, John le Carre, Nadine Gordimer, Carlos Fuentes, and Norman Mailer.

The list of the 100 best works of fiction, alphabetically by author, as determined by a vote among 100 noted writers from 54 countries and released by the Norwegian Book Clubs as reported by the Associated Press:

• 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.
  
• 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 and The Brothers Karamazov.
  
• George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch.
  
• Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man.
  
• Euripides, Greece, (c. 480-406 B.C.), Medea.
  
• William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury.
  
• Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary and A Sentimental Education.
  
• Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads.
  
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
  
• Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia, (c. 1800 B.C.).
  
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust.
  
• Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls.
  
• Guenter 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 B.C.), The Iliad and The Odyssey.
  
• Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll’s House.
  
• The Book of Job, the Bible, Israel. (600-400 BC).
  
• James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses.
  
• Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories, The Trial and The Castle.
  
• 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.
  
• D.H. 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), Buddenbrooks and 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, (43 BC-17 e. Kr.), 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, Iran, (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, and King Lear, and 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.
  
• Anton P. Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected 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 and To the Lighthouse.
  
• Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian.