In your opinion, what are the ten "greatest" pieces of world literature?

I haven't read everything in the world but I would put "Moby-Dick" and The Upanishads on my list and Whitman's "Song of Myself".

I like "Anna Karenina" as choice, it's a perfect novel. Maybe "The Brothers Karamazov" should be on it, too.

[quote]I like "Anna Karenina" as choice, it's a perfect novel.

Totally agree

Barbara Taylor Bradford's A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE

Should add that my knowledge of Persian and Arabic literature is non-existent, and surely something from those canons belongs on the list

....

Of the books I have read, I would include Hedda Gabler, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pride and Prejudice, Buddenbrooks, Barchester Towers, Shakespeare’s sonnets.

And one which very few people seem to have heard of: Sunset Song.

ANYTHING with FABIO on the cover.

Shakespeare's Sonnets, r6 -- good one I overlooked

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary surely.

War and Peace.

James Joyce’s Ulysses

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and written circa 1000 A.D. I've read it three times. Now I'm reading The Plum in the Golden Vase , a Chinese novel written in 1600 A.D.

Don Quixote because of its place in the Western literary tradition.

r10 ohh, I have the first volume of Plum in the Golden Vase and have been meaning to get around to it ... one of these years.

The intricate structure of the novel, as well as its themes, seem fascinating to me

To Justify Wasted Time by Marcel Proust

You sound like an insufferable "college educated" type, OP. I wish you all would go die in a grease fire.

King James Bible and In Search of Lost Time

R14 Not illiterate perhaps in the truest sense but definitely a nasty angry bitch.

"Vanna Speaks."

Ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman literature has to have some place on here, as well as the Hebrew bible (studied as literature). I'll nominate the *Odyssey* and Petronius' *Satyricon* (even though we only have excerpts of it) for starters.

“I Cant Believe I Just Said That!”

1. Gilgamesh 2. The Oedipus Trilogy 3. The King James Bible 4. The Tale of Genji 5. The plays of Shakespeare 6. Don Quixote 7. The Rubiyat 8. The Mahabarata 9. Madame Bovary 10. Ulysses

Wow. I thought I might be alone in saying "Madame Bovary"!

I'd add "The Canterbury Tales";

(continued)...

"The Decameron"; "Paradise Lost"; "The Prince"; "Crime and Punishment"; and then I'd look to other continents.

If you can get past the first few chapters of tedious anecdotes about the Bishop, Hugo’s Les Miserables is otherwise a masterpiece. It the best book I’ve ever read (so far).

[quote] Hugo’s Les Miserables is otherwise a masterpiece. It the best

What makes it the best? The characters or plot or prose???

The Indian Epic Mahabharata is over the top and amazing. It must be among the top 10 in history

[quote] What makes it the best? The characters or plot or prose???

All three! I got totally wrapped up in the characters and the plot like I never have before or since. There were so many twists and turns in the plot, I couldn’t put it down. It’s the only time I’ve ever thrown a book across the room because it made me so angry.

I love his writing style, too. It’s so descriptive without being too floral. Simply genius.

The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann. Moby Dick is overrated and Whitman unreadable for non-native speakers.

I like Patti LuPone’s autobiography

r27 I loved Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain has been on my to-read list for TOO many years

Cards Against Humanity

In the 20th century, three books defined the century: Mein Kampf (Hitler), Interpretation of Dreams (Freud), Das Kapital (Marx).

Previously Darwin’s Origin of Species was a major book that affected the entire world

The Arabian Nights

The Lang's Fairy Books series

R27 read it now! It’s very much relevant to our times..

A Shore Thing, by Snooki

Thanks for the push r33!

I'm currently reading Piers Plowman, Journey to the West, Orlando Furioso ... I always have too many literary balls in the air at once

For something a tad more modern, I’d add in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. The lists above skew too classical for my tastes.

Wow R35 you plowed through Journey to the West? I had to give up. Another one I have enjoyed tremendously recently, although maybe not World Literature: Barchester Towers.

And why isn't Gordon Merrick on this list?

Sex by Madonna.

Seriously? This is not on the list?

The Volcano Lover

One hundred Years of Solitude could make my list... Mme Bovary, Crime and Punishment, Proust/Recherche, Don Quixote, Joyce....

You people need to read more philosophy. Start with Plato.

Mickey Mouse's dog was a philosopher?

Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man

Lol. Ulysses? No one has read Ulysses, and certainly no one on this thread.

I've read Ulysses, but it does not qualify.

Moby Dick is underrated. Trash like Vanity Fair is overrated, as is most class-based whingeing for dispossessed women (I'm looking at you Edith Wharton. You could bore a sloth to death with your tedium - Erma Bombeck is fucking better than you; and Jane Austen is a one-trick pony not unlike the Brontes). Anybody who includes Henry James on this list should be boiled in oil, which would take less time than one of his sentences. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, on the other hand, is amazing.

The Allegory of the Cave by Plato

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickenson

Lens Dunham's Verified Strangers

The Profit by Kahlil Gibran

The Twilight Saga

Actors Anonymous: A Novel by James Franco

This list is literal genocide!!!

It is contrary to the aims and interests of great literature to make a "10 best" list out of it.

Why don't you vote for the Ten Greatest Cliff's Notes?

r51 is fun at parties

Being 'fun at parties' is incompatible with the serious task of ranking the ten greatest examples of world literature.

OP, I can't compete in this quest because I only know the English language.

It's unfair to judge an author if you're reading some translator's words instead of the author's words.

[Quote] Why don't you vote for the Ten Greatest Cliff's Notes?

Sadly in much of high school and college I read cliff notes in place of the real things.

Years later I went back and read many of the actual books and was amazed at how great they were, of course. They are so much better for leisure reading than for analysis in school

Scoundrel- By Joan Collins

Contrary to R27, Moby Dick is in no way overrated and Whitman had an extraordinary influence on non-Anglophone poetry, particularly Latin American.

Let's ask James Mustich

Sorry R57, I find it very hard to read. The language seems contrived, at least to a non-native speaker. I had to force myself through the first 100 pages and then gave up. And I read quite a few English novels with large vocabulary (e.g. recently Earthly Powers, which I loved).

Can anybody explain to me why Don Quixote is so highly rated? I find it boring. Same for I Promissi Sposi. I would add Stendahl (Le Rouge et le Noir) to the list.