Created by Niklas
This list is based on what Sarah Bakewell added to the list when The Guardian made a list in May 2026: www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time#sarah-bakewell.
The list also includes the Musil book, one that Sarah should have added (her own words).
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
One of the most influential and celebrated German works of the 20th century has been newly rendered in English by …
"The novel I reread more than any other, running the gamut of lust, politics, romanticism and science. Like a lot of books that are considered humourless, it's also full of humour."
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) by Laurence Sterne
4 stars
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as Tristram Shandy, is a novel by Laurence Sterne, inspired …
"Gleeful 18th-century literary fun, never bettered."
"As with so many good novels, the bad bits are a bore and the good bits are sublime."
Life and Fate by Vasiliĭ Semenovich Grossman (New York Review Books classics)
Life and Fate (Russian: Жизнь и судьба) is a novel by Vasily Grossman, written in the Soviet Union in 1959 …
"The 20th century in a (large) nutshell."
"It never, unfortunately, seems to become less relevant."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by A. R. S. BEL, Ferdinand Du Chevalier, Lewis Carroll
3 stars
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. A young girl …
"Simply a delight."
Middlemarch (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot
4 stars
Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several …
"All life is here – slightly marred by its over-earnest protagonist, although there are funny bits too."
Howards End by Edward Morgan Forster
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. …
"Human connection and disconnection: humanism in novel form."
"I loved this as a teenager and love it still, for its lush language, its wit, and the vivid mental pictures it leaves with you for a lifetime."
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Man Without Qualities (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften; 1930–1943) is an unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various …
