Sarah Bakewell's list of best novels (2026) Public

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).

  1. Niklas says:

    "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."

  2. In Search of Lost Time by 

    In Search of Lost Time, novel in seven parts by French author Marcel Proust, published in French as À la …

  3. The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman by  (Penguin classics)

    No rating

    Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, …

    Niklas says:

    "Gleeful 18th-century literary fun, never bettered."

  4. Niklas says:

    "As with so many good novels, the bad bits are a bore and the good bits are sublime."

  5. Life and Fate by  (New York Review Books classics)

    No rating

    Life and Fate (Russian: Жизнь и судьба) is a novel by Vasily Grossman, written in the Soviet Union in 1959 …

    Niklas says:

    "The 20th century in a (large) nutshell."

  6. 1984 Nineteen-Eighty Four by 

    Niklas says:

    "It never, unfortunately, seems to become less relevant."

  7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by , ,

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. A young girl …

    Niklas says:

    "Simply a delight."

  8. Middlemarch by  (Penguin Classics)

    Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several …

    Niklas says:

    "All life is here – slightly marred by its over-earnest protagonist, although there are funny bits too."

  9. Howards End by 

    No rating

    Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. …

    Niklas says:

    "Human connection and disconnection: humanism in novel form."

  10. Niklas says:

    "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."

  11. The Man Without Qualities by 

    No rating

    Set in Vienna on the eve of World War I, this great novel of ideas tells the story of Ulrich, …

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