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 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."
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
5 stars
In Search of Lost Time, novel in seven parts by French author Marcel Proust, published in French as À la …
The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman by Laurence Sterne (Penguin classics)
Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it. Part novel, part digression, …
"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 Василий Семёнович Гроссман (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, Lewis Carroll, Ferdinand Du Chevalier
4 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 by George Eliot (Penguin Classics)
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
Set in Vienna on the eve of World War I, this great novel of ideas tells the story of Ulrich, …
