The 25 best books of the 1940s
The 25 highest-ranked books first published in the 1940s in our ranking of 2,816, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 50 books of the 1940s in all. How we rank
- 1
198490.6Must-Read Score1984
In the superstate of Oceania, where Big Brother is always watching, Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth rewriting history to match the Party's ever-changing version of events.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsBokklubben World Library (100 greatest books) - 2
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn84.7Must-Read ScoreA Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Francie Nolan grows up in the tenements of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 1900s, with a hardworking, determined mother, a charming father who drinks, and a fierce love of books and learning.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (28 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1943 and 1944 (Publishers Weekly)PBS Great American Read - 3
The Little Prince84.1Must-Read ScoreThe Little Prince
A pilot crashes in the Sahara and meets a strange young boy who says he's a prince from a tiny, distant asteroid, where he left behind a single rose.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 200 million copies)PBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big ReadLe Monde's 100 Books of the Century - 4
Black Boy: A Record of Youth and Childhood84.0Must-Read ScoreBlack Boy: A Record of Youth and Childhood
Richard Wright tells the story of his childhood and youth in the Jim Crow South: a fatherless, hungry boy moving between relatives in Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and growing up in a world where a Black person's survival depended on hiding what he thought.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (6 weeks at #1)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 5
Ficciones83.8Must-Read ScoreFicciones
Jorge Luis Borges's collection of short stories reads like a set of puzzles and thought experiments.
Why it made the listBokklubben World Library (100 greatest books)Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century - 6
Pale Fire83.1Must-Read ScorePale Fire
Pale Fire is a novel in the form of a 999-line poem by the late American poet John Shade, published with a foreword, commentary and index by his neighbor, Charles Kinbote.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best Novels - 7
All the King's Men81.6Must-Read ScoreAll the King's Men
Jack Burden is a cynical former newspaperman who goes to work for Willie Stark, a rural lawyer who becomes a populist governor of a southern state in the 1930s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1947)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsGuardian 100 Best Novels in English - 8
The Open Society and Its Enemies79.6Must-Read ScoreThe Open Society and Its Enemies
Written during the Second World War, Karl Popper's book attacks the idea that history follows fixed laws, an idea he traces through Plato, Hegel and Marx, and argues that it leads to totalitarianism.
Why it made the listModern Library 100 Best NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 9
The Diary of a Young Girl79.2Must-Read ScoreThe Diary of a Young Girl
On her thirteenth birthday, in June 1942, Anne Frank received a diary.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 35 million copies)Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century - 10
Animal Farm79.2Must-Read ScoreAnimal Farm
The animals of Manor Farm, inspired by an old boar's dream of freedom, rise up and drive out their drunken farmer, Mr.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsBBC's The Big Read - 11
Hiroshima79.1Must-Read ScoreHiroshima
John Hersey follows six people, a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon and a German Catholic priest, from 8:15 a.m.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 12
Native Son78.7Must-Read ScoreNative Son
Bigger Thomas is twenty and lives with his mother and siblings in a single rat-infested room on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best Novels - 13
The Robe77.9Must-Read ScoreThe Robe
Marcellus Gallio is a young Roman tribune, the son of a senator, who has been posted to a remote garrison in Palestine as punishment for offending the emperor's heir.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (33 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 and 1953 (Publishers Weekly) - 14
Joy in the Morning77.8Must-Read ScoreJoy in the Morning
Bertie Wooster is trapped in the village of Steeple Bumpleigh with his formidable Aunt Agatha's household, his ex-fiancée Florence Craye, her jealous new fiancé Stilton Cheesewright, who thinks Bertie is a snake in the grass, and Edwin the Boy Scout, who does acts of kindness out of sheer malevolence.
Why it made the listGuardian 100 Best Novels in English - 15
Speak, Memory77.6Must-Read ScoreSpeak, Memory
Vladimir Nabokov remembers his childhood in a wealthy, liberal family in St.
Why it made the listModern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 16
Arch of Triumph77.3Must-Read ScoreArch of Triumph
Paris, 1939.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (8 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1946 (Publishers Weekly) - 17
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon77.1Must-Read ScoreBlack Lamb and Grey Falcon
In the late 1930s, Rebecca West traveled through Yugoslavia with her husband, and wrote this enormous book about it: part travel diary, part history of the Balkans, part meditation on Europe, religion and violence, as she watched the world slide toward another war.
Why it made the listModern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 18
The Egyptian76.8Must-Read ScoreThe Egyptian
Sinuhe is found as a baby floating on the Nile in a reed boat and grows up to be a physician in Egypt in the fourteenth century BC, the time of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who tried to replace Egypt's gods with a single sun god.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (16 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1949 and 1954 (Publishers Weekly) - 19
Brideshead Revisited76.5Must-Read ScoreBrideshead Revisited
During the Second World War, an army captain named Charles Ryder finds his unit billeted at Brideshead, a great English country house he knew well.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsBBC's The Big Read - 20
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living76.5Must-Read ScoreHow to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, collects practical advice on beating worry, drawn from his adult students and the lives of famous people.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (14 weeks at #1) - 21
If This Is a Man75.6Must-Read ScoreIf This Is a Man
In 1943, Primo Levi, a 25-year-old Italian chemist, was arrested by Fascist militia and deported to Auschwitz.
Why it made the listLe Monde's 100 Books of the Century - 22
Darkness at Noon75.3Must-Read ScoreDarkness at Noon
Rubashov, an old Bolshevik who helped lead the Revolution, is arrested by the Party he served and put in a cell.
Why it made the listModern Library 100 Best Novels - 23
Man's Search for Meaning74.8Must-Read ScoreMan's Search for Meaning
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz and other Nazi camps, where his wife, parents and brother died.
- 24
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter74.7Must-Read ScoreThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In a small Georgia mill town in the 1930s, John Singer, a deaf man, loses his only friend to an asylum and takes a room in a boarding house.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best Novels - 25
The Razor's Edge74.5Must-Read ScoreThe Razor's Edge
Larry Darrell comes home to Chicago after flying in the First World War, shaken by the death of a friend who saved his life.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (3 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1944 (Publishers Weekly)
