in your opinion
Brave New World
Since this is completely subjective… Howard’s End.
I can’t pick one. Lolita or The Master and Margarita are the first to come to mind of the ones I’ve read. Midnight’s Children and 100 Years of Solitude come to mind soon after.
A Separate Peace - only because of the ungodly suffering it has caused the almost countless schoolchildren forced to plod through only for the punishment of having memorize it to pass the final test and move on to eight grade.
Anything that can cause that much suffering must be powerful indeed.
Slaughterhouse-Five.
isn’t the general consensus among academics/writers to this question is “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust
For me it’s Catch-22.
If you are looking for that kind of answer, then sure. Proust; Ulysses; in the U.S., The Great Gatsby is held up as the Great American Novel of the 20th century.
Beyond that, it is a fascinating question - the twilight period of the novel as a predominant art form.
The Caine Mutiny
I’m not sure there is such a consensus. Proust would definitely be up there, though.
Too many choices to pick one, and too many opinions to ever reach a consensus.
I’m going to add All Quiet on the Western Front to the conversation.
I am hardly qualified to participate in this discussion, but For *Whom the Bell Tolls *is clearly superior to The Great Gatsby in my estimation, so I’ll take that one.
Haven’t read enough of the contenders to say, but I recently read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and wow, I was impressed. I think it should be regarded as THE novel of the '20s (move over, Gatsby), and at least on a short list for the century.
Howards End was mentioned above, and that’s another great choice.
- Because it’s very publication may have prevented the scenario it described.
My favorite is probably “Death Comes for the Archbishop.”
Tied for 1-2-3, with numerous honorable mentions:
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
Gone with the Wind
(e.g. hon. mention: I Claudius)
And screw the academics, the cognoscenti and other frauds who would have it that some such garbage as Ulysses, actually the worst novel of the century, is the best.
John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor.
The Sound and the Fury
What, I’m the first to nominate To Kill a Mockingbird? Though it’s perhaps too distinctively American to be the greatest in the world.