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  About the List
» Managing Editor James Kelly talks about the list and shares his John Le Carre favorite (which didn't make
the cut).

» Richard Lacayo lays bare the process (and the pain) behind stacking up
100 novels.
  Reader's Choice
1:  
2:  Lolita
3:  A Passage to India
4:  A Death in the Family
5:  Ubik

    See the full list
  Best Graphic Novels
TIME's Andrew Arnold picks Watchmen and nine other comix masterpieces

  Archive Trivia
Who was the first author to appear on a TIME cover? Get the answer and much more on our trivia page
  Talk Back
Why isn't the Harry Potter series on there!!?? It definitely should be on there!!
—Robin; Seattle, Wash.

Where is Ayn Rand and John Irving? I checked your list twice, I can't believe you did not list either author.
—Susan Sayfan; Longwood, Fla.

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  From the TIME Archive
Ernest Hemingway
"Make no mistake, Ernest Hemingway is somebody; a new, honest, un-'literary' transcriber of life...."
Writer 1/18/26

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The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Author: John Steinbeck
The storms of the great Dust Bowl had barely settled when Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, which follows a family of impoverished "Okies," the Joads, as they chase the mirage of a good life westward from their devastated midwestern farm to California. The Joads find only bitterness, squalor and oppression as migrant agricultural workers living in "Hoovervilles," but their indomitable strength in the face of an entire continent's worth of adversity makes Steinbeck's epic far more than a history of unfortunate events: It's both a record of its time and a permanent monument to human perseverance.—L.G.

From the TIME Archive:
The publishers believe it is 'perhaps the greatest modern American novel, perhaps the greatest single creative work this country has ever produced.' It is not
—TIME Magazine, Apr. 17, 1939 (Read This Review)





Next: Gravity's Rainbow »


More From the Archive:
Great Books for Grown-Ups (6/10/46)
Dirty Book of the Month (4/22/66)
How and What to Read (10/2/72)
Dame Agatha: Queen of the Maze (1/26/76)
Rediscovering the Joy of Text (4/21/97)
Harry Potter Archive Collection
Writers in TIME Archive Collection





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