Le Monde – 100 books that excited them since 1944
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This list comes from survey in Le Monde ( Les 100 romans qui ont le plus enthousiasmé « Le Monde » depuis 1944 [The 100 novels that have most excited Le Monde since 1944]). As the article does not give the list, here it is. The original list is, of course in French. I have given the English title where the book has an English title.
Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon (1940)
Louis Aragon: Aurélien (1944)
Philippe Hériat: Famille Boussardel (no English translation) (1944)
Nikos Kazantzaki: Zorba the Greek (1946)
Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano (1947)
Julien Green: Moïra (Moira) (1950)
Graham Greene: The End of the Affair (1951)
Paul Vialar: La Haute Mort (no English translation) (1951)
J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
François Mauriac: Le Sagouin (Little Misery) (1951)
Julien Gracq: Le Rivage des Syrtes (The Opposing Shore) (1951)
Marguerite Yourcenar Mémoires d’Hadrien (Memoirs of Hadrian) (1951)
Béatrix Beck: Léon Morin, prêtre (The Priest) (1952)
Françoise Sagan: Bonjour tristesse (1954)
Michel Butor: La Modification (UK: Second Thoughts, US: Change of Heart) (1957)
Marcel Pagnol: La Gloire de mon père (My Father’s Glory) (1957)
Boris Pasternak: Dr. Zhivago (1957)
André Schwarz-Bart: Le Dernier des Justes (The Last of the Just) (1959)
Italo Calvino: Il cavaliere inesistente (The Nonexistent Knight) (1959)
William Burroughs: The Naked Lunch (1959)
Romain Gary: La Promesse de l’aube (Promise at Dawn) (1960)
Kobo Abe: The Woman in the Dunes (1962)
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook (1962)
Ismail Kadaré: The General of the Dead Army (1963)
J. M. G. Le Clézio: Le Procès-verbal (The Interrogation) (1963)
Thomas Pynchon: V (1963)
Jean-Paul Sartre: Les Mots (UK: Words; US: The Words) (1964)
Yasunari Kawabata: Beauty and Sadness (1965)
Kateb Yacine: Le Polygone étoilé (no English translation) (1966)
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (1966)
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1967)
Gabriel García Márquez: Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years Of Solitude) (1967)
Albert Cohen: Belle du Seigneur (1968)
Henry de Montherlant: Les Garçons (The Boys) (1969)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
Elsa Morante: La Storia (History) (1974)
Elfriede Jelinek: Die Liebhaberinnen (Women as Lovers) (1975)
Fritz Zorn: Mars (1976)
Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea (1978)
Varlam Shalamo: Kolyma Stories (1978)
Georges Perec: La Vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual) (1978)
Umberto Eco: Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1980
Vasily Grossman: Life and Fate (1980)
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children (1981)
Edouard Glissant: La Case du commandeur (The Overseer’s Cabin) (1981)
Fernando Pessoa: Livro do desassossego (The Book of Disquiet; The Book of Disquietude (1982)
Philippe Sollers: Femmes (Women) (1983)
Juan Jose Saer: El Entenado (The Witness) (1983)
Bai Xianyong: Crystal Boys (1983)
Milan Kundera: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) (1984)
Pierre Michon: Vies minuscules (Small Lives) (1984)
Marguerite Duras: L’Amant ( (The Lover) (1984)
Eric Chevillard: Mourir m’enrhume (no English translation) (1987)
Daniel Pennac: La Fée carabine (The Fairy Gunmother) (1987)
Pierre Pachet: Autobiographie de mon père (no English translation) (1987)
Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
Claude Simon: L’Acacia (The Acacia) (1989)
Paul Nizon: Im Bauch des Wals (no English translation) (1990)
Jean Rouaud: Les Champs d’honneur (Fields of Glory) (1990)
Hervé Guibert: A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life) (1990)
Norman Rush: Mating (1991)
Patrick Chamoiseau: Texaco (1992)
W. G. Sebald: Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn) (1995)
Jean Echenoz: Les Grandes Blondes (Big Blondes) (1995)
Bernhard Schlink: Der Vorleser (The Reader) (1995)
Jean Rolin: L’Organisation (no English translation) (1996)
Laura Kasischke: Suspicious River (1996)
Marie NDiaye: La Sorcière (no English translation) (1996)
Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (1997)
Patrick Modiano: Dora Bruder (1997)
Philip Roth: American Pastoral (1997)
Michel Houellebecq: Les Particules élémentaires (UK: Atomised; US: The Elementary Particles) (1998)
Christine Angot: L’Inceste (Incest) (1999)
Ahmadou Kourouma: Allah n’est pas obligé (Allah Is Not Obliged) (2000)
Emmanuel Carrère: L’Adversaire (The Adversary: A True Story Of Monstrous Deception) (2000)
Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde (2000)
Zadie Smith: White Teeth (2000)
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Sefarad (Sepharad) (2001)
Amos Oz: A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002)
J. M. Coetzee: Youth (2002)
Jasper Fforde: Lost in a Good Book(2002)
Camille Laurens: L’Amour (no English translation) (2003)
Roberto Bolaño: 2666 (2004)
Jean-Philippe Toussaint: Fuir (Running Away) (2005)
Yu Hua: Brothers (2005)
Jonathan Littell: Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) (2006)
Daniel Mendelsohn: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006)
David Grossman: To the End of the Land (2008)
Annie Ernaux: Les Années (The Years) (2008)
Jérôme Ferrari: Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome (The Sermon on the Fall of Rome) (2012)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah (2013)
Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch (2013)
Yasmina Reza: Heureux les heureux (Happy are the Happy) (2013)
Ivan Repila: El niño que robó el caballo de Atila (The Boy who Stole Attila’s Horse) (2013)
Svetlana Alexievich: Second-hand Time (2013)
Catherine Millet: Une enfance de rêve (no English translation) (2014)
Virginie Despentes: Vernon Subutex (2015)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Buried Giant (2015)
Philippe Lançon: Le Lambeau (no English translation) (2018)