To assemble a list of the 100 stories that shaped the world you need a global perspective. The book lovers who contributed to BBC Culture's poll hail from 35 different countries – from Uganda and Pakistan to Colombia and China – and only 51% claim English as their ‘mother tongue’. These critics, scholars and journalists who voted were 59% female, 40% male. Here are their individual ballots.
Marie Thérèse Abdelmessih, Kuwait University and Cairo University, Egypt
1. Children of Gebelawi (Naguib Mahfouz, 1967 – translated by Philip Stewart, 1981)
2. Fictions (Jorge Louis Borges, 1940 – translated by Paul Bowles, 1946)
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera, 1984 – translated by Michael Henry Heim, 2009)
5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
Hassan Abdulrazzak, playwright, UK
1. The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)
2. The Corpse Washer (Sinan Antoon, 2014)
3. The Circle (Dave Eggers, 2013)
4. The Shell (Mustafa Khalifa, 2008)
5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
Debra Adelaide, novelist, International Sydney PEN, Australia
1. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
2. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
3. The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, 1915)
4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark, 1961)
5. The Plains (Gerald Murnane, 1982)
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Rayyan Al-Shawaf, novelist and critic, Germany
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962)
2. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
3. Lady Chatterley's Lover (DH Lawrence, 1928)
4. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie, 1981)
5. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov, 1955)
Rumaan Alam, novelist, USA
1. The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats, 1962)
2. Heather Has Two Mommies (Lesléa Newman, 1989)
3. The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976)
4. I Love My Hair! (Natasha Anastasia Tarpley, 1998)
5. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling, 1997-2007)
Caroline Alexander, translator, USA
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. Antigone (Sophocles, circa 441 BC)
Hephzibah Anderson, critic, writer and broadcaster, UK
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
Lisa Appignanesi, author, novelist and critic, UK
1. Cinderella (unknown author and date)
2. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust, 1913-1927)
4. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie, 1981)
5. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
Elisabeth Åsbrink, author and journalist, Sweden
1. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
2. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
3. Fatelessness (Imre Kertész, 1975)
4. Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)
5. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath, 1963)
Lindsay Baker, BBC Culture, UK
1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
2. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
5. Aesop's Fables (Aesop, circa 620 to 560 BC)
Colette Bancroft, Book Editor, Tampa Bay Times, USA
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
3. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960)
5. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, 1939)
Damian Barr, Creator and Host of The Literary Salon, UK
1. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937)
2. Tales of the City (Armistead Maupin, 1978)
3. A Boy's Own Story (Edmund White, 1982)
4. The Color Purple (Alice Walker, 1982)
5. Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897)
Wendy Laura Belcher, Associate Professor of Literature, Princeton University, USA
1. Kebra Nagast (various authors, 1322)
2. The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Amos Tutuola, 1952)
3. This Earth of Mankind (Pramoedya Ananta Toer, 1980)
4. We Killed Mangy-Dog (Luís Bernardo Honwana, 1964)
5. Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dangarembga, 1988)
Jenny Bhatt, writer and Contributing Editor, PopMatters, USA
1. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling, 1997-2007)
2. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
3. The Ramayana (attributed to Valmiki, 11th Century BC)
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
5. The Lady With the Dog (Anton Chekhov, 1899)
Christian Blauvelt, BBC Culture, USA
1. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens, 1843)
2. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
3. God's Bits of Wood (Ousmane Sembène, 1960)
4. Waiting (Ha Jin, 1999)
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, 1820)
Anne Boyd Rioux, literary critic and Professor of English, University of New Orleans, USA
1. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, 1868-1869)
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960)
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling, 1997)
Teresa Cadete, novelist, Portugal
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
3. Judas (Amos Oz, 2014)
4. Myra (Maria Velho da Costa, 2008)
5. Prayers for the Stolen (Jennifer Clement, 2014)
Ricardo Cayuela Gally, Editorial Director, Penguin Random House Mexico, Mexico
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
3. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
4. Candide (Voltaire, 1759)
5. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
Jane Ciabattari, writer and critic for BBC Culture, USA
1. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
2. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
4. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
5. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
Alex Clark, literary journalist and editor, UK
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
3. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevksy, 1866)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
Oscar Contardo, journalist, La Tercera newspaper, Chile
1. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
2. Oedipus the King (Sophocles, 429 BC)
3. Sleeping Beauty (Charles Perrault, 1697)
4. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens, 1837-1839)
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
Fan Dai, novelist and Professor of English, Sun Yatsen University, China
1. Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en, circa 1592)
2. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong, 1321-1323)
3. The Butterfly Lovers (folk story, various versions)
4. The True Story of Ah Q (Lu Xun, 1921-1922)
5. Water Margin (attributed to Shi Nai'an, 1589)
Lawrence Daniels, academic, UK
1. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Aesop's Fables (Aesop, circa 620 to 560 BC)
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
Dominica Dipio, Associate Professor of Literature, Makerere University, Uganda
1. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
2. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
3. Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dangarembga, 1988)
4. Song of Lawino (Okot p'Bitek, 1966)
5. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1873-1877)
Rachel Dwyer, Professor at SOAS University of London, UK
1. The Mahabharata (attributed to Vyasa, 4th Century BC)
2. The Aeneid (Virgil, 29-19 BC)
3. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
4. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798)
5. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
Ainehi Edoro-Glines, Assistant Professor of Literature, Marquette University, USA
1. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
3. The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1880)
4. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
5. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
Pamela Erens, novelist and writer, USA
1. The Oresteia (Aeschylus, 5th Century BC)
2. La Princesse de Clèves (author unknown, attributed to Madame de La Fayette, 1678)
3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
4. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing, 1962)
5. Angels in America (Tony Kushner, 1991)
Diego Erlan, novelist and writer for Los Inrockuptibles magazine, Argentina
1. The Aleph (Jorge Luis Borges, 1945)
2. The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, 1915)
3. A Perfect Day for Bananafish (JD Salinger, 1948)
4. The Waste Land (TS Eliot, 1922)
5. El Nadador (Héctor Viel Temperley, 1967)
Noun Fare, novelist and journalist, Togo
1. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
2. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, 1952)
3. Hermina (Sami Tchak, 2003)
4. Candide (Voltaire, 1759)
5. Bound to Violence (Yambo Oueleguem, 1968)
Michele Filgate, writer and critic, Contributing Editor at Literary Hub, USA
1. The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, 1906)
2. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
3. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling, 1997-2007)
4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892)
5. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
David Flusfeder, author and Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Kent, UK
1. Metamorphoses (Ovid, 8 AD)
2. Lenz (Georg Büchner, 1836)
3. Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1871-1872)
4. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
5. The Last of the Just (André Schwarz-Bart, 1959)
Joan Frank, novelist, USA
1. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
2. Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)
3. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960)
5. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian, SOAS, University of London, UK
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
2. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1865-1867)
3. Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1871-1872)
Harriett Gilbert, writer and broadcaster, BBC, UK
1. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
3. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
4. The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (Robert Tressell, 1914)
5. The Well of Loneliness (Radclyffe Hall, 1928)
Lev Grossman, novelist and literary critic, USA
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
3. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
4. The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895)
5. Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, 1938)
Mary Ann Gwinn, critic, Seattle Times, USA
1. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1865-1867)
2. Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1852-1853)
3. A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887)
4. Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897)
5. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
Edith Hall, Professor of Classics, King's College London, UK
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Medea (Euripides, 431 BC)
3. Robin Hood (unknown author, unknown year)
4. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevksy, 1866)
5. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy, 1886)
Natalie Haynes, writer and broadcaster, UK
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Medea (Euripides, 431 BC)
3. Oedipus the King (Sophocles, 429 BC)
4. The Oresteia (Aeschylus, 5th Century BC)
5. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
John Higgins, Arderne Chair of Literature, University of Cape Town, South Africa
1. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719)
2. Lyrical Ballads (William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798-1802)
3. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)
4. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
5. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
Terry Hong, critic, Smithsonian BookDragon for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, USA
1. The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, before 1021)
2. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
4. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
5. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami, 1982)
David Howard, poet, playwright and editor, New Zealand
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
2. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Faust (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1808-1832)
4. We (Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924)
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
Tendai Huchu, novelist, Zimbabwe
1. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
3. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
4. What Is To Be Done (Nikolai Chernyshevsky, 1863)
5. Candide (Voltaire, 1759)
Ned Ibrahimović, novelist, poet and Professor of Film History, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina
1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, 1876)
2. The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)
3. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
4. The Bridge on the Drina (Ivo Andrić, 1945)
5. Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore, 1910)
Entela Kasi, writer and President of Albanian PEN Centre, Albania
1. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
2. The Palace of Dreams (Ismail Kadare, 1981)
3. Macbeth (William Shakespeare, 1606)
4. The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1868-1869)
5. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
Andrei Khadanovich, poet, Belarus
1. The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe, 1845)
2. The Voyage (Charles Baudelaire, 1859)
3. The Drunken Boat (Arthur Rimbaud, 1871)
4. Froth on the Daydream (Boris Vian, 1947)
5. Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar, 1963)
Susan Kiguli, poet, critic and Associate Professor of Literature, Makerere University, Uganda
1. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
2. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
3. Song of Lawino (Okot p'Bitek, 1966)
4. Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman, 1855)
5. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1865-1867)
Ali Knight, novelist, UK
1. The Secret History (Donna Tartt, 1992)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
3. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
4. Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1935)
5. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
Saradha Koirala, poet, New Zealand
1. Song of Myself (Walt Whitman, 1855)
2. Howl (Allen Ginsberg, 1956)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960)
4. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
5. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
Alexander Košenina, literary critic for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany
1. The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774)
2. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevksy, 1866)
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
4. Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925)
5. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-1848)
Susan Larson, journalist and critic, WWNO and The New Orleans Advocate, USA
1. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
2. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling, 1997-2007)
3. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing, 1962)
4. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
5. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
Rebecca Laurence, BBC Culture, UK
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
3. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
4. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
Krys Lee, novelist, South Korea
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong, 1321-1323)
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
4. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)
5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Marukami, 1995)
Peter Liebregts, Professor of Modern Literatures in English, Leiden University, Netherlands
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774)
Roger Luckhurst, Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Birkbeck College, UK
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
3. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886)
4. Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)
5. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
Heng Lui, novelist and playwright, China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, China
1. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong, 1321-1323)
2. Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en, circa 1592)
3. Water Margin (attributed to Shi Nai'an, 1589)
4. The True Story of Ah Q (Lu Xun, 1921-1922)
5. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
Fiona Macdonald, BBC Culture, UK
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (Robert Tressell, 1914)
3. All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque, 1929)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
Mohamed Magani, novelist, Algeria
1. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. Ulysses (James Joyce, 1922)
3. The Stranger (Albert Camus, 1942)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
5. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
Ian McLean, Professor of Australian Art History at University of Melbourne, Australia
1. Rainbow Serpent (Aboriginal Australian story cycle, date unknown)
2. Wagilag Sisters (Australian Aboriginal story cycle, date unknown)
3. Seven Sisters (Aboriginal Australian story cycle, date unknown)
4. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
Larissa McLean Davies, Assistant Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
1. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
2. My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin, 1901)
3. Monkey Grip (Helen Garner, 1977)
4. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)
5. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, 1861)
Lena Merhej, comic artist, Samandal, Lebanon
1. Footnotes in Gaza (Joe Sacco, 2009)
2. Sitt Marie Rose (Etel Adnan, 1977)
3. The Illustrator's Notebook (Mohieddine Ellabbad, 2003)
4. One Thousand and One Nights, Book Five (published by al-Maṭbaʻah al-Kāthūlikiyah, 1909)
5. The Arrival (Shaun Tan, 2006)
Jan Miernowski, University of Wisconsin-Madison; University of Warsaw, USA
1. Il Canzoniere (Petrarch, 1374)
2. The Myth of Aristophanes in The Symposium (Plato, 385-70 BC)
3. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
4. Gargantua (François Rabelais, 1534)
5. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
Kylie Murray, literary critic and academic, Cambridge University, UK
1. The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius, 524)
2. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark, 1961)
3. The Selfish Giant (Oscar Wilde, 1888)
4. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
5. The Testament of Cresseid (Robert Henryson, 1480s)
Musa Mutaev, novelist, Norway
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
2. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
3. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
4. Little Tragedies (Alexander Pushkin, 1830)
5. Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak, 1957)
Beverley Naidoo, novelist, UK
1. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
2. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
3. Aesop's Fables (Aesop, circa 620 to 560 BC)
4. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
5. The Ramayana (attributed to Valmiki, 11th Century BC)
Louise Omer, The Guardian Australia, Australia
1. Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates, 1961)
2. Monkey Grip (Helen Garner, 1977)
3. Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013)
4. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
5. The Neapolitan Novels (Elena Ferrante, 2012-2015)
Bethanne Patrick, Contributing Editor, Lit Hub, USA
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, before 1021)
3. Les Misérables (Victor Hugo, 1862)
4. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
5. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)
Agnes Poirier, journalist, writer and broadcaster, France
1. Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust, 1913-1927)
2. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevksy, 1866)
3. A Sport and a Pastime (James Salter, 1967)
4. Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
5. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (Honoré de Balzac, 1838)
Elena Poniatowska, journalist and author, Mexico
1. Orlando (Virginia Woolf, 1928)
2. Heroes and Villains (Angela Carter, 1969)
3. Memoirs of Hadrian (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951)
4. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
5. Pedro Páramo (Juan Rulfo, 1955)
Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
2. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
3. Popol Vuh (K'iche myth, written down 1550)
4. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
5. The Epic of Sunjata (author unknown, year unknown, French translation published 1960)
M Lynx Qualey, critic, ArabLit, Morocco
1. The Three Apples from One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. Layla and Majnun (folk story / Nizami Ganjavi, 1192)
3. The Epic of 'Antar (author unknown, attributed 7th/8th Century)
4. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
5. Kalila wa Dimna (Ibn al-Muqaffa' translation, 756)
Rejane Queiroz, Saint Louis University Madrid, Spain
1. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
2. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (João Guimarães Rosa, 1956)
3. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, 1881)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
5. Vidas Secas (Graciliano Ramos, 1938)
Felipe Restrepo Pombo, Editor in Chief at Gatopardo magazine, Colombia
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
2. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
3. Letter of the Seer (Arthur Rimbaud, 1871)
4. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
5. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1865-1867)
Milan Richter, poet and playwright, Slovakia
1. Before the Law (Franz Kafka, 1915)
2. The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran, 1923)
3. Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1904)
4. A Night with Hamlet (Vladimír Holan, 1964)
5. The Ugly Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen, 1843)
Harry Ricketts, poet and Professor at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
1. King Lear (William Shakespeare, 1608)
2. Persuasion (Jane Austen, 1817)
3. Paradise Lost (John Milton, 1667)
4. Parade's End (Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928)
5. Don Juan (Lord Byron, 1818-1824)
Roxana Robinson, author and novelist, USA
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
2. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
3. Black Beauty (Anna Sewell, 1877)
4. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1873-1877)
5. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
Elizabeth Rosner, novelist, poet and critic, USA
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
2. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
3. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
4. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)
5. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969)
Alex Rowell, writer, translator, and Managing Editor of Al-Jumhuriya English, UK
1. The Khamriyyat (Abu Nuwas, late 8th-early 9th Century)
2. The Mu'allaqa (Imru' al-Qais, 6th Century)
3. Divan (Hafez, 14th Century)
4. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
Nilanjana S Roy, novelist and Financial Times columnist, India
1. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
3. The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, before 1021)
4. The Panchatantra (attributed to Vishnu Sharma, circa 300 BC)
5. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
Ewa Rudnicka, University of Warsaw, Poland
1. The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie, 1988)
2. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)
3. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
4. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967)
5. Solaris (Stanisław Lem, 1961)
Ramón Saldívar, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Stanford University, USA
1. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
3. The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison, 1970)
4. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner, 1929)
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz, 2007)
Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, Professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
1. Pedro Páramo (Juan Rulfo, 1955)
2. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
3. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, 1881)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
Philippe Sands, writer and barrister, University College London & Matrix Chambers, UK
1. The Radetzky March (Joseph Roth, 1932)
2. Alexandra Leaving (Leonard Cohen, 2001)
3. Quo Vadis (Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1895)
4. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967)
5. Five Photos of My Wife (Agnès Desarthe, 2001)
Carolina Sanin, novelist and writer for Revista Arcadia, Colombia
1. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
3. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
4. The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
Sarah Schmidt, novelist, Australia
1. Medea (Medea (Euripides, 431 BC – translated by Robin Robertson, 2008)
2. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
3. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
4. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
5. Hansel and Gretel (Brothers Grimm, 1812)
Lawrence Scott, novelist, Trinidad and Tobago
1. Omeros (Derek Walcott, 1990)
2. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)
3. A House for Mr Biswas (V. S. Naipaul, 1961)
4. The Dragon Can't Dance (Earl Lovelace, 1979)
5. Éloges and other Poems (Saint-John Perse, 1944)
Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History, University of Westminster, UK
1. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
2. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
3. Kim (Rudyard Kipling, 1901)
4. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969)
5. The Tiger Who Came to Tea (Judith Kerrr, 1968)
Kamila Shamsie, novelist and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Manchester, UK
1. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. The Mahabharata (attributed to Vyasa, 4th Century BC)
3. Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao Xueqin, 1791)
4. Antigone (Sophocles, circa 441 BC)
5. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
Muneeza Shamsie, literary critic, Pakistan
1. King Shahyrar and his Brother from One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
2. The Panchatantra (attributed to Vishnu Sharma, circa 300 BC – Penguin Classics translation, 1993)
3. Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925)
4. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje, 1992)
5. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
Pablo Simonetti, novelist, Chile
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
3. King Lear (William Shakespeare, 1608)
4. Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust, 1913-1927)
5. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1873-1877)
Sjón, author, novelist and poet, Iceland
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen, 1879)
3. Beloved (Toni Morrison, 1987)
4. Candide (Voltaire, 1759)
5. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare, 1597)
Sophia Smith Galer, journalist, BBC, UK
1. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling, 1997-2007)
2. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
4. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
5. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
Ahdaf Soueif, novelist, writer and commentator, UK
1. The Eloquent Peasant (ancient Egyptian folk story, circa 2000 BC)
2. One Thousand and One Nights (various authors, 8th-18th centuries)
3. The Times They Are a'Changin (Bob Dylan, 1964)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
Elizabeth Starčević, President Emerita, PEN San Miguel Mexico and Professor Emerita, City College of New York, USA
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967)
2. The Little School (Alice Partnoy, 1986)
3. Ixok Amar-Go: Central American Women's Poetry for Peace (ed. Zoe Anglesey, 1987)
4. Dreaming in Cuban (Cristina Garcia, 1992)
5. In the Time of the Butterflies (Julia Alvarez, 1994)
Rebecca Steinitz, novelist and critic, The Boston Globe, USA
1. The Sorrows of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774)
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
3. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
5. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
Biyú Suárez de Jaldín, poet and children's author, Bolivia
1. América (Raúl Otero Reiche, 1980)
2. Obra poética (Germán Coimbra Sanz, 2010)
3. Quiero escribir, pero me sale espuma (Pedro Shimose,1972)
4. Tardes Antiguas (Enrique Kempff Mercado, 1995)
5. Leyendas Cortas del oriente de Bolivia (Biyú Suárez, 2017)
Tess Taylor, poet and reviewer for NPR's All Things Considered, USA
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925)
3. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
4. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937)
Adam Thorpe, author and critic, UK
1. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
3. The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387)
4. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert, 1856)
5. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
Kate Tuttle, President, National Book Critics Circle, USA
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. King Lear (William Shakespeare, 1608)
3. Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
5. Snow White (Brothers Grimm, 1812)
Vonne van der Meer, novelist, Netherlands
1. The Emperor's New Clothes (Hans Christian Andersen, 1837)
2. Christmas Not Just Once A Year (Heinrich Böll, 1952)
3. The Girl I Left Behind (Shusaku Endo, 1964)
4. Home (Marilynne Robinson, 2008)
5. Iphigenia in Tauris (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1779)
David Varno, literary critic, USA
1. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes, 1605-1615)
2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers, 1940)
3. The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, 1948)
4. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)
5. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
Alain Viala, Emeritus Professor of French, University of Oxford, France
1. The Iliad (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. The Mahabharata (attributed to Vyasa, 4th Century BC)
3. Les Misérables (Victor Hugo, 1862)
4. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
5. Death on Credit (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1936)
Lena Wånggren, Research Fellow in English Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK
1. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
2. The Epic of Gilgamesh (author unknown, circa 22nd-10th centuries BC)
3. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
4. The Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan, 1405)
5. Dreams (Olive Schreiner, 1890)
Kenneth W. Warren, Professor of English, University of Chicago, USA
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
3. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
5. Cinderella (Brothers Grimm, 1812)
Paul Wilner, poet and literary critic, USA
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1884)
2. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, 1926)
3. The Catcher In The Rye (J.D. Salinger, 1951)
4. Howl (Allen Ginsberg, 1956)
5. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan, 1965)
Zao Yang, critic, China Academy of Social Sciences, China
1. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong, 1321-1323)
2. Water Margin (attributed to Shi Nai'an, 1589)
3. Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en, circa 1592)
4. Lady Meng Jiang (folk tale, first described 8th-5th centuries BC)
5. Fairy Tales (Hans Christian Andersen, 1835-1872)
Amina Yaqin, Senior Lecturer, SOAS, University of London, UK
1. Toba Tek Singh (Saadat Hasan Manto, 1955)
2. Untouchable (Mulk Raj Anand, 1935)
3. Umrao Jaan Ada (Mirza Hadi Ruswa, 1899)
4. Heer Ranjha (Waris Shah, 1766)
5. Lihaaf (Ismat Chughtai, 1942)
William Yeoman, writer, The West Australian, Australia
1. The Odyssey (Homer, 8th Century BC)
2. The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320)
3. The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387)
4. The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio, 1353)
5. Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)
Raymond Zhou, playwright and critic, China
1. Journey to the West (Wu Cheng'en, circa 1592)
2. Water Margin (attributed to Shi Nai'an, 1589)
3. The Butterfly Lovers (folk story, various versions)
4. The True Story of Ah Q (Lu Xun, 1921-1922)
5. Aesop's Fables (Aesop, circa 620 to 560 BC)
More from Stories That Shaped the World:
- Why critics voted for the top 10
- Is The Odyssey the greatest story of all time?
- The 100 stories that shaped the world
BBC Culture’s Stories that Shaped the World series looks at epic poems, plays and novels from around the globe that have influenced history and changed mindsets. A poll of writers and critics, 100 Stories that Shaped the World, will be announced in May.
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