Book awards: Waterstones Books of the Century

Book awards by cover

(show all 100 covers)

Works (100)

Titles
The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans	100
I, Claudius by Robert Graves	99
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess	98
The BFG by Roald Dahl	97
The Van by Roddy Doyle	96
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby	95
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton	94
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell	93
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton	92
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins	91
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela	90
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn	89
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass	88
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke	87
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell	86
The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence	85
An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan	84
Delia's Complete Cookery Course by Delia Smith	83
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe	82
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence	81
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl	80
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking	79
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson	78
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis	77
Matilda by Roald Dahl	76
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle	75
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque	74
The Stand by Stephen King	73
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene	72
It by Stephen King	71
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis	70
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster	69
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig	68
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut	67
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières	66
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles	65
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin	64
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov	63
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell	62
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene	61
The Magus by John Fowles	60
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain	59
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood	58
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath	57
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee	56
Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake	55
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak	54
Perfume by Patrick Süskind	53
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving	52
Dune by Frank Herbert	51
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth	50
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh	49
Howards End by E. M. Forster	48
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War by Sebastian Faulks	47
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera	46
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro	45
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier	44
Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez	43
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco	42
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder	41
Watership Down by Richard Adams	40
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster	39
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad	38
Possession by A. S. Byatt	37
Beloved by Toni Morrison	36
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck	35
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl	34
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust	33
The Wasp Factory by Iain M. Banks	32
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov	31
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi	30
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf	29
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence	28
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess	27
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank	26
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie	25
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams	24
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell	23
The Trial by Franz Kafka	22
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis	21
The Stranger by Albert Camus	20
The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien	19
The Color Purple by Alice Walker	18
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne	17
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame	16
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley	15
On the Road by Jack Kerouac	14
Lord of the Flies by William Golding	13
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald	12
Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang	11
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh	10
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck	9
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez	8
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee	7
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger	6
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller	5
Ulysses by James Joyce	4
Animal Farm by George Orwell	3
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell	2
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien	1

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Book awards authors (83)

Award description

Waterstones is a bookstore chain with more than 200 stores in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and Europe. In January 1997, Waterstones announced the results of its Books of the Century poll to find out what the public considered to be the hundred greatest books of the twentieth century. Over 25, 000 people took part in the poll and the Book of the Century was revealed as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.