17 july 1987

1. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
2. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
3. James Joyce, Ulysses
4. F.M. Dostoyevski, Idiot
5. F. Rabelais, Gargantua et Pantagruel
6. F.M. Dostoyevski, Crime and punishment
7. Voltaire, Candide
8. D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's lover
9. Jorge Louis Borges, anything
10. Sholzenitsyn, First circle
11. J.A. Goethe, Werther
12. Gabriel Garcia Marques, Hundred years of solitude
13. F.M. Dostoyevski, Notes from the underground
14. F. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra
15. G. Flaubert, Madame Bovary
16. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
17. Gibbon, Rise and fall of the Roman empire
18. D.H. Lawrence, Sons and lovers
19. C. Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal
20. Oscar Wilde, On the importance of being earnest
21. Celine, Mort a credit
22. Victor Hugo, Les miserables
23. George Orwel, Animal farm
24. Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit
25. Henry Miller, Astrological fricasee, a story
26. G. Boccaccio, Decameron
27. H. Melville, Moby Dick
28. A. Hitler, Mein kampf
29. Knut Hamsun, Hunger
30. Elie Faure, History of art
31. Alan Ginsberg, Howl
32. R. Ellison, Invisible man
33. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
34. Henrik Pontoppidan, De dødes rige
35. Sylvia Plath, Bell jar
36. Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography
37. P. Lagerkvist, Det evige smil
38. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
39. H. Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
40. Stendhal, La education sentimentale
41. Marquis De Sade, Julliet
42. Patrick Mondiano, La place del' Etoile
43. C. Levi-Strauss, Les tristes tropiques
44. Susan Sontag, Essays
45. Wilhelm Reich, Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus
46. Stanislaw Lem, Perfect Vacuum
47. Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray
48. James D. Watson, The double helix
49. A. de Saint-Exupery: Le Petit prince
50. Pauline Regis, Histoire de l'O
51. Oswald Spengler, The decline of the West

Books I would like to read:

1. J.J. Rousseau, Emile
2. W.A. Goethe, Faust
3. Marcel Proust, A la recherche de temps perdu
4. Thomas Mann, Der Zeuberberg
5. F. Dostoyevski, Brothers Karamazov
6. Y. Mishima, The sea of fertility, (four books)
7. Bulgakov, Master and Marguarita
8. Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
9. Michael Foucault, Folie et deraison
10. Andrei Beli, Petersburg
11. Josephus, The Jewish Wars

List's dectractors:

Niall Whelan (Nov 9, 98): in your list of great western literature there is nary a mention of Shakespeare. Oversight or do you share Stephen Creagh's opinion that Shakespeare is overrated?

Branka Viker-Young (Jul 29, 99): As I think that you might have some, even loose, connection with eather former or current Yugoslavia, I am surprised tha Ivo Andric is not included in your list. I have read 'Na Drini Cuprija' in English and Serbo-Croat and I was indeed greatly impressed. OK, so I might be somewhat subjective, but Andric did get the Nobel prize for this novel. Incluson of Baudelaire meets my approval, as does 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. By the way, have you read Danilo Kis's 'The Encyclopaedia of the Dead' or anything by Aleksander Tisma? Well worth looking into.
Predrag: Andric is wonderful, but Krleza is untranslatably amazing. OK, "The Bridge on the River Drina" should be on the list for those of limited mastery of all of the Austro-Hungarian languages. Of course, Kis and Tisma deserve to get on some list. I was young and fearless when I first compiled it. My consolation is that it the overlap with any other top 100 books list is minimal.

Bojan Tunguz (Oct 11, 2000): Ako imate vremena, ja bih preporuci da procitate i Nabokovu "Lolitu" i Lemov "Solaris."
Predrag: I read them, read them. Then one could say one liked "Pale Fire" and "Perfect Vacuum" better. This story will never end.

Marcos Marino (Aug 13, 2001): Your literature list is pretty sensible. I definitely encourage you to read Proust, and I would recommend Foucault "Discipline and punishment" or "The order of things" instead of "Folie et deraison." Predrag: First Professor Foucoff made a pass at a male friend of mine in Cornell student cafeteria. Then there was a front page of Le Monde (or was it Liberation?) attack on Kosturica's "Underground" by the french Philosophe #1, followed by a fierce counterattack on a front page of Liberation (or was it Le Monde?) by the french Philosophe #2. That neither had actually SEEN the movie seemed not to matter. Then there was "L' affaire Sokal" (I met her after she had married him, and she is indeed very sweet). So I gave up on reading les Philosophes.