The 19 Best NYRB Classics Books of All Time

From rediscovered masterpieces to cult gems rescued from obscurity, this lineup spans continents and decades of overlooked brilliance. Some are quiet heartbreakers, others sly comedies or shadowy noirs. Which one wins your vote?

1

The Summer Book

Tove Jansson's luminous portrait of a grandmother and granddaughter on a tiny Finnish island.

1000pts

2

Butcher's Crossing

John Williams's stark frontier novel of a buffalo hunt that becomes a descent into obsession.

993pts

3

Stoner

John Williams's quietly devastating 1965 campus novel, the rediscovered title that made NYRB Classics a phenomenon.

951pts

4

Chess Story

Stefan Zweig's taut final novella about an obsessive duel of the mind aboard an ocean liner.

951pts

5

The Invention of Morel

Adolfo Bioy Casares's eerie 1940 fantasy of love, illusion, and a mysterious island machine.

883pts

6

Family Lexicon

Natalia Ginzburg's autobiographical novel of an Italian family told through its private phrases.

831pts

7

The Door

Magda Szabo's piercing novel of a writer and her enigmatic Hungarian housekeeper.

772pts

8

The Go-Between

L.P. Hartley's haunting novel of a boy carrying secret messages across a class divide.

772pts

9

Nightmare Alley

William Lindsay Gresham's pitch-black 1946 noir of a carnival grifter's rise and ruin.

772pts

10

Warlock

Oakley Hall's sprawling 1958 anti-Western that deconstructs the myths of frontier violence.

772pts

11

The Dud Avocado

Elaine Dundy's sparkling 1958 romp of a young American adrift in 1950s Paris.

702pts

12

Transit

Anna Seghers's tense WWII novel of refugees trapped in Marseille awaiting escape.

702pts

13

Troubles

J.G. Farrell's darkly comic Lost Booker winner set in a crumbling Irish hotel.

702pts

14

Hard Rain Falling

Don Carpenter's gritty 1966 debut tracing a drifter from pool halls to prison.

617pts

15

Life and Fate

Vasily Grossman's epic Stalingrad-era answer to War and Peace, suppressed in the USSR.

617pts

16

Sleepless Nights

Elizabeth Hardwick's fragmentary, luminous autobiographical novel of a writing life.

617pts

17

Cassandra at the Wedding

Dorothy Baker's sharp 1962 novel of a twin spiraling on the eve of her sister's wedding.

514pts

18

Skylark

Dezso Kosztolanyi's tender, melancholy tale of aging parents and their plain daughter.

514pts

19

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

G.B. Edwards's singular lifelong portrait of a stubborn Guernsey islander.

514pts