These are the 100 best novels of all time according to writers: the Guardian's ranking (there are also 3 Italian books)

The prestigious British newspaper The Guardian has published a new ranking of the 100 most important novels in the history of literature in the English language – but with a substantial difference compared to traditional rankings: it was not drawn up by ordinary readers, but by 172 internationally renowned writers, critics and academics.

How the ranking was born

The method adopted is rigorous and transparent. Each participant was asked to indicate their 10 favorite novels in order of liking. The Guardian then developed a weighted average, which takes into account both the frequency with which each title was cited and the position assigned to it in the individual lists. The result is a ranking that spans five centuries of fiction, from nineteenth-century classics to contemporary literature.

Among the names involved are authors of the caliber of Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Bernardine Evaristo and Stephen King.

The podium

Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871–72), a masterpiece of Victorian realism, remains in first place. Followed by Toni Morrison’s Beloved – a novel about the memory and trauma of slavery – and James Joyce’s Ulysses, a milestone of literary modernism.

Middlemarch

The Italians in the ranking

The presence of Tomasi di Lampedusa, Ferrante and Calvino is not just symbolic: it represents three very different — and complementary — ways of understanding the Italian novel.

The Leopard continues to be considered abroad as one of the great European novels of the twentieth century because it tells, through the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy, a universal theme: the relationship between power, change and social immobility. The famous phrase “if we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change” has almost become an international political formula.

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The Leopard

With My Brilliant Friend, however, Elena Ferrante achieved something rare for contemporary Italian fiction: transforming a story deeply rooted in Naples and Southern Italy into a global phenomenon. The saga has been read as a novel about female friendship, social mobility and class tensions, but also as one of the works that have brought Italian literature back to the center of international debate in the last twenty years.

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My Brilliant Friend (Vol. 1): childhood, adolescence

More particular is the case of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, perhaps the most “international” of modern Italian writers. The novel is often studied in universities around the world not only as a work of fiction, but also as a philosophical reflection on language, urbanization, memory and imagination. Even today it influences architects, urban planners and writers.

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Invisible cities

When held against the light, the Guardian’s ranking also shows another aspect: Italian literature continues to be appreciated especially when it manages to combine a strong local identity and the ability to speak to universal themes.

New: more female voices

A fact that emerges strongly compared to the previous edition in 2003 concerns female representation: the authors present have gone from 16 to 36, a sign of a growing recognition – albeit belated – of the contribution of women to the great world narrative.