The 100 Books of the Century (French: Les cent livres du siècle) is a list of the hundred most memorable books of the 20th century, regardless of language, according to a poll performed during the spring of 1999 by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde.
Contents
Overview
Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?) As Le Monde journalist Josyane Savigneau aptly clarified in her article, the list is not meant to encompass the 100 most distinguished French literary works of the 20th century, but rather to reflect the emotional connections of the French populace.
The list includes both classic novels and genre fiction (Tolkien, Agatha Christie, A. C. Doyle), as well as poetry, drama and nonfiction literature (Freud's essays and the diary of Anne Frank). There are also comic books on the list, one volume from each of these five Francophone or Italian series: Asterix, Tintin, Blake and Mortimer, Gaston and Corto Maltese.
The large number of French novels on the list is due to the demographics of the surveyed group. Likewise, comparable lists by English-language entities—such as the two lists of Modern Library's 100 Best Novels published in 1998, one by the Board of the Modern Library and the other by readers who responded—disproportionately favor British and American authors. Only English-language works were eligible for the two Modern Library lists.
List
Note: Classified by the language of the book's first publication, which might not be the author's principal language.