The 100 best fantasy novels

No. 11 on this list. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass · Lewis Carroll · 1871

No syllabus or Wikipedia-language data is recorded for this edition in our database, but Alice is a fixture of children's-literature, Victorian-studies, and philosophy-of-language courses worldwide. It remains one of the most translated books in history, with a reach comparable to Hamlet's or The Great Gatsby's syllabus ubiquity.

No. 12 on this list. Invisible Cities · Italo Calvino · 1972

Marco Polo sits before Kublai Khan and describes cities he has visited — or perhaps invented. Despina can be approached by land or by sea, and looks entirely different depending on which direction you come from. Valdrada was built above a lake so that every action of its inhabitants would be doubled in the water below; the city and its mirror have learned to hate each other. Zobeide was constructed by men who all dreamed the same woman and built a city to trap her, but the woman never appeared. Calvino arranges 55 such cities across 11 categories — Cities & Memory, Cities & Desire, Thin Cities — in a mathematical grid that wears the clothing of fiction. The cities are not places. They are states of mind, arguments about time and loss, meditations on the difference between a map and the territory it claims to represent. Between the vignettes, Marco Polo and the Khan conduct dialogues about language, empire, and whether it is possible to describe anything that exists. The prose is precise and dreaming at once — a short paragraph can hold more compressed thought than a chapter of conventional fiction. This is a book that accumulates rather than progresses, and what it accumulates is a complete philosophy of how cities, and perhaps consciousness itself, work.

No. 13 on this list. A Christmas Carol · Charles Dickens · 1843

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, OCR GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

A Christmas Carol is among the most widely taught Victorian texts in the English-speaking world, a fixture on secondary and university literature curricula in the UK, US, and Commonwealth nations. Its Wikipedia article exists in over 60 languages, and it appears on virtually every canonical list of Victorian prose. No other work of comparable length has achieved the same degree of curricular permanence.

No. 14 on this list. The Tempest · William Shakespeare · 1611

Taught in schools: Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico), WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Prospero's island stages Shakespeare's final reckoning with his own art—the magician who conjures storms, manipulates lovers, and then drowns his book. Caliban's "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises" is the most haunting speech given to a character the play calls a monster.

No. 15 on this list. Pedro Páramo · Juan Rulfo · 1955

Taught in schools: Literatura, Diseño Curricular – Provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina), UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

Pedro Páramo is the foundational text of Latin American modernism, present in nearly every world literature curriculum globally. Its Wikipedia article spans 26 languages. García Márquez credited it with teaching him how to write One Hundred Years of Solitude — a direct line of influence that alone ensures canonical permanence. Penguin Modern Classics published it in 1961.

No. 16 on this list. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There · Lewis Carroll

It is a core text of Victorian and children's literature, taught in courses on nonsense, fantasy and Victorian studies and constantly adapted. It trails only a little behind the first Alice book in curricula.

No. 17 on this list. One Thousand and One Nights · Anonymous

World literature's most famous story collection; shaped global narrative imagination.

No. 18 on this list. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight · The Pearl Poet · 1375

Required reading in virtually every medieval and Middle English literature course at anglophone universities. The poem appears on thousands of syllabi and features in Great Books curricula worldwide. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon's 1925 scholarly edition set the standard text; Simon Armitage's 2007 translation reached mainstream audiences. The poem occupies the same canonical tier as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for the period it represents.

No. 19 on this list. A Midsummer Night's Dream · William Shakespeare · 1600

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Four Athenian lovers stumble through an enchanted forest while Oberon and Puck rearrange their affections with a magic flower, and a troupe of tradesmen rehearse the worst play ever staged. Shakespeare nests three worlds—court, fairy kingdom, and amateur theater—into a single moonlit structure that defines romantic comedy.

No. 20 on this list. The Tin Drum · Günter Grass · 1959

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

The Tin Drum appears on approximately 200 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus Project data (57th percentile), placing it firmly in world literature and 20th-century European fiction curricula. Wikipedia coverage spans 35 languages with dedicated Reception and Adaptations sections, indicating sustained international engagement. The novel is widely regarded as the defining work of postwar German literature, though its syllabus presence falls short of canonical American fixtures like The Great Gatsby.

No. 21 on this list. Joseph and His Brothers · Thomas Mann · 1943

Joseph and His Brothers appears regularly on European and world literature curricula, particularly in German literature courses and modernism seminars. It features on multiple 'greatest novels' lists including Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century. The tetralogy is less frequently taught than Mann's shorter works (Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain) owing to its length, but its canonical standing within the Mann oeuvre and 20th-century literature broadly is secure. The database shows no syllabus or Wikipedia data, but scholarly consensus places this among the defining works of European modernism.

No. 22 on this list. The Sandman · E.T.A. Hoffmann · 1816

The Sandman is canonical in German literature courses, Romantic literature surveys, Gothic fiction studies, and psychoanalytic literary criticism worldwide. Freud's 1919 essay 'The Uncanny' uses it as the central specimen, ensuring its presence on psychoanalysis and literary theory syllabi for over a century. While it lacks the broad English-language curriculum presence of Frankenstein or Great Expectations, it is effectively required reading in any serious study of German Romanticism, the Gothic tradition, or the history of uncanny fiction.

No. 23 on this list. The Arabian Nights · Anonymous

The Nights are a cornerstone of world literature and widely taught in comparative and Middle Eastern literature courses, though this 2004 edition is one of many renderings.

No. 24 on this list. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio · Pu Songling

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

The standard classical Chinese story collection, taught in every survey of premodern Chinese literature and available in Penguin Classics, Yale and Columbia editions.

No. 25 on this list. Orlando Furioso · Ludovico Ariosto · 1516

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

Orlando Furioso stands as one of the defining works of Italian Renaissance literature, a fixture in Italian university curricula and comparative literature courses worldwide. Its influence on Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Voltaire makes it indispensable to the study of early modern literature. While less taught in English-language universities than Greek and Roman epic, it appears on virtually every world literature and Renaissance literature syllabus.

No. 26 on this list. The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) · J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954

Taught in schools: Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate – English

Widely taught in fantasy, medieval-influenced and popular literature courses and ranked among the most read novels, but less dominant on core literary syllabi than Gatsby or Crime and Punishment.

No. 27 on this list. The Fifth Season · N.K. Jemisin · 2015

The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, the first book in what became an unprecedented trilogy of consecutive Hugo wins for Jemisin—a feat unmatched in the award's history. It appears on contemporary science fiction and fantasy syllabi and in critical discussions of the genre's formal and political possibilities. Its position in the canon is still consolidating, but its influence on subsequent speculative fiction is already evident.

No. 28 on this list. The Street of Crocodiles · Bruno Schulz · 1934

Taught in schools: Lektury obowiązkowe – Polish national reading list (Poland)

A standard text in world-literature and modernism syllabi and the central work of Polish literary modernism after Gombrowicz.

No. 29 on this list. Midnight's Children · Salman Rushdie · 1981

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

Appears on 781 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus (72nd percentile), with a Wikipedia article in 40 languages. Required reading in postcolonial literature courses worldwide. Won the Booker Prize (1981), then the Booker of Bookers in both 1993 and 2008—the prize committee's pick for the best Booker winner across 25 and 40 years respectively. Listed on TIME All-TIME 100 Novels, Modern Library 100 Best Novels, and Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century.

No. 30 on this list. The Kingdom of This World · Alejo Carpentier · 1949

Taught in schools: Literatura, Diseño Curricular – Provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

The Kingdom of This World is widely taught in Latin American literature courses and postcolonial studies programs worldwide. The novel launched the concept of 'lo real maravilloso' (the marvelous real), which Carpentier articulated in its famous prologue — making it a required theoretical as well as literary text. No specific syllabus count data is available, but its presence on comparative literature and world fiction syllabi is consistent and decades-long.