ReadingRate · Best Books · 2026

The best books from Ireland

Ranked by literary regard, Irish writing is led by Joyce's Ulysses, the collected Yeats, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with Swift and Wilde close behind. It is the most concentrated body of modernist writing from any small country, and this list ranks the top 100 Irish works in ReadingRate's catalogue with difficulty scores for each.

A computed ranking from literary-regard scores. Ireland's list is remarkable for its density at the top and brutal on the difficulty axis — Finnegans Wake scores 94 out of 100, the hardest book in the whole catalogue. But the same tradition produced Dubliners and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the per-book scores are what tell those apart before you commit.

1–10

  1. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922, difficulty 8.9/10)
  2. Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats (1933, difficulty 6.9/10)
  3. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1953, difficulty 7.4/10)
  4. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939, difficulty 9.4/10)
  5. Dubliners by James Joyce (1914, difficulty 7.2/10)
  6. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916, difficulty 7.8/10)
  7. The Tower by William Butler Yeats (1928, difficulty 5.6/10)
  8. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726, difficulty 6.6/10)
  9. The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett (1953, difficulty 8.0/10)
  10. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (2003, difficulty 6.8/10)

11–20

  1. Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett (1951, difficulty 6.6/10)
  2. Happy Days by Samuel Beckett (1961, difficulty 5.2/10)
  3. Molloy by Samuel Beckett (1951, difficulty 6.8/10)
  4. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde (1898, difficulty 4.2/10)
  5. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897, difficulty 5.3/10)
  6. Endgame by Samuel Beckett (1957, difficulty 6.1/10)
  7. Watt by Samuel Beckett (1953, difficulty 7.3/10)
  8. How It Is by Samuel Beckett (1961, difficulty 8.6/10)
  9. Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (1958, difficulty 4.6/10)
  10. Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney (1991, difficulty 4.2/10)

21–30

  1. Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney (1966, difficulty 5.3/10)
  2. Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (1981, difficulty 8.3/10)
  3. Field Work by Seamus Heaney (1979, difficulty 5.4/10)
  4. Company by Samuel Beckett (1980, difficulty 5.9/10)
  5. The Winding Stair by William Butler Yeats (1933, difficulty 7.1/10)
  6. Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (1923, difficulty 5.5/10)
  7. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (1939, difficulty 5.8/10)
  8. Anomalous States by David Lloyd (1993, difficulty 6.6/10)
  9. The Irish Writer and the World by Declan Kiberd (2005, difficulty 5.5/10)
  10. A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (2014, difficulty 5.9/10)

31–40

  1. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1960, difficulty 7.2/10)
  2. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré (1974, difficulty 5.2/10)
  3. Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (1903, difficulty 5.8/10)
  4. Foster by Claire Keegan (2010, difficulty 6.0/10)
  5. Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett (1983, difficulty 6.6/10)
  6. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978, difficulty 7.9/10)
  7. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch (1973, difficulty 6.2/10)
  8. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963, difficulty 6.1/10)
  9. A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift (1704, difficulty 7.8/10)
  10. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948, difficulty 7.2/10)

41–50

  1. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (1913, difficulty 5.3/10)
  2. The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde (1888, difficulty 4.0/10)
  3. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872, difficulty 6.0/10)
  4. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938, difficulty 6.0/10)
  5. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story by Frank O'Connor (1963, difficulty 5.1/10)
  6. The Bell by Iris Murdoch (1958, difficulty 3.9/10)
  7. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938, difficulty 7.1/10)
  8. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (2022, difficulty 6.0/10)
  9. Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw (1919, difficulty 5.7/10)
  10. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009, difficulty 5.2/10)

51–60

  1. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (1954, difficulty 5.9/10)
  2. North by Seamus Heaney (1975, difficulty 7.8/10)
  3. The Master by Colm Tóibín (2004, difficulty 5.6/10)
  4. Fools of Fortune by William Trevor (1983, difficulty 5.3/10)
  5. Inventing Ireland by Declan Kiberd (1995, difficulty 6.7/10)
  6. A Perfect Spy by John le Carré (1986, difficulty 5.8/10)
  7. Milkman by Anna Burns (2018, difficulty 7.2/10)
  8. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (1935, difficulty 6.5/10)
  9. Reading Turgenev by William Trevor (1991, difficulty 5.4/10)
  10. The Book of Evidence by John Banville (1989, difficulty 7.2/10)

61–70

  1. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch (1961, difficulty 4.0/10)
  2. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe (1992, difficulty 6.0/10)
  3. On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry (2011, difficulty 5.5/10)
  4. The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015, difficulty 5.3/10)
  5. The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch (1969, difficulty 5.5/10)
  6. Bruno's Dream by Iris Murdoch (1970, difficulty 5.3/10)
  7. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990, difficulty 5.0/10)
  8. Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (1994, difficulty 5.1/10)
  9. The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (1924, difficulty 4.4/10)
  10. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (2023, difficulty 6.0/10)

71–80

  1. The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín (1999, difficulty 5.2/10)
  2. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy (1955, difficulty 5.1/10)
  3. The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor (1976, difficulty 5.3/10)
  4. History of the Rain by Niall Williams (2014, difficulty 5.6/10)
  5. Transformations in Irish Culture by Luke Gibbons (1996, difficulty 5.8/10)
  6. The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney (2016, difficulty 5.5/10)
  7. The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (2024, difficulty 5.9/10)
  8. Actress by Anne Enright (2020, difficulty 6.0/10)
  9. Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry (2023, difficulty 5.8/10)
  10. Long Island by Colm Tóibín (2024, difficulty 5.1/10)

81–90

  1. Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen (1970, difficulty 5.5/10)
  2. A Vision by William Butler Yeats (1925, difficulty 7.1/10)
  3. Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel by William Trevor (1970, difficulty 5.4/10)
  4. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (2013, difficulty 6.0/10)
  5. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (2021, difficulty 5.0/10)
  6. In the Forest by Edna O'Brien (2002, difficulty 3.5/10)
  7. The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Literature by Denis Donoghue (1968, difficulty 6.5/10)
  8. The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch (1987, difficulty 5.9/10)
  9. The Old Jest by Jennifer Johnston (1979, difficulty 5.3/10)
  10. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2017, difficulty 4.9/10)

91–100

  1. Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe (1998, difficulty 5.0/10)
  2. Mercier and Camier by Samuel Beckett (1970, difficulty 4.8/10)
  3. Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín (2014, difficulty 2.9/10)
  4. Apeirogon by Colum McCann (2020, difficulty 5.4/10)
  5. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (2013, difficulty 6.0/10)
  6. Good Behaviour by Molly Keane (1981, difficulty 5.5/10)
  7. The Gathering by Anne Enright (2007, difficulty 5.6/10)
  8. No Country for Young Men by Julia O'Faolain (1980, difficulty 5.6/10)
  9. The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch (1974, difficulty 6.3/10)
  10. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820, difficulty 7.5/10)

Questions people actually ask

What are the best Irish books?
By literary regard: Ulysses, the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Waiting for Godot, Finnegans Wake, and Dubliners lead, with Gulliver's Travels and The Picture of Dorian Gray in the top tier. ReadingRate ranks the top 100.
Where should I start with James Joyce?
Dubliners. It holds high literary regard at a fraction of the difficulty of Ulysses, and none of Finnegans Wake's — the difficulty data separates the three sharply, which is exactly why readers who start in the wrong place give up on Joyce entirely.
What is the hardest book to read?
By ReadingRate's nine-dimension scoring, Finnegans Wake is the most difficult work in the catalogue, scoring 94 out of 100 — driven by invented vocabulary and structural complexity rather than length.