Read the, "100 most meaningful books of all time"

2. Things fall apart

4. Pride and prejudice

9. Wuthering heights

24. Invisible man

39. The old man and the sea

40. The Iliad

41. The Odyssey

46. The Trial

64. Beloved

69. 1984

81. Hamlet

83. Othello

98. Mrs Dalloway

A 2002 survey of around 100 well-known authors from 54 countries voted for the “most meaningful book of all time” in a poll organised by editors at the Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo. Voters included Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes and Norman Mailer. Miguel de Cervantes’ tale gained 50% more votes than any other book, eclipsing works by Shakespeare, Homer and Tolstoy.

Ten authors got more than one book on to the list. After Cervantes, Fyodor Dostoevsky emerged as the most worthwhile read with four books listed. The only Shakespeare plays the authors agreed on were Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. The Bard was matched by Franz Kafka whose three angst-ridden tales of grotesque alienation on the list were The Trial, The Castle and the Complete Stories. Three works by Leo Tolstoy made it: War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf both scored twice, along with the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.