Your Country’s Favorite Book, Revealed (World Book Day, 2023)

There are 195 countries in the world, and most of them have produced many incredible literary works. That’s a staggering number of must-read books.

Because you probably don’t have all the time in the world (you’re on a website dedicated to saving you time on writing projects, for god’s sake), we’re going to list one influential book from a few select countries around the globe.

Can you guess your country’s favorite book?

An alphabetical list of favorite books, by country

1. Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi (Afghanistan)
2. The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare (Albania)
3. The Earthquake by Tahir Wattar (Algeria)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Argentina)
5. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (Australia)
6. The Trial by Franz Kafka (Austria)
7. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh)
8. The Sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus (Belgium)
9. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Brazil)
10. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (Canada)
11. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (Chile)
12. Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (China)
13. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)
14. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
15. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (Denmark)
16. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
17. The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna (Finland)
18. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (France)
19. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass (Germany)
20. Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)
21. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (India)
22. This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia)
23. My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad (Iran)
24. Ulysses by James Joyce (Ireland)
25. A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz (Israel)
26. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Italy)
27. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Japan)
28. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Mexico)
29. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
30. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (Norway)
31. Ice Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa (Pakistan)
32. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
33. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass (Poland)
34. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Russia)
35. Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea (Saudi Arabia)
36. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (South Africa)
37. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (South Korea)
38. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Spain)
39. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden)
40. Heidi by Johanna Spyri (Switzerland)
41. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
42. The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ukraine)
43. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (United Kingdom)
44. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (United States)
45. Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay)
46. Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos (Venezuela)

And there you have it: 46 of the world’s most influential books.

From all of us here at QuillBot, happy World Book Day. Go read something.