The Iliad
750 BC · 848 pages
Achilles withdraws from the fighting over a stolen prize and his friends die outside Troy for it. Nothing written about war since has matched Homer's fury, or the mercy of the final scene.
★ 9.9
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Odyssey
700 BC · 592 pages
Ten years of storms, monsters, and a goddess who will not let him go stand between a soldier and his own front door. Every adventure story since descends from Odysseus.
★ 9.9
Aeneid
19 BC · 484 pages
Aeneas carries his father out of burning Troy and is sent to found Rome, abandoning the queen who loves him. Duty wins, and Dido's grief is the greatest passage in Latin poetry.
★ 9.5
Paradise Lost
1667 · 591 pages
Satan rebels in heaven, loses, and comes for the first two people. Milton meant to justify God and produced a devil so magnificent he nearly walks off with the greatest poem in English.
★ 9.5
Gilgamesh
Author unknown
1700 BC · 304 pages
Literature begins here. Gilgamesh bullies his city until the gods send a wild man to match him. They become friends, one dies, and grief drives the survivor to the end of the world.
★ 7.5
Mahabharata
A Modern Retelling
400 BC · 928 pages
Five brothers gamble away a kingdom and their wife, then return from exile to a war that swallows their world. Carole Satyamurti's English verse holds the whole Sanskrit epic, Krishna's counsel included.
★ 7.5
Beowulf
Author unknown
1000 · 213 pages
For twelve years a monster has emptied a Danish king's hall, until a young warrior sails over to wait for it in the dark. Fifty years on, the poem comes back for him.
★ 7.4
Inferno
1321 · 296 pages
Lost in a dark wood, Dante follows the Roman poet Virgil down through nine circles, past lovers, popes, and traitors frozen in ice. Every punishment is built to answer its sin.
★ 7.3
Shahnameh
977 · 1040 pages
Fifty thousand couplets carry Iran from creation to the Arab conquest, past a tyrant with snakes growing from his shoulders and the hero Rostam meeting a young champion he does not recognize.
★ 7.1
The Ramayana
Valmiki and Arshia Sattar
500 BC · 157 pages
Rama accepts fourteen years of exile to keep his father's promise, and the demon king of Lanka carries off his wife. Indian towns still act the story out in the streets each autumn.
★ 6.7