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A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Canon

A panel of critics tells us what belongs on a list of the 100 most important books of the 2000s … so far..

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Okay, assessing a century’s literary legacy after only 18 and a half years is kind of a bizarre thing to do.

Actually, constructing a canon of any kind is a little weird at the moment, when so much of how we measure cultural value is in flux. Born of the ancient battle over which stories belonged in the “canon” of the Bible, the modern literary canon took root in universities and became defined as the static product of consensus — a set of leather-bound volumes you could shoot into space to make a good first impression with the aliens. Its supposed permanence became the subject of more recent battles, back in the 20th century, between those who defended it as the foundation of Western civilization and those who attacked it as exclusive or even racist.

But what if you could start a canon from scratch? We thought it might be fun to speculate (very prematurely) on what a canon of the 21st century might look like right now. A couple of months ago, we reached out to dozens of critics and authors — well-established voices (Michiko Kakutani, Luc Sante), more radical thinkers (Eileen Myles), younger reviewers for outlets like n+1 , and some of our best-read contributors, too. We asked each of them to name several books that belong among the most important 100 works of fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays since 2000 and tallied the results. The purpose was not to build a fixed library but to take a blurry selfie of a cultural moment.

Any project like this is arbitrary, and ours is no exception. But the time frame is not quite as random as it may seem. The aughts and teens represent a fairly coherent cultural period, stretching from the eerie decadence of pre-9/11 America to the presidency of Donald Trump. This mini-era packed in the political, social, and cultural shifts of the average century, while following the arc of an epic narrative (perhaps a tragedy, though we pray for a happier sequel). Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections , one of our panel’s favorite books, came out ten days before the World Trade Center fell; subsequent novels reflected that cataclysm’s destabilizing effects, the waves of hope and despair that accompanied wars, economic collapse, permanent-seeming victories for the once excluded, and the vicious backlash under which we currently shudder. They also reflected the fragmentation of culture brought about by social media. The novels of the Trump era await their shot at the canon of the future; because of the time it takes to write a book, we haven’t really seen them yet.

You never know exactly what you’ll discover when sending out a survey like this, the results of which owe something to chance and a lot to personal predilections. But given the sheer volume of stuff published each year, it is remarkable that a survey like this would yield any kind of consensus—which this one did. Almost 40 books got more than one endorsement, and 13 had between three and seven apiece. We have separately listed the single-most popular book; the dozen “classics” with several votes; the “high canon” of 26 books with two votes each; and the rest of the still-excellent but somewhat more contingent canon-in-utero. (To better reflect that contingency, we’ve included a handful of critics’ “dissents,” arguing for alternate books by the canonized authors.)

Unlike the old canons, ours is roughly half-female, less diverse than it should be but generally preoccupied with difference, and so fully saturated with what we once called “genre fiction” that we hardly even think of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road , Colson Whitehead’s zombie comedy Zone One , Helen Oyeyemi’s subversive fairy tales, or even the Harry Potter novels as deserving any other designation than “literature.” And a whole lot of them are, predictably, about instability, the hallmark of the era after the “end of history” that we call now.

At least one distinctive new style has dominated over the past decade. Call it autofiction if you like, but it’s really a collapsing of categories. (Perhaps not coincidentally, such lumping is better suited to “People Who Liked” algorithms than brick-and-mortar shelving systems.) This new style encompasses Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels; Sheila Heti’s self-questing How Should a Person Be? ; Karl Ove Knausgaard’s just-completed 3,600-page experiment in radical mundanity; the essay-poems of Claudia Rankine on race and the collage­like reflections of Maggie Nelson on gender. It’s not really a genre at all. It’s a way of examining the self and letting the world in all at once. Whether it changes the world is, as always with books, not really the point. It helps us see more clearly.

Our dozen “classics” do represent some consensus; their genius seems settled-on. Among them are Kazuo Ishiguro’s scary portrait of replicant loneliness in Never Let Me Go ; Roberto Bolaño’s epic and powerfully confrontational 2666 ; Joan Didion’s stark self-dissection of grief in The Year of Magical Thinking . They aren’t too surprising, because they are (arguably as always, but still) great.

And then there’s The Last Samurai , Helen DeWitt’s debut: published at the start of the century, relegated to obscurity (and overshadowed by a bad and unrelated Tom Cruise movie of the same name), and now celebrated by more members of our panel than any other book. That’s still only seven out of 31, which gives you a sense of just how fragile this consensus is. Better not launch this canon into space just yet.

— Boris Kachka

The Best Book of the Century (for Now)

By Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Last Samurai , by Helen DeWitt (September 20, 2000)

Ask a set of writers and critics to select books for a new canon, and it shouldn’t come as a shock that the one most of them name is a novel about the nature of genius. It is also, more precisely, a novel about universal human potential.

Like many epics, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai charts the education of its hero and proceeds by means of a quest narrative. A boy undertakes rigorous training and goes in search of his father. What makes it a story of our time is that the boy lives in an insufficiently heated London flat with a single mother. What makes it singular is that his training begins at age 4, when he starts to learn ancient Greek, before quickly moving on to Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Finnish, etc. That’s not to mention his acquisition of mathematics, physics, art history, music, and an eccentric taste for tales of world exploration.

Is this boy, Ludo, a genius? Sibylla, his mother, is of two minds about it. She recognizes that she’s done something out of the ordinary by teaching the kid The Iliad so young, following the example of J.S. Mill, who did Greek at age 3. She knows he’s a “Boy Wonder” and she encourages him in every way to follow his omnivorous instincts. But she also believes that the problem with everybody else — literally everybody else — is that they haven’t been properly taught and have gone out of their way, most of the time, to avoid difficult things, like thinking. Otherwise we’d be living in a world of Ludos.

So a novel that appears on the surface to be elitist — concerned as it is with great works of art, scientific achievement, and excellence generally — is actually profoundly anti-elitist at its core. DeWitt’s novel is infused with the belief that any human mind is capable of feats we tend to associate with genius. But the novel’s characters, especially Sibylla, are aware that youthful talent can be thwarted at any turn. She knows it happened to her parents — a teenage-whiz father who was accepted to Harvard but made to go to seminary by his Christian father; and a musical prodigy mother who never went back to Juilliard for a second audition — and to herself. Whatever the world had in store for Sibylla changed forever the night Ludo was conceived.

  • SEE THE FULL ESSAY

The 12 New Classics

Per our panel.

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Corrections , by Jonathan Franzen (September 1, 2001) | 6 votes Arriving in bookstores ten days before the September 11 attacks, The Corrections recounts the tragicomic breakdown of a 20th-century American dream of middle-ness: midwestern and middle-class. The Lamberts, with their mentally disintegrating patriarch, Christmas-obsessed mother, and grown siblings tackling depression, professional failure, adultery, and celebrity chefdom, may not seem as universal as they once did, but the sensation of certainties evaporating as we pitch headlong into this still-young century has only gotten stronger. —Laura Miller

DISSENT: Freedom (August 31, 2010) I prefer this in large measure because it focuses on a feature of human life that has gotten less fictional coverage than family and love: male friendship. Sure, it’s a love story between Patty and Walter and then between Patty and Richard, but it’s also a love story between Walter and Richard, two friends fiercely at odds and no less fiercely close. To say that the emotional high-note, and the real shocker, of this nearly 600-page novel is a gift that one man makes for his friend is to say that Franzen, who too many people say gets too much credit, doesn’t get enough for what he actually manages to do : reveal the tender, unexpected workings of human animals. —Wyatt Mason

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Never Let Me Go , by Kazuo Ishiguro (March 3, 2005)  | 6 votes You can think of this as Ishiguro’s The Road — his haunting masterpiece. The ratio of taut plot to ghastly subject matter is disturbingly effective. Kathy H.’s multidimensional but methodical storytelling of this adolescent Gothic horror show is indelible (and difficult to review without spoiling). The questions it raises are perfectly of-our-century. Never Let Me Go is a prime example of an author with impeccable taste in ideas and the control to execute them. Most authors are lucky if they have one of those things going for them. This novel is a rare symphony of both. —Sloane Crosley

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

How Should a Person Be? , by Sheila Heti (September 25, 2010)   |  5 votes Heti doesn’t get enough credit from her advocates for being funny or from her critics for being serious. Slipping imperceptibly from ironic to earnest, challenging to chatty, her voice is sui generis and ideally suited to capturing the experience of making art — and decisions — in the modern world. The concerns of her breakout work of autofiction include sex, self-documentation, aesthetics, and friendship, as well as the titular question. The title is a perfect joke, a mission statement of deranged grandiosity, straight-faced and self-aware. Isn’t this what every book, ever, wants (in its own way) to ask? —Molly Fischer

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante (2011-2015) | 5 votes Elena Ferrante’s Italy is where the personal is political, the male gaze is visceral, and the past clings to the present with potent force. Across four books and over the lifetimes of its two unforgettable main characters, the Neapolitan quartet explores female rage, agency, and friendship with a raw power. (All that over a decade when women have begun to express their anger and agency in new ways.) Lila and Elena grow up inured to the violence and corruption that defines their hometown of Naples in the 1950s, even as they yearn for something better: beauty amidst the ugliness, and intellectual fulfillment, which can be as heady as romantic love. Ferrante fever struck readers all over the world, captivated by Lila and Elena’s complicated relationship. —Maris Kreizman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Argonauts , by Maggie Nelson (May 5, 2015) |  5 votes Around the time it was published, Maggie Nelson read aloud the opening of this book — an extremely graphic and surprising sex scene, awkwardly lighting up that New York room and clanging a bell that people had just not heard before. Her 21st-century classic is structurally just that kind of awoke re-shuffling. It’s not that you don’t know about anal sex, childbirth, or even about a partner’s transition or a parent dying, but Nelson puts each next to the other in a manner that changes our perception of each and all. I’m always glad to have never had a baby, yet Maggie has writ birthing so deeply that I’m grateful to say I’ve missed nothing in this life, thanks to this uncanny saint of a book. —Eileen Myles

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

2666 , by Roberto Bolaño (November 11, 2008) | 4 votes Bolaño’s final legacy to the world before his death in 2003 is a labyrinthine mystery taking in three continents and most of the 20th century. Its playful first part might make you think you are stepping into a steady old-fashioned cruise ship of a novel, à la Victor Hugo, but the tone shifts as abruptly as the locale. At its center is the book-length fourth part, a mercilessly clipped recital of some of the hundreds of femicides in Ciudad Juárez, which is both integral to the story and a direct confrontation with the reader. The book is a world: teeming, immeasurable, unplumbable, materially solid but finally enigmatic. —Luc Sante

DISSENT: The Savage Detectives (March 4, 2008) I have always preferred this precursor to 2666 , which is its closest (though much slimmer) competitor in scope. The polyphonic tour de force is peak Bolaño, the purest distillation of its author’s disparate obsessions: the collision of the Old World with the New, mezcal , road trips, Surrealism, sacrifice in lifelong pursuit of art (and the authoritarian urge seeded in creative failure), fraudulence, unrecognized genius, and the maddening and fleeting allure of youth. —Thomas Chatterton Williams

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Sellout , by Paul Beatty (March 3, 2015) |  4 votes It takes a master of language, culture, and comic timing to create a satire that excoriates contemporary American life, with jokes coming at a furious pace, almost line by line. The novel takes on the idea of living in a “post-racial” society, which even during the Obama administration was ridiculous. The Sellout details the trials of a black man charged with reinstating slavery and segregation in his California hometown, in a voice that is unabashedly profane; so unflinchingly silly and smart that it’s impossible to look away. —Maris Kreizman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Outline Trilogy ( Outline , Transit , and Kudos ), by Rachel Cusk (2014–2018) |  4 votes In its basic contours, Cusk’s trilogy is a masterpiece of rigorous denial: The books, mostly plotless, follow a British writer named Faye about whom we learn little. Yet Faye is less a protagonist than a character-shaped black hole, pulling stories and confessions out of everyone she encounters as if by inexorable gravitational force. Their disclosures allow Cusk to examine the ways we try (and fail) to make meaning out of life. The result is fiction like ice water, cold and clear, a mirror of our time. —Molly Fischer

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Atonement , by Ian McEwan (September 2001) |  3 votes At once a war story, a love story, and a story about the destructive and redemptive powers of the imagination, Atonement pivots around a terrible lie told by a 13-year-old girl that will shatter her family. At the same time, the novel opens out into a deeply moving portrait of England careerning from the quiescent 1930s into the horrors of World War II. A bravura account of the 1940 Allied retreat from Dunkirk stands as one of the most indelible combat scenes in recent literature, slamming home the confusion, terror, and banality of war with visceral immediacy. It is only the most memorable sequence in a brilliantly orchestrated novel that injects many of the author’s favorite themes — the hazards of innocence, the sudden intrusion of bad luck into ordinary lives, the blurring of lines between art and life — with a new resonance and depth. —Michiko Kakutani

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion (September 1, 2005) |  3 votes This is often referred to as Didion’s “departure” — the underbelly everyone always longed to see after reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem and thinking: But surely she’d pick me. Surely we’d live happily ever after, observing the world with our cool eyes. In short: No, she wouldn’t. And The Year of Magical Thinking is actually not her “personal” anomaly. It’s the Didion that’s been there all along — funny, humane, trenchant — transformed by tragedy and grief. The 21st century is young, but this one will be on this list 50 years from now. There’s something so reassuring about a bar that can never be surpassed. —Sloane Crosley

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Leaving the Atocha Station , by Ben Lerner (August 23, 2011) |  3 votes When our alien overlords want to know what was new in the novel in the first quarter of the 21st century, give them Atocha Station . Some will contend that Lerner’s second novel, 10:04 , is a more mature work, but this one is leaner and shapelier, and more directly explores the disconnect between our hopes for art and our actual experience of it. The narrator, a self-loathing stoner American poet on a fellowship in Madrid, is a privileged jackass trying to appear deep. The trick, of course, is that he’s brilliant, and his anxious stream of thought is philosophically rich. What is the average person’s role in history? How can we live with our own fraudulence? Why should we make art, and what kind of art can we make now? To all these questions Atocha Station is an answer. —Christine Smallwood

DISSENT: 10:04 (September 2, 2014) 10:04 is the story of a poet and novelist (the author of a book very much like Leaving the Atocha Station ) as he contemplates in vitro uncoupled parenthood, radical politics, fleeting love, and a looming, potentially lethal arterial condition. Lerner moves from touristic escapism and the question of artistic fraudulence to the deeper burdens of settling, reproducing, and creating something great. On top of that he gives the much bemoaned Brooklyn novel a good name. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Flamethrowers , by Rachel Kushner (April 2, 2013) |  3 votes This fever-dream of the 1970s would make a spectacular movie — if anyone had the budget to make a picture that takes in speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, vast street riots in Rome, escapes through the Alps, and intrigue in the international art world. Kushner sets her heroine, Reno, in the middle of all of it, usually astride her battered Moto Valera; passionate, vulnerable, relentlessly curious, and only a little bit compromised. The book is a feminist action-adventure, a love note to the last decade before neoliberalism choked the world, and a monument to sheer gumption. —Luc Sante

The High Canon

Books endorsed by two panelists.

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Erasure , by Percival Everett (August 1, 2001) The University of Southern California English professor has published some 30 volumes, mostly fiction, and Erasure is among his best. A comic romp through academic pieties and perversities, it centers on a literary hoax gone bad, in ways that predicted our current higher-educational climate. Everett is always, in a sense, writing about race, and always not. (He also writes about himself — and not — with a Hitchcock-like cameo in the form of a derelict-in-his-duty, wastrel of a literature professor by the name of Percival Everett.) —Tom Lutz

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Middlesex , by Jeffrey Eugenides (September 4, 2002) “Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome,” proclaims Cal/Calliope Stephanides, Middlesex ’s pseudo-hermaphroditic protagonist, recounting his family’s long hereditary slide towards her mixed-up gender identity. And then: “Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That’s genetic, too.” Eugenides packs so much richness into this Classical saga-cum-bildungsroman-cum–paean to the American Dream that Dickens would be proud. Starting with the burning of Smyrna and winding its way through Prohibition to the 1967 Detroit race riots, Middlesex does what any viable candidate for the Great American Novel should; it broadens the definition of “American.” —Hillary Kelly

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Platform , by Michel Houellebecq (September 5, 2002) Houellebecq’s second novel (after his incendiary debut, The Elementary Particles ) is full of loathsome, corrosive wit; it continues his savagely pessimistic project exploring the future of France (and, by extension, Europe and the West), caught between the distractions of late capitalism and the amorality of a post-1968 society. Houellebecq is abrasive, offensive, and in many ways obviously wrong, but his grim outlook on globalization and his anger at his parents’ generation make him one of the essential European novelists of the 21st century. —Jess Row

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Do Everything in the Dark , by Gary Indiana (June 1, 2003) A working title for this novel was “Psychotic Friends Network.” Composed in 74 short sections, it follows a group of loosely bound friends — artists, actors, writers, and careerless people who once had other plans — into the damaged state of middle age. Downtown Manhattan is their center of gravity, but these characters have been scattered, before waking up to find themselves so much human debris in the wake of personal failures, betrayals, and AIDS. A literary descendant of Renata Adler’s Speedboat and a forerunner of recent autofiction, Do Everything in the Dark concludes on the weekend before 9/11, and demonstrates that American wreckage wasn’t something invented on that sunny Tuesday morning. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Known World , by Edward P. Jones (August 14, 2003) This intimate portrait of the great national nightmare of slavery comes disguised in the britches and mourning dresses of an antebellum historical novel. It was widely praised upon publication for revealing an obscure chapter of American history — free people of color who owned slaves — but the history itself was largely invented. The Virginian county of Henry Townsend’s plantation, the reference citations, and many of the period details are made up. Having denied the consolations of historical distance, The Known World forces a reckoning with a moral horror that lives still. —Nathaniel Rich

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Plot Against America , by Philip Roth (September 30, 2004) It can be easy to forget that The Plot Against America , which today reads as a parable for Trump’s America, was widely received as an allegory for W.’s — an interpretation that Roth encouraged by insisting the opposite. The novel begins in a buzz of fear and the pitch increases steadily, unbearably. But it’s Roth’s doomed hero, Walter Winchell, whose speeches have the uncanny urgency of prophecy: “How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds by the fascist fifth column of the Republican right marching under the sign of the cross and the flag?” —Nathaniel Rich

DISSENT: The Human Stain (April 2000) This was the first Roth title that came to mind, which surprised me because I wouldn’t list it if the parameters were widened from “21st century” to “ever.” But it’s really a marvel of racial politics and suspense. And who doesn’t love Nathan Zuckerman? Don’t answer that. —Sloane Crosley

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Line of Beauty , by Alan Hollinghurst (October 1, 2004) Sometimes a book just feels monumental. The Line of Beauty follows a young gay man, Nick, who lives with the family of a Tory MP under Thatcher — who makes an unforgettable cameo appearance. This is the story of two initiations. It’s about a loss of innocence coinciding with social success, but also about a coming in of sorts: Nick’s entrance into London’s gay subculture. He is always seduced by beauty, but as AIDS looms — along with the threat of discovery by his conservative hosts — Nick can’t outrun the politics of his aesthetics or the contradictions in the social structures to which he clings. —Alice Bolin

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Veronica , by Mary Gaitskill (October 11, 2005) Like her first novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), Gaitskill’s second revolves around a friendship between two women. Alison Owen, a former model living with hepatitis C, reflects on her complex closeness with Veronica Ross, a woman we learn died alone with AIDS. How we care for people in pain is at the heart of this moving, unsentimental look at our fragility, written with remarkable metaphorical and lyrical power. In a book not about living through hardships but about living in their aftermath, Gaitskill’s Alison is indelible, as is her memory of her lost friend. —Wyatt Mason

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Road , by Cormac McCarthy (September 26, 2006) Here is the author of Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men still trafficking in his primordial themes — good vs. evil — but locating it tenderly within the relationship between a father and son (as they journey through a post-Apocalyptic hellscape). The father knows he is dying and, in a world overrun by cannibalism and violence, he’s trying to teach his son how to tell the “good guys” from the bad. This is McCarthy at his most restrained, and consequently most resonant. There is no fiction subject more trendy (and more urgent) than the multifarious possible ends of the world; McCarthy led the way, and might be impossible to surpass. —Edward Hart

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ooga-Booga , by Frederick Seidel (November 14, 2006) “The title is Kill Poetry , / And in the book poetry kills.” The poems in Frederick Seidel’s 12th collection, Ooga Booga , don’t kill but they come awfully close. Some poets are easy to love; Seidel is so good you revere him despite yourself. Born in 1936 and still living in New York, he’s the heir to a family coal fortune, a famously dapper dresser, and a writer of odes to Ducati motorcycles. He also captures the absurd melancholy of modern existence in dark, crystalline stanzas. “The poet the 20th century deserved” is how one critic put it, and it’s not clear if that’s a compliment or not, or if it matters. At 82, he’s the poet the 21st century deserves, too, and still desperately needs. —Adam Sternbergh

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , by Junot Díaz (September 6, 2007) Junot Díaz’s first novel not only affirmed the vitality and the talent displayed in his first book, Drown , in a resounding way, it expanded the idea of what is possible, and what American literature could be. It could be written for an audience in ascendancy, told in vernacular but expertly formed and composed. It could concern the intensely personal, but telescope out to the historic and the political. The astounding Oscar Wao did all of that, leaving us with a lasting understanding of the American experience as encompassing lives beyond our blinkered borders. —Oscar Villalon

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Wolf Hall , by Hilary Mantel (April 30, 2009) Any writer could have done the research that informs this remarkable historical novel. But only genius, gimlet-eyed, wicked Hilary Mantel could have created the animating intelligence at the heart of it: Thomas Cromwell, adviser to Henry VIII, antagonist to Thomas More, brilliant and ambitious, heartbroken and ruthless. “As some men have an eye for horseflesh or cattle to be fattened,” Mantel writes, “he has an eye for risk,” and as a novelist she shares this quality, taking unlikely narrative leaps that always pay off. No book this learned should be so wildly entertaining. —Dan Kois

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Possessed , by Elif Batuman (February 16, 2010) The best essay collections are about the writer’s strange and hungry mind groping around the contours of the world, but this one is also a hilarious book on a famously grave subject: Russian literature. Batuman creates a memoir of her time in Stanford’s PhD program obliquely, writing about authors first and herself second. She mimics the forms of fiction — a Sherlock Holmes–style detective story in “The Murder of Leo Tolstoy,” an old-school travelogue of studying abroad in Uzbekistan — to better comment on them. The Possessed and Batuman’s novel, The Idiot , together form a body of work that queries the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction — and between books and their readers. —Alice Bolin

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake , by Aimee Bender (June 1, 2010) All of Bender’s stories are written in a mode that is not quite fantasy, certainly not realist, and somewhat fairy-tale-ish (in other words a style that is all her own), offering beautiful, profound stories about, for instance, a six-inch-tall man who lives in a bird cage in his wife’s house; or, as in the title of another collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. It really doesn’t matter which of her books you pick up first; you’ll be immediately hooked and read them all. —Tom Lutz

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Mr. Fox , by Helen Oyeyemi (June 1, 2011) Not since Angela Carter has a writer subverted classic fairy-tale tropes the way Helen Oyeyemi does, to transformative effect. Mr. Fox is perhaps the first brilliant work of romantic metafiction, a novel that tells the story of a few characters over and over again in pitch-perfect iterations that reveal volumes about love and loneliness and violence. Undeniably clever — but not so clever as to obscure the sentiment embedded in Oyeyemi’s shrewd structure — Mr. Fox has the brains and the heart to win over both those who enjoy unraveling how fiction works and those who just seek pure enjoyment. —Maris Kreizman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Lives Other Than My Own , by Emmanuel Carrère (September 13, 2011) The sui-generis French author of fiction, nonfiction, and works that bridge the two has published many excellent books, among them the true-crime account The Adversary (2000) and The Kingdom (2014). My favorite by a nose is Lives Other Than My Own , a book that defies tidy summary, but which, though preoccupied with the very saddest human experiences — the deaths of a young child and a sibling — is also believably a book about happiness, one which earns its happy ending. —Wyatt Mason

DISSENT: The Kingdom (August 29, 2014) I left the Catholic Church at 13 and have not spent much time thinking about religion since then. But this book kept me pinned to its pages until the end. It is personal and rigorous, skeptical and open, casual and profound, and its speculative portrait of Saint Luke is as compelling as any fictional life I’ve read lately. —Luc Sante

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Zone One , by Colson Whitehead (October 6, 2011) In a century marked by the erosion of the high-low divide that once separated “literature” from genre fiction, Zone One is the exemplary hybrid, the paragon of what each mode offers the other. Whitehead’s post-apocalyptic experiment — a zombie novel that’s also a 9/11 meditation that’s also a cultural satire — delivers both moving psychological realism and satisfying gore. (The moment when hero Mark Spitz discovers his undead mother feasting on his dad’s corpse will stay with me until the day a zombie chows down on mine.) Whitehead has written terrific novels that more directly address the horrors of American history, but never one that more accurately portrays the horrors of the American present. —Dan Kois

DISSENT: Sag Harbor (April 28, 2009) This thoroughly uneventful but linguistically dazzling autobiographical account of an upper-middle-class black holiday enclave accomplishes what very few books attempt: to remove the contemporary black experience from the realm of extremes. Unlike the more zeitgeisty Underground Railroad , this is neither a lament about subjugation nor a tale of individual escape. It neither denies the persistence of racism nor revels in the lingering wound. In this book as in real life, anti-blackness is but a single facet of the black experience. It is genuinely fresh. —Thomas Chatterton Williams

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Gone Girl , by Gillian Flynn (May 24, 2012) Six years, a film adaptation, and many, many imitators later, it can be difficult to recall why Flynn’s third thriller was such a genre game-changer. But I’ll never forget how loudly I gasped at the now-infamous mid-novel narrative twist, as audacious as Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (both of these play fair with the reader, by the way). Flynn’s writing, always Ginsu-sharp, leveled up here, especially on the stress of a marriage under strain in the wake of 2008’s economic collapse. We’re playing by Gone Girl rules now. —Sarah Weinman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

NW , by Zadie Smith (August 27, 2012) Zadie Smith is maybe the most important British novelist of the 21st century (yeah, I said it). She unpacks layered cultural identities in the tradition of Dickens, Eliot, and Austen. If Smith was in E.M. Forster mode in the wonderful On Beauty , she went full Virginia Woolf in NW , her fourth and maybe her best novel, undertaking a Mrs . Dalloway– esque journey through London. NW is not only about the intersecting lives of characters who grew up together in a Northwest London housing project, but also leveraging the complexity of the modernist project to ask difficult questions about race and social status. —Alice Bolin

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

White Girls , by Hilton Als (January 1, 2013) En route to the airport, I ask one of my boyfriends to tell me, in his own words, why White Girls belongs here. As it happens, the boyfriend has, stored on his phone, favorite lines from the book. Here are some: “Other people are always our parents.” “I cannot bear to imagine unraveling my mother, her hair, her retribution.” “Nowadays, no one leaves the house without some kind of script.” “I’d like to fuck some truth into Suicide Bitch, if I could get it up.” “We hate white girls because we are white girls and that’s what white girls do.” —David Velasco

My Struggle: A Man in Love, by Karl Ove Knausgaard

My Struggle: A Man in Love , by Karl Ove Knausgaard (May 13, 2013) What was it about this thoroughly Gen-X Norwegian man that caused so many readers to plunge into his struggle — an epic stretching over nearly 4,000 pages — as if it were their own? Was it the agony of his relationship with his alcoholic father? Was it the tribulations of parenthood, so many hours at kiddie parties and not the writing desk? Or was it the passion that seized him when he first met his future second wife and cut up his face when she rejected him? With its digressions within digressions, A Man in Love — book two of My Struggle — is the most formally thrilling in the series. In its pathetic way, it’s also the funniest. —Christian Lorentzen

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The Goldfinch , by Donna Tartt (September 23, 2013) Tartt seems to have inhaled the complete works of Charles Dickens and magically exhaled them into a thoroughly original narrative that reinvents the old-fashioned social novel, while capturing our anxious post-9/11 age with uncommon fervor and precision. Like Great Expectations, it concerns the sentimental education of an orphan as well as a mysterious benefactor. The story takes young Theo from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a bomb kills his mother, to sojourns in Las Vegas and Amsterdam and dangerous encounters with drug dealers, mobsters, and other sinister types. In the hands of a lesser novelist, such developments might feel contrived, but Tartt writes with such authority and verve and understanding of character that her story becomes just as persuasive as it is suspenseful. —Michiko Kakutani

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Dept. of Speculation , by Jenny Offill (January 28, 2014) If the novel exists to help readers reconcile themselves to the disappointments of adulthood, Dept. of Speculation ranks up there with Balzac’s Lost Illusions . Its narrator is a type relatively new in literature — a female writer who is also a mother. (The book is written in fragments, reflecting the temporality of motherhood and depression, that are alternately wry, bereft, tender, furious, despairing, and joyful.) Before having a baby, she had dreamed of being an “art monster.” But this book is proof that great art does not require a spouse who licks your stamps. It requires only what Offill possesses in abundance, and what her narrator knows is the highest wisdom: “attention.” —Christine Smallwood

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All My Puny Sorrows , by Miriam Toews (April 11, 2014) There have been bigger, splashier novels featuring suicidal characters published in the 21st century, but none so resonant as Toews’s stunner — the story of two sisters, one of whom is kind of miserable while the other is accomplished, talented, and determined to kill herself. A profoundly tender love story about deep despair, Sorrows also brims with jokes that are real and plentiful and well-earned, as well as a keen sense of what joy looks like even in the darkest of times. —Maris Kreizman

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Citizen: An American Lyric , by Claudia Rankine (October 7, 2014) Rankine’s compilation of lyric poems, micro-essays, snatches of cultural commentary, and startlingly direct descriptions of her everyday experiences as a black woman became the essential literary complement to Black Lives Matter and probably the most important work of American poetry in the 21st century. Fiercely eccentric, refusing any easy resolutions, Citizen ’s success represents a redefinition of the conventions of American literature. —Jess Row

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consent not to be a single being , by Fred Moten (2017–2018) At a time when both theory and criticism are frequently and convincingly attacked as exhausted forms, Moten’s trilogy has reinvented both. Reading hip-hop and jazz musicians through and against philosophers and visual artists, he interrogates aesthetic, political, and social phenomena through analyses of blackness. He offers a profusion of arguments and deconstructions to create a coherence that nonetheless remains open to active reading and interpretation. In its mixture of theoretical complexity and disarming directness, Moten’s beautifully written trilogy offers the sheer pleasure of art. —Lidija Haas

The Rest of the (Premature, Debatable, Arbitrary, But Still Illuminating) Canon

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay , by Michael Chabon (September 19, 2000) The star creation of the comic-book whiz kids Joe Kavalier and Sammy Klayman is the Escapist, a superhero cloaked in a midnight-blue costume emblazoned with a golden key. The Escapist lacks physical might, but like the novel, he possesses a shrewd intelligence, courage, and an insatiable appetite for adventure. As Clay puts it, the Escapist doesn’t just fight crime, “he frees the world of it. He frees people, see?” In this novel of Houdinis, femme fatales, and comic book villains (including Adolf Hitler) — a novel about the American genius for self-invention, in all its glorious and hideous manifestations — Michael Chabon proves that the strongest superpower of all is the ability to tell a great story. —Nathaniel Rich

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The Amber Spyglass , by Philip Pullman (October 10, 2000) The concluding volume of Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy takes its teenaged heroes, Lyra and Will, across universes, up to heaven, and deep into the shadowlands of the dead. But intertwined with their epic tale is the quiet, odd story of physicist Mary Malone, one of the greatest of Pullman’s creations, who uses the rational tools of the scientist to untangle the trilogy’s cosmological mysteries. The Harry Potter series may have launched children’s books into the commercial stratosphere, but it was this book — a stew of Milton and Blake, rich with allusion, kind and fierce — that made clear the imaginative and literary heights to which books for young people could ascend. And the ending: Oh! The ending! My heart breaks again just thinking of it. —Dan Kois

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True History of the Kelly Gang , by Peter Carey (January 9, 2001) There isn’t a novelist alive shy of Toni Morrison who can forge sprung poetry from the speech of mere mortals quite like Carey. In True History of the Kelly Gang , which won him a second Booker Prize in 2001, he conjured the clang and twang of Australia’s infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, telling his life story from beyond the grave to a daughter he left behind. Here’s all the adventure of robbing banks to give to the poor, but also the shame and rage of a convict long gone turned into eternal narrative. An ecstatic and furious book. —John Freeman

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The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos , by Anne Carson (February 6, 2001) Among the most immediate, most poignant, and funniest of Carson’s works, Beauty tells the story of a marriage to a vampiric, manipulative narcissist, and explores some of her favorite themes: frustration over what cannot be understood or communicated; power struggles enacted through language; erotic longing. The sharp, fragmentary collision of essay, poetry, fiction, and memoir is arguably becoming a dominant form in 21st-century literature so far, and Carson created a compelling template for it that won’t be easily surpassed. —Lidija Haas

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The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse , by Louise Erdrich (April 3, 2001) In our age of fake presidents and wished-for miracles, I’ve begun to long for a rediscovery of Erdrich’s novel. The book tells the tale of Father Damien, a woman who for 50 years disguises herself as a man so she can serve an Ojibwe congregation. Damien’s anguished, searching voice is the book’s oaken rudder, as she steers through currents of moral dilemma. Is a lie a sin if it preserves her work? Should she instigate against a false prophet, or dedicate herself to highlighting humans’ capacity for good? Perhaps the last question is eternal, but Erdrich makes it feel freshly so. —John Freeman

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Austerlitz , by W.G. Sebald (October 2, 2001) Austerlitz bears all of Sebald’s hallmarks: a saturnine narrator, a love of archives and depositories, and a series of chance encounters with someone who has a story to tell. That someone, Jacques Austerlitz, was brought to England aboard a kindertransport as an infant, and he is in the process of recovering the truth about his parents — he first learns that his mother, an opera singer, was killed at Theresienstadt. The sweep of European cultural history is laid out like an enormous map in order to precisely locate the circumstances of the crime. The sentences are long, the paragraphs cyclopean, the pacing leisurely, and yet it’s all hypnotically gripping. —Luc Sante

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Fingersmith , by Sarah Waters (February 4, 2002) You know a twist is coming. About ten million friends have hinted about the twist. “You haven’t read Fingersmith ?” they said. “Oh man, that twist.” But it doesn’t matter that you know the twist is coming because when it arrives in this page-turner about a shifty ladies’ maid and her neurotic, beautiful lady, you will still cackle with glee. I myself threw the book to the ground, shouting, “Holy shit!” You have never had a reading experience quite as propulsive and enjoyable as barreling through Sarah Waters’s sordid, sexy saga of swindlers and smut-peddlers screwing each other all across Victorian England. —Dan Kois

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The Time of Our Singing , by Richard Powers (October 3, 2002) Powers revisits the civil rights struggles of the last century from an unexpected angle, illuminating some of the deepest rifts and tensions in American life via an often exhilarating meditation on time and music. The novel follows a German Jewish physicist; his African-American wife, whose ambitions as a singer are thwarted early; and their children, two of whom become classical musicians. Few writers have captured the experience of listening to music the way Powers does, and his evocations of historical events have the same vividness. The book’s scope and grandeur make clear that the realist novel can still embody ideas as few other forms can. —Lidija Haas

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The Book of Salt , by Monique Truong (April 7, 2003) Based on a passing reference to a Vietnamese cook in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, Truong’s first novel reimagines the domestic life of Gertrude Stein and Toklas through the eyes of Binh, whose rich and caustic voice makes him one of the great fictional narrators of the last quarter-century. It’s a miraculous paradox — a novel that lovingly reproduces the atmosphere of European modernism in order to reveal its racist and imperialist underpinnings. —Jess Row

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Mortals , by Norman Rush (May 27, 2003) A novel of adultery and conspiracy, of Americans in Africa on the morning after the end of the Cold War, Mortals follows a CIA agent (and Milton scholar) in Botswana in 1992. Rush is the most politically committed and engaged of contemporary American novelists, and Mortals is the most sustained and well-informed fictional account of U.S. meddling in countries that rarely feature in our headlines. The human story of a faltering marriage merges with the geopolitical in the form of a boiling civil conflict. Rush is Joseph Conrad’s heir in the era of globalization. —Christian Lorentzen

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Home Land , by Sam Lipsyte (February 16, 2004) What would a Gen-X Notes from Underground look like? In Lipsyte’s version, it comes in the form of letters written to a high-school alumni newspaper, confessing to the nightmare of the American meritocracy: “I did not pan out.” Lipsyte’s Underground Man has a name and a nickname, both of which mark him as pathetic. Lewis “Teabag” Miner is the embodiment of the loser under late capitalism. Location: New Jersey, a place just across the river from the precincts of power, but in fact a wasteland of strip malls, fast food, dive bars, and work-from-home content-generation jobs. Teabag has graduated into a world of bullshit, and what he has to tell his high-school classmates is that they were living in a land of bullshit all along. —Christian Lorentzen

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Oblivion , by David Foster Wallace (June 8, 2004) Oblivion was the final book of fiction Wallace published before his life was cut short by suicide. Although a great writer of nonfiction, Wallace’s idea of fiction was of another order of magnitude. As Oblivion showcases, one of the things that made Wallace so necessary was his insistence on formal inventiveness: None of the eight stories in Oblivion resembles any other, each a kind of experiment that never has the whiff of the lab. Rather, these stories attempt to find new ways of getting at the deep, dark difficulty of being a modern human, a predicament so funny it could make you weep, as these stories themselves are likely to make you do: in rage, in sorrow, in gratitude. —Wyatt Mason

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Honored Guest , by Joy Williams (October 5, 2004) Joy Williams is one of the contemporary masters of the American short story, and her 2004 collection Honored Guest finds her at her most bizarre and profound. It is easy to be wrapped up in Williams’s sentences, in lines of dialogue like, “‘I’m Priscilla Dickman and I’m an ex-agoraphobic. Can I buy you a drink?’” But Honored Guest is much more than its delightful surface. These are stories of lonely characters on the rim of tragedy — a girl living with her terminally ill mother, a woman whose boyfriend is gravely injured in a hunting accident — probing the eternal with hilarious detachment and moving, sorrowful confusion. —Alice Bolin

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Suite Française , by Irène Némirovsky (October 31, 2004) Enough time has passed that the astounding story of this posthumous, unfinished novel — which Némirovsky wrote in secret in Nazi-occupied France and was discovered by her daughters six decades after she was killed at Auschwitz — can cede center stage to the book itself. And what a marvel Suite Française is, an incisive, heartbreaking portrait of a small French town under seige, and the people trying to survive, even to live, as Hitler’s horrors march closer and closer to their doors. Even incomplete, it’s a masterpiece of observation and character study, a standout of Holocaust literature. —Sarah Weinman

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The Sluts , by Dennis Cooper (January 13, 2005) Once upon a time, in the prelude to the plague years, gay male desire invented its most mesmeric and unbearable object: the twink. Blond, white, underweight, and user-friendly, he was a plastic icon of inverted, Aryan masculinity. As AIDS destroyed a population, as the internet quickened and anarchized our pornographies, the twink took off. Dennis Cooper hit this crepuscular intersection of web and death with effortless genius. A series of online rent-boy reviews describe the discovery, torture, and maybe murder of a barely-legal, no-limits hustler named Brad. Call it the twink cri de coeur — all surface, and so, perversely impenetrable. It is a dangerous fantasia, slipping so easily into the mouths and minds of homophobes. But go ahead, let them taste it. They want it as much as anyone. —David Velasco

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Voices From Chernobyl , by Svetlana Alexievich (June 28, 2005) The Belarusian Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize in 2015, ostensibly trades in oral history. Her books do not, however, bear much resemblance to the form as it is usually practiced. Here the accounts of witnesses and victims are orchestrated, arranged in counterpoint and as fugues and descants, with purposeful ellipses and repetitions, and edited to make every voice sound like a poet. Alexievich is clear about the extent to which she reshapes her material, and her books are only nominally about facts — they are concerned with impressions and feelings, and they remain in your ear long after you’ve turned the last page. —Luc Sante

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Magic for Beginners , by Kelly Link (July 1, 2005) Any collection of Kelly Link’s stories will do. They shimmer in the borderlands of myth, genre, and literature. A convenience store caters to the mild-mannered zombies who emerge from a nearby gorge and clumsily attempt to shop. A group of teenagers bond over an elusive TV series. A suburban family becomes slowly and methodically alienated from every possession they own. Link’s stories can make you shudder, then laugh, then feel like a god has just walked past your window. —Laura Miller

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The Afterlife , by Donald Antrim (May 30, 2006) A book of fierce love and heartbreaking shame, Antrim’s memoir of his mother, written in the wake of her death from lung cancer, was a radical departure from his wild comic novels of the 1990s. It was also an artistic breakthrough. Antrim’s mother was an alcoholic. Her marriage to his father, an English professor who left her for another woman and returned years later, was happy in neither of its incarnations. The emotions in this book are raw, the writing exquisite, and the family pain shattering. —Christian Lorentzen

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Winter’s Bone , by Daniel Woodrell (August 7, 2006) Can a film adaptation be too good? I worry that Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout performance in the 2010 film has overshadowed this outstanding novel, which features what one critic called “the character of a lifetime.” The story of 16-year-old Ree Dolly trying to save her Ozark family is at once intimate and mythic. Woodrell’s language has a spiky beauty, he also uses localisms carefully. His depictions of violence are first-rate, vivid, and essential to the story. Oh, and it’s a glancing look at the methamphetamine scourge, largely forgotten but far from gone as the country now focuses on opioids. —Laura Lippman

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Wizard of the Crow , by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (August 8, 2006) Thiong’o, often talked about as a Nobel Prize contender, was among the first celebrated post-independence African writers, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. Imprisoned and then exiled from Kenya, he has been writing his memoirs and is now on his fourth volume. Wizard of the Crow , a fantastic (in all senses of the word) novel written in his native Kikuyu, is his masterpiece, published when he was 68. No novel has ever so profoundly mixed oral tradition, novelistic gamesmanship, serious political critique, literary meta-analysis, and every genre under the sun, from farce to tragedy. —Tom Lutz

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American Genius, A Comedy , by Lynne Tillman (September 25, 2006) A modernist adventure for a new century: You spend the novel roaming around inside the mind of a woman who has taken refuge in a Magic Mountain–style sanatorium-cum–artists’ colony. Her compulsive digressions and recurring preoccupations mostly take the place of a conventional plot, and Tillman’s beautifully constructed sentences create their own propulsion, able to take a reader in any direction at any moment. From the opening pages, a singular consciousness emerges, both porous and radically isolated, and by stripping out most other elements, the book confirms the ultimate primacy of literary voice, of which this is a rare triumph. —Lidija Haas

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Eat the Document , by Dana Spiotta (November 28, 2006) If Don DeLillo is a sage of 20th-century American politics and popular culture, Dana Spiotta is the author who has carried the torch into the 21st. Her prose is as catchy and melodic as the music she describes in so many of her novels with the insight of a rock critic, and her fiction often illuminates the way we distort our memories. Eat the Document is the story of a woman who goes underground in the 1970s after participating in violence with a radical group, and her son who uncovers her past in the 1990s, when the ideals of the leftist movement have been romanticized and perverted. —Maris Kreizman

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The Harry Potter novels, by J.K. Rowling (1997–2007) With her seven Harry Potter novels, J.K. Rowling has created a fictional world as fully imagined as Oz or Narnia or Middle Earth. Each volume grows progressively darker, and as more responsibilities are heaped on Harry’s shoulders, the Boy Who Lived becomes the leader of the Resistance. Grounding his story in the mundane Muggle world, with its ordinary frustrations and challenges, even as she conjures a wildly inventive magical realm, Rowling has crafted an epic that transcends its classical sources as effortlessly as it leapfrogs conventional genres. In doing so, she created a series of books that have captivated both children and adults — novels that hold a mirror to our own mortal world as it lurches into the uncertainties of the 21st century. —Michiko Kakutani

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Sleeping It Off in Rapid City , by August Kleinzahler (April 1, 2008) August Kleinzahler is such a good poet, such a master of English vernaculars and a variety of modernisms, with such a gift for observational detail, that I think he gets overlooked or underpraised, partly for his consistency. Sleeping It Off in Rapid City is one of the great collections of American poetry, from the opening title poem, which exudes the bleak vastness and kitsch of midwestern landscapes, to the various blues lyrics and seemingly offhand evocations of San Francisco weather, as classical as the Tang Dynasty greats they recall. —Nikil Saval

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The White Tiger , by Aravind Adiga (April 22, 2008) The White Tiger promised “you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious 21st century of man,” launching a relentless attack on the myth of a “new” capitalism, and not just in India. Adiga’s comic monologue and many-voiced testament follows Balram Halwai, naïve servant and caged spirit, to the climactic “act of entrepreneurship”: braining his master with an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Black in Delhi, then stealing his bag of politicians’ bribes to conquer the tech world of Bangalore. Spiritually the equal of Wright’s Native Son and Balzac’s Père Goriot , this Booker Prize–winning debut was how a major writer announced himself — in fury. —Mark Greif

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The Lazarus Project , by Aleksandar Hemon (May 1, 2008) A fictional Bosnian writer (and Hemon doppelgänger of sorts) travels to Eastern Europe to retrace the footsteps of Lazarus Averbuch, a Jewish immigrant who survived a pogrom only to be gunned down in the home of Chicago’s police chief in 1908, while in alternating chapters Averbuch’s story unspools. Hemon transmogrifies the smallest details into strangely vivid prose: Gunsmoke moves slowly “like a school of fish” while a character hears “straw crepitating” in her pillow. Hemon’s verbal effects accumulate into a haunting portrait of immigrant life. Hemon is Nabokov’s heir, in a more perilous time for American newcomers. —Edward Hart

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Home , by Marilynne Robinson (September 2, 2008) Grace suffuses this novel, and not just its prose. Twenty-four years after her debut, the magnificent Housekeeping , Robinson returned to fiction with Gilead , winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. But its sequel, Home , is the more sublime realization of her vasts gifts, the masterpiece of what’s so far a trilogy (Robinson’s Lila appeared in 2014). A retelling of the prodigal-son parable set in 1950s Iowa, Home is also something rare in American literature these days: a meditation on Christian transfiguration. It derives its power from family pain and the radical nature of forgiveness. —Christian Lorentzen

DISSENT: Gilead (November 4, 2004) Marilynne Robinson’s writing through the lens of religious faith can make even the most unspiritual reader feel blessed. Yes, both Home and Gilead are set within the same time and place, but I’m loyal to the latter because it came out first — and the first discovery of grace is the most thrilling. —Maris Kreizman

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Fine Just the Way It Is , by Annie Proulx (September 9, 2008) The short story is often offered the kiddie table when seated beside the novel. Annie Proulx the novelist is and will remain one of America’s greatest, but here she elevates story to a category that tips over the word fiction . Proulx’s Wyoming is a brutal, raw life and landscape, characters battered and isolated; and she is so unafraid of the dark that these stories become like religious parables not just of a region or nation, but of existence. Add to that her pitch-black humor — she got the chuckles writing these gigantic stories. —Dagoberto Gilb

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Scenes From a Provincial Life: Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime , by J.M. Coetzee (1997–2009) In this autobiographical trilogy, Coetzee forged a clinical way of writing about the self and raised the meta stakes. Are these memoirs or novels? (The last one kills off the author, among other departures from the facts.) Boyhood presents a detached account of growing up an English-speaking Afrikaner in apartheid South Africa, a sickly boy with imaginings of greatness and a mounting sense of shame about his cruel society. Youth moves to London, where Coetzee worked as a programmer for IBM, and plumbs the anguish of the aspiring, exiled poet. The form is broken in Summertime , which combines diary fragments and a fictional biographer’s interviews of the dead writer’s acquaintances. The self-portrait that emerges from these (very funny) books is pitiless and unforgettable. —Christian Lorentzen

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Notes From No Man’s Land , by Eula Biss (February 3, 2009) Biss’s insanely good collection has been instrumental in fostering a new generation of essayists. She writes poignantly on racism, gentrification, home, and identity, probing the proximity of white and black in America. She also forges new styles for the personal essay, braiding literary quotations, academic research, ironic anecdotes, and scenes from her own life to construct arguments that are complex and profound. The medium is the message here: The title essay connects Laura Ingalls Wilder, a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, and swimming in Lake Michigan to understand the American fixation on — and fear of — borders and frontiers. —Alice Bolin

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Spreadeagle , by Kevin Killian (March 1, 2010) Killian is a poet as well as perhaps the most experienced society novelist of the gay demimonde since John Rechy, but Spreadeagle is like Rechy meets Robert Walser. It’s both comically droll and ardently, deeply noir. The plot feels kind of British fin de siècle — a menage involving a confused young art student and an older couple, one an activist and the other a gay pulp-novelist, all of whom collide with a pair of pornographers and drug dealers, the entirety taking place under the shadow of AIDS. It’s a quintessentially California novel as well as simply an occasion for Killian’s flawless poet’s ear to roll out for us pages of the most memorably dank, swift, and knowing gay dialogue I’ve ever read. —Eileen Myles

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Super Sad True Love Story , by Gary Shteyngart (July 27, 2010) Gary Shteyngart’s best novel (so far) virtually invented its own literary category — near-dystopian satire — and it has indeed proved shockingly accurate. It’s set in a future New York where the dollar is pegged to the Chinese yuan, inequality has transformed Central Park into a protest camp, and phone apps display your potential date’s credit score. But the real key to the novel is the hopeless relationship between its protagonists, Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park, whose relatively small age gap — Lenny is in his late 30s, Eunice her mid-20s — measures the difference between the last generation to grow up before the internet and the first generation to grow up saturated in it. —Jess Row

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Seven Years , by Peter Stamm (March 22, 2011) Whatever it is that flattens so much American MFA fiction is blissfully missing from this Swiss novelist’s haunting European realism. Seven Years employs strong and supple sentences evocative of Camus to tell the all-too-recognizable story of a successful man, Alex, who ought to be happily married to his beautiful and accomplished wife, Sonia, but is silently exploding. Through Stamm’s deft strokes of observation and insight, the bizarre affair Alex pursues with a woman who physically repulses him somehow seems not only plausible but revelatory — shedding light on the extent to which we can never really figure out another person or even, maybe, ourselves. —Thomas Chatterton Williams

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The Sense of an Ending , by Julian Barnes (August 4, 2011) This is an elegant, deceptively simple little novel, a quietly devastating, deftly plotted moral mystery that hinges on the unreliable juncture of memory, time, and history, with aging and remorse thrown in. Its title invites dual interpretations — the feeling that something has ended, and making sense of an ending. The story centers on a retired divorcé for whom an unexpected bequest leads to a reassessment of his memories and a painful recognition of how much he’d gotten wrong. “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” —Heller McAlpin

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1Q84 , by Haruki Murakami (October 25, 2011) Murakami’s magnum opus (though probably not his very best novel — I would still vote for The Wind-up Bird Chronicle ) brings together a haunting love story with the sinister manipulations of a personality cult not unlike Aum Shinrikyo. Like many writers of his generation, Murakami is preoccupied with the aftereffects of the 1960s, and though on the surface 1Q84 appears concerned with the mundane lives of disappointed and awkward lovers, the novel represents something like a Grand Unified Theory of Japanese life over four decades. —Jess Row

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The Gentrification of the Mind , by Sarah Schulman (January 7, 2012) Sarah Schulman is a first-class thinker who upholds our duty to preserve the marginal, the complicated history. This memoir maps out how the razing, via AIDS, of queer, diverse communities in New York and San Francisco paved the way for “urban transformations” that in fact led to suburbanized experiences and cramped intellectual lives. She protests sophistry and demonstrates the saneness of radical notions. When she points out that “very few children actually grow up to make the world a better place,” you may feel not only doubtful about reproducing, but also sorry you yourself were born. It’s unforgettable — which is the point. —Sarah Nicole Prickett

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Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , by Ben Fountain (May 1, 2012) No novel better captures the first decade of this century in a certain sector of America — pro-Bush, pro–Iraq War, pro–free-market capitalism, and steeped in evangelical Christianity and Fox News — than Fountain’s satire of heartland jingoism and the one-percenter cynicism that exploits it. It’s seen through the eyes of a young but increasingly disillusioned soldier being honored for heroism in a football stadium extravaganza. Both savagely funny and heartbreaking, Billy Lynn scrutinizes a facet of the American character that has since slid into an unsatirizable sump of excess, but like all great novelists, Fountain was able to locate the humanity in it all the same. —Laura Miller

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Capital , by John Lanchester (June 11, 2012) In a world where people write porny fan-fiction about the Property Brothers — no, seriously, they do — why aren’t there more great novels about real estate? Capital has a simple set-up, telling the interconnected stories of a single block in South London in 2008, where house prices are going up, up, up, and residents find themselves receiving mysterious postcards stating, “We Want What You Have.” Lanchester employs a bird’s-eye view that sweeps in for dazzling close-ups, then swoops out again, until you see not only the entirety of Pepys Road, but the city, the world — and the economy that’s crumbling under the weight of everyone’s aspirations. —Laura Lippman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The MaddAddam Trilogy ( Oryx and Crake , The Year of the Flood , and MaddAddam ), by Margaret Atwood (2003-2013) “Speculations about what the world would be like after human control of it ended had been — long ago, briefly — a queasy form of popular entertainment.” Queasy, yes, but exhilarating too. The human beings and humanoids of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy lose control of the natural world, then of themselves, in a bloody wonderland of mutant raccoons, endangered-species luxury couture, and ethereal beings with genitalia that turns blue at times of sexual arousal. But Atwood herself never loses control. The trilogy is the rare work of literature in which dread and joy exist in equal — and extreme — measure. —Nathaniel Rich

DISSENT: The Blind Assassin (September 2, 2000) She may be the queen of dystopia, but I have always been drawn to Atwood’s more realistic storytelling. In this novel, we get a little of both. It’s the literary equivalent of a Russian nesting doll, with layers of detective noir, sci-fi, and romance opening up to reveal the tiniest doll and the ultimate mystery — one of the heart. —Maris Kreizman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , by Anthony Marra (May 7, 2013) This extraordinary debut novel set in war-torn Chechnya is a feat of empathetic imagination. It makes a compelling case for what literature — and so-called cultural appropriation — can do to transcend our personal experience and reduce the blind spots in our lives. Tolstoyan in its ambition, breadth, and deep humanity, Marra’s portrait of a nation devastated by war — and of a terrified man who risks his life to save a young girl — is harrowing and heartrending, but also brightened by humor and transcendent hopefulness. Taking its title from a medical dictionary’s definition of life, the novel is a constellation of six interwoven points of view — all vital and phenomenally moving. —Heller McAlpin

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Taipei , by Tao Lin (June 4, 2013) Lin came to fame as a blogger and poet with a notoriously blank style. His was the language of the digital native, and when he started writing novels, his detractors saw his attempts to turn the vernacular of the internet into literature as a sort of fraud. With Taipei , his fifth work of fiction, his style evolved into something undeniably sophisticated and often beautiful; he translated the consciousness of a life lived largely online into a new way of describing the world IRL, as mediated by an almost relentless (and relentlessly quantified) intake of pills and powders. One of the book’s central repeated images is a crucial image for our times: the narrator lying on his back and dropping his phone on his own face. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Men We Reaped , by Jesmyn Ward (September 17, 2013) Yes, I rate Jesmyn Ward’s 2013 memoir above her two novels, Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing , that won National Book Awards. It’s that good, that important. Well into its third century, the United States has yet to reckon with the death rate of young African-American men, an epidemic hiding in plain sight. Ward, who lost five family members and friends in a four-year span, harnesses her incandescent prose to make a deeply personal story universal. Part of the book’s genius is its nonlinear structure; her peripatetic journey amplifies the doggedness of grief and rage. —Laura Lippman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Family Life , by Akhil Sharma (April 7, 2014) Shortly after the Mishra family emigrates from Delhi to Queens, their older son dives into a swimming pool and becomes brain dead. The narrator is a young child when the accident occurs, and must navigate the embarrassments of being a recent immigrant as well as the grief that deforms his family. Sharma possesses a rare understanding of psychology and an unsentimental, bleakly comic sensibility. (“You’re sad?” the father says. “I want to hang myself every day.”) Every detail has been burnished and floats precipitously over depths of feeling, while the plot zooms ahead. The point is not to wring meaning out of suffering — Sharma never does — but to bear witness to it. —Christine Smallwood

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

How to Be Both , by Ali Smith (August 28, 2014) Scottish writer Ali Smith’s furious yet-to-be-completed seasonal quartet may turn out to be her crowning achievement, but its predecessor, How to Be Both , stands out for its ingeniousness and heart. There’s more than meets the eye in this structurally innovative, two-part novel that encompasses a mother-daughter relationship truncated by unexpected death, a gender-bending Renaissance artist, and a moving exploration of time, mortality, and the consolations of unconventional love, friendship, and art. Smith’s literary double-take models how to be both complex and inviting, linguistically playful and dead serious, mournful and joyous, brainy and tender. —Heller McAlpin

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Brief History of Seven Killings , by Marlon James (October 2, 2014) A Brief History is a sweltering chorus of voices, all constellating around the Jamaican musician Bob Marley and an attempt to assassinate him in 1976. James is a brilliant ventriloquist, whether speaking through an angry young woman, a feckless gangster, or a jaded American spy. Like Père Goriot and Our Mutual Friend , this is one of the great city novels, even if not all of it is set in Kingston. It makes the city rise in the reader’s imagination like a leviathan conjured out of talent, desperation, desire, grief, and an unstoppable life force. —Laura Miller

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Preparation for the Next Life , by Atticus Lish (November 11, 2014) America’s brutal wars and the inhumanity of its immigration policies come together in this novel, but its real achievement is a transformative vision of New York City. Seen through the eyes of an immigrant from Western China and a traumatized American veteran, the city, especially Queens, comes to seem less the glistening metropolis of the Bloomberg imaginary than a brick-and-mortar wasteland constantly encroached by dust and weeds but possessed of its own strange beauty. It’s a beauty these two still perceive in the face of poverty, hunger, violence, and fear of incarceration because theirs is also a love story. And that may be the most radical thing about Lish’s magnificent novel. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Sympathizer , by Viet Thanh Nguyen (April 7, 2015) Viet Thanh Nguyen’s recent first novel comes after a career as a leading scholar of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian culture. It is part thriller, part the “Empire Writing Back,” part revenge tragedy, part screed against Apocalypse Now , and the best novel about the Vietnamese diaspora. The form — a series of confessions forced on the narrator by his shadowy prison warden — turns his stories from self-revelation to more complex utterances, adding a level of second-guessing for readers. An exquisite examination of the psyche under duress. —Tom Lutz

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Light of the World , by Elizabeth Alexander (April 21, 2015) After her husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus, dies unexpectedly just days after turning 50, poet and essayist Alexander writes, “Now, I know for sure the soul is an evanescent thing and the body is its temporary container, because I saw it. I saw the body with the soul in it, I saw the body with the soul leaving it, and I saw the body with the soul gone.” In this exquisite account of marriage and widowhood, written with the magical simplicity of a fairy tale, Alexander meditates on her husband’s life as a refugee, an immigrant, an artist, an African man, a father, a son, a husband. —Kate Tuttle

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Broken Earth trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin (2015-2017) Jemisin, the first black writer to win sci-fi’s prestigious Hugo Award for best novel, made history again last month, becoming the first author ever to win the prize for each book in a trilogy. Her Broken Earth series, about a warring mother and daughter who each possess the power to incite, or quell, a world-destroying earthquake, is about institutional racism, climate change, and the terrible things the powerful will do to stay powerful. If that sounds a little too close to home, take heart: You’ve never been anywhere quite like the Stillness, a continent scattered with floating crystal obelisks and people who eat stone. Beautifully written, with epic magical battles and earthquakes, these books are literally groundbreaking. —Lila Shapiro

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

What Belongs to You , by Garth Greenwell (January 19, 2016) One of the most exquisite prose performances of the past decade, Greenwell’s first novel partakes in autofiction and the novel of trauma, and his writing about sex eschews the transgressive in favor of an elegiac mode. An American teacher of high school English in Sofia, Bulgaria, narrates a passionate affair with a young man he met in a public toilet. A phone call informs him that, back in Kentucky, his estranged father is dying, prompting a dreamlike series of memories that return him to the awakening of his sexuality in the homophobic heartland. Greenwell is a poet, and his sinuous sentences seem to come from another time. Since it can’t be the past, it must be the future. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Collected Essays & Memoirs (Library of America edition), by Albert Murray (October 18, 2016) Murray — renaissance man, blues philosopher, resolute non-victim — was almost criminally overlooked in the previous century. Perhaps this was because he was constitutionally incapable of suffering fools of any complexion and insisted on pointing out the most elemental truths: “The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of multicolored people,” Murray notes in his masterpiece, The Omni-Americans . We are in desperate need of such lucidity. If the arc of the intellectual universe also bends towards justice, then the Library of America’s canonization will resituate Murray alongside contemporaries James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. —Thomas Chatterton Williams

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Needle’s Eye , by Fanny Howe (November 1, 2016) Fanny Howe is a poet, a novelist, a memoirist, and one of America’s deepest, most whimsical and emotionally grounded writers. Here she takes the energy of a song like Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” (“There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy …”) and guides us into a meditation on youth and its proclivity to wander and find itself. Moving on that tack, she animates the story of the Boston bombers, two Kyrgyz -Americans whose fraught road to self-knowledge took a turn that killed three people and seriously maimed more than a dozen. It’s a tiny masterpiece, this book, and a gloriously weird read. —Eileen Myles

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ghachar Ghochar , by Vivek Shanbhag (February 7, 2017) Written with an economy of means — on just over 100 pages — that puts most nation-spanning epics to shame, Ghachar Ghochar conjures a South Indian family transformed by money in a narrative voice at once inimitable, funny, and filled with dread. The level of effortless glancing detail with which it draws minor characters — like a waiter in a Bangalore coffee house who acts as everyone’s therapist — is extraordinary. That it is one of the few novels translated (beautifully) from Kannada, a language spoken by millions and with its own literary tradition, to be published in the United States says a lot about our literary world’s myopia when it comes to the Indian novel. —Nikil Saval

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Hate U Give , by Angie Thomas (February 28, 2017) No crossover novel has proven the vitality of YA fiction as an art form more than Angie Thomas’s debut about one teenage girl’s entry into the Black Lives Matter movement. Taking its name from a Tupac Shakur acronym about the ills of systemic racism, The Hate U Give , or, THUG , explores the consequences of police violence against young men of color with more nuance, charm, and levity than you might imagine possible . THUG doesn’t offer easy answers, nor does it portray any of its diverse cast in binary terms, and the fact that it’s been banned in areas of the U.S. just shows how much it has hit a nerve. —Maris Kreizman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

All Grown Up , by Jami Attenberg (March 7, 2017) One of the toughest bars to clear in fiction is the novel of connected stories, beautiful parts that add up to a gorgeous whole — and Jami Attenberg soared over it with her sixth book. The protagonist, Andrea, is a person who happens to be a woman who happens to be single who happens to live in Brooklyn. “Why is being single the only thing people think of when they think of me?” Andrea asks her therapist, who instructs her to list the other things she is. “In my head I think: I’m alone. I’m a drinker. I’m a former artist. I’m a shrieker in bed. I’m the captain of the sinking ship that is my flesh. To my therapist I say, ‘I’m a brunette.’” It’s the kind of novel I keep handy, like a pocket flask, taking little nips to get me through the day. —Laura Lippman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir , by Thi Bui (March 7, 2017) “How much of ME is my own and how much is stamped into my blood and bone, predestined?” Posed at the end of Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, this is the persistent, yearning question underlying this quietly heartbreaking book. Thi Bui chronicles her family’s journey from Vietnam to America, as well as her own transformation from daughter to mother. Stunningly self-assured, this is epic, intimate history rendered in understated words and images. —Kate Tuttle

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Tell Me How it Ends , by Valeria Luiselli (March 13, 2017) This extraordinary little book is a powerful glimpse of how we extract stories in exchange for safety and belonging in America today. As a volunteer interpreter for migrant children fleeing poverty and violence, Luiselli describes 6- and 7-year-olds asked to perform and interpret their pain for an immigration system that sees a hard border—a border where, for most of Luiselli’s clients, the troubles have just begun. Cycling between her own life in the U.S. as a semi-documented American and mother, the lives of children she helps, and the questionnaire, Luiselli has woven an essential moral text for an age of migration. —John Freeman

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Priestdaddy , by Patricia Lockwood (May 2, 2017) This poet’s memoir is the story of Lockwood’s adult return home when her husband temporarily loses his sight and the couple can no longer pay the rent. They are hipsters exiled to the heartland. Lockwood’s father is a clergyman and a conservative, but the resemblance to his bohemian poet daughter is unmistakable. The family dog is named Whimsy. Priestdaddy is the funniest book yet written about millennial–boomer culture clash. It is also moving in its accounts of Lockwood’s loss of faith, her teenage suicide attempt, and the pain that came with giving up her first love — singing — and then rediscovering herself as a writer. —Christian Lorentzen

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Red Clocks , by Leni Zumas (January 16, 2018) This book follows a handful of female narrators in the Northwest in a future only slightly pushed from now (except for one, a polar explorer who is the biographical subject of one of the narrators) and, in prose that tingles with life and perversity and research and attitude and authenticity, brings them all to life. It’s political speculative fiction in an America where women have lost rights over their bodies and go to Canada to get abortions, crossing what’s come to be known as “the Pink Wall.” It’s brilliant stuff, and the woods surrounding the witchy herbalist character are both glittering and informed. To read this is to feel Leni Zumas knows everything. —Eileen Myles

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden , by Denis Johnson (January 16, 2018) Once upon a time a hard-living man, Johnson didn’t survive to see the publication of his final collection of stories, but it’s the near equal and spiritual cousin of his immortal Jesus’ Son . These stories flash through unforgettable images (notably a woman leaning in to kiss an amputee veteran’s stump) of men and women wounded by their own wildness. The beauty in Johnson’s stories is the beauty of the broken wing. Elvis and 9/11, junk and jail, hangovers and halfway houses — Johnson was a searcher in a lowlife America that’s largely vanished from our literature. —Christian Lorentzen

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Asymmetry , by Lisa Halliday (February 6, 2018) On one hand, it would be unfair to consider Asymmetry only through the lens of Philip Roth. Lisa Halliday’s debut novel is bracing and brilliant entirely on its own terms, engrossing as a coming-of-age story and astute in exploring the project of fiction. On the other hand, not to consider it also through the lens of Philip Roth — who was once involved with Halliday and maps readily onto the novel’s Ezra Blazer — is to ignore a clue to what makes Asymmetry so exhilarating. Halliday considers the 20th-century canon from an intimate vantage: She sees not some abstract patriarchy but the patriarchs themselves, with their bypass scars and their tired pick-up lines. She demonstrates that power is never as simple as the familiar binaries of “privilege” might lead you to believe, at least not when it comes to art. —Molly Fischer

Contributors

Alice Bolin , essayist Sloane Crosley , author, most recently of Look Alive Out There Molly Fischer , senior editor, the Cut John Freeman , author, editor of Freeman’s Dagoberto Gilb , author of several short-story collections Mark Greif , author, Against Everything Lidija Haas , New Books columnist, Harper’s Edward Hart , senior editor, New York Michiko Kakutani , former chief book critic, the New York Times Hillary Kelly , critic and essayist Dan Kois , editor of the Slate Book Review Maris Kreizman , book critic and essayist Laura Lippman , crime novelist Christian Lorentzen , book critic, New York Tom Lutz , editor-in-chief, Los Angeles Review of Books Wyatt Mason , contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine Heller McAlpin , book reviewer for the Washington Post , NPR, and others Laura Miller , books and culture columnist, Slate Eileen Myles , poet Sarah Nicole Prickett , critic for Artforum , Bookforum , et al. Nathaniel Rich , author, most recently, of King Zeno Jess Row , novelist and critic Luc Sante , critic and author of Low Life Nikil Saval , co-editor, n+1 Lila Shapiro , culture journalist Christine Smallwood , critic and writer Adam Sternbergh , contributing editor, New York Kate Tuttle , president, National Book Critics Circle David Velasco , editor-in-chief, Artforum Oscar Villalon , editor and critic Sarah Weinman , author, The Real Lolita Thomas Chatterton Williams , contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine

Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy an item through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission.

*A version of this article appears in the September 17, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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100 Best 21st Century Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best 21st century books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

Suzanne Collins | 5.00

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bill Gates [On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Robert Muchamore A brutal, exciting, action-based sci-fi novel. Hugely popular and excellent fun. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)

J. K. Rowling | 4.97

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Shami Chakrabarti It’s all about the War on Terror as far as I’m concerned. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)

J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré | 4.94

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)

J.K. Rowling | 4.94

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4)

J.K. Rowling | 4.90

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Big Structural Change @siriusclaw Azkaban ftw! Goblet is the worst of the series. Great book though. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green | 4.86

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Elon Musk Must admit to liking [this book]. Sad, romantic and beautifully named. (Source)

James Comey @johngreen You should not be. It is a great book. Was recently in Amsterdam and walked some of the scenes with your huge fan, my youngest daughter. Loved hearing from you and meeting you at Kenyon. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Cormac McCarthy | 4.79

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Oprah Winfrey It's got everything that's grabbing the headlines in America right now. It's about race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the us-versus-them mentality. And underneath it all, pumps the heart and soul of family love, the pursuit of happiness, and what home really means. (Source)

James Miller It is such a powerful story … against an utterly bleak scenario you have the father and the son, and the novel builds up this incredibly emotive relationship. (Source)

Mark Boyle In my view, The Road is the greatest novel ever written, and McCarthy one of the most important writers of the last hundred years. Its bleakness is interspersed with sentences so beautiful I wept. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak | 4.78

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Lydia Ruffles The (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)

Suzanne Collins | 4.72

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon | 4.66

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Simon Baron-Cohen In fiction the writer has some licence to deviate from what is real – it’s a work of art, ultimately, for people’s interest and enjoyment, but I think that the character is very recognisable of many people with Asperger syndrome. I think the author has done a very good job. (Source)

Vanessa Keng I've always loved fiction - mainly crime and legal thrillers, but there's something wonderful about reading a completely different style of writing from what I'm used to. I found myself absorbed in the narrative of guilt and love in The Kite Runner, and The Curious Incident told me a story from a completely different perspective. (Source)

Robert Muchamore Mark Haddon wrote a spy series for eight- or nine-year-olds and then he suddenly comes out with this rather brilliant novel. Is it an adult book? Is it a kids’ book? So many people can read it and approach it. (Source)

Don't have time to read the top 21st Century books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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sunday times top 100 books 21st century

American Gods (American Gods, #1)

Neil Gaiman | 4.64

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ricky Whittle Nobody can break my family.I’m proud to be apart of this diverse cast & crew who are working their butts off to deliver a fantastic season 3 continuing to tell Shadows story and the awesome characters he meets along the way as in @neilhimself incredible book #readit #details🤔 https://t.co/PahPC9j3HB (Source)

Scott Johnson American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This is a brilliant thought experiment about what happens to a god when its believers stop believing. My preferred edition is the 10th Anniversary release with expanded text. (Source)

Marko Rakar Basically, first of all, I am a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy books and I grew up with Douglas Adams and Arthur C Clarke. For me, this is the best of Gaiman’s books and I’ve got all of them. It’s set in the present time and talks about settlers who have settled a continent and have brought their gods with them. So, if you are Swedish and you cherish Nordic gods and move to the US, the... (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini and Simon & Schuster Audi | 4.62

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

James Altucher Excellent novel. (Source)

Magda Marcu I’m currently reading “The Kite Runner”. I never have expectations from books, I let them surprise me as I get into the story. Learning about characteristics of different cultures, in this case the Afghan one, it’s one aspect I am interested in. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari | 4.62

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Richard Branson One example of a book that has helped me to #ReadToLead this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. While the book came out a few years ago now, I got around to it this year, and am very glad I did. I’ve always been fascinated in what makes humans human, and how people are constantly evolving, changing and growing. The genius of Sapiens is that it takes some daunting,... (Source)

Reid Hoffman A grand theory of humanity. (Source)

Barack Obama eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Tara Westover | 4.61

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bill Gates Tara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I never thought I’d relate to a story about growing up in a Mormon survivalist household, but she’s such a good writer that she got me to reflect on my own life while reading about her extreme childhood. Melinda and I loved this memoir of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a Ph.D.... (Source)

Barack Obama As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Alexander Stubb If you read or listen to only one book this summer, this is it. Bloody brilliant! Every word, every sentence. Rarely do I go through a book with such a rollecoaster of emotion, from love to hate. Thank you for sharing ⁦@tarawestover⁩ #Educated https://t.co/GqLaqlcWMp (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

Suzanne Collins | 4.59

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Martian

Andy Weir | 4.57

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Craig Barrett This book didn’t really change my mind, but rather reinforced the concept of the power of the individual. At a time when we depend more and more on big institutions to solve our business and social problems the real solutions are crafted by individual actions and initiative. This is true in the business world, where ideas from individual researchers or entrepreneurs can create mega companies... (Source)

Dan Christensen @EconTalker @cable_co1 The Martian... hey it can’t all be economics and it’s a great book (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Patrick Chovanec @acgleva The book was great. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Gillian Flynn | 4.55

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Kelly Vaughn @ceeoreo_ Great book! (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)

Dan Brown | 4.52

Neal O'Gorman Certainly, a previous non-business book which I really enjoyed (along with many other people) was the Da Vinci Code. I was living in the States at the time, and it was a rare occasion to be on a plane and not see someone reading it. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)

Stieg Larsson and Reg Keelan | 4.51

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Yann Martel | 4.50

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline | 4.45

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Steve Jurvetson A gift to all of my Apple II programming buddies from high school and Dungeons & Dragons comrades. (Source)

Fabrice Grinda I have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend. (Source)

Dominic Steil [One of the books that had the biggest impact on .] (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt | 4.43

Kaci Lambe Kai More modern, I recently read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and I love the way it was written. A great story brought to life with long, descriptive, sometimes frenetic sentences. She paints some scenes and some ideas that are unlike anything I've ever read. It's like watching magic on the page. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro | 4.43

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell | 4.43

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Robert Eaglestone In this novel, you find stories that interlock like Russian dolls…an obvious example of a writer learning clever postmodern tricks, but domesticating them. (Source)

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk This is the perfect book if you want to read about human extinction but you still need to be ‘seduced’ into it. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Kathryn Stockett | 4.43

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Twin Mummy And Daddy I love a good book and The Help is exactly that! In fact it’s an amazing book! Read my review over on the blog today! https://t.co/efaf9aRGOK #TheHelp #KathrynStockett #bookreview #bookblogger #mummybloggers #daddybloggers #pbloggers #mbloggers @UKpbloggers @UKBloggers1 #books (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Twilight (Twilight, #1)

Stephenie Meyer | 4.42

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.38

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Barack Obama The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Jack Dorsey Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Doug McMillon Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.37

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Angelica Ross @WarnerMediaGrp @tressiemcphd @Lupita_Nyongo @DanaiGurira LOVE THIS BOOK! Can’t wait for this!!!! (Source)

Julia Enthoven For non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini | 4.36

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ann Miura-Ko I would encourage people to read it because it gives you a sense of Afghanistan’s incredible history and the role women have played within that history (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ian McEwan | 4.36

Patricia Reed The portrayal of vastly different interpretations and outcomes from a single moment was thorough, unvarnished, and raw. I agonized and worried about the main character, and turned pages as fast as I could, hoping for resolution. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Girl on the Train

Paula Hawkins | 4.35

Barack Obama Just like us, the president enjoys a good beach read while relaxing in the sun. In 2016, he released his list of summer vacation books: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins Seveneves, Neal Stephenson The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Lucia Grave | 4.34

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman | 4.34

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Asher Wolf @trib I love that book. So much. (Source)

Zoe Keating For a while in 2015 I lost the ability to read (PTSD, I’m told) and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” and Eli Brown’s “Cinnamon & Gunpowder” were the first books I was able to understand and enjoy. @neilhimself’s book in particular was like a hand pulling me up. https://t.co/foEbRxYbuj (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr | 4.33

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Jason Goldman All The Light We Cannot See is the best book I've read in a while. I tend to speed read and here I savored every word; the writing is just effortlessly beautiful. I hope it's made it onto high school WWII syllabi by now. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Jeffrey Eugenides | 4.33

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Lisa Feldman Barrett Eugenides does a really nice job of illustrating the complexity of emotional life, the emotional life that doesn’t necessarily fall into neat categories. (Source)

Alex Stojkovic I don’t. But I would. Books love to be used up. (Related: Middlesex is the best book I read in 2019. If you’re look… (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami | 4.32

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Brian Koppelman If you have always wanted to read [this author], I think this [Covid-19] period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. (Source)

Bernard Tan I’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a... (Source)

John Craig The only book, or should I say author, that takes priority is Haruki Murakami. He is a Japanese novelist that takes me into the next world. His style is surreal. Check it out. Start with Kafka on the Shore. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Divergent (Divergent, #1)

Veronica Roth | 4.31

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain | 4.31

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Simon Sinek eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Leaders needn’t be the loudest. Leadership is not about theater. It’s not about dominance. It is about putting the lives of others before any other priority. In Quiet, Cain affirms to a good many of us who are introverts by nature that we needn’t try to be extroverts if we want to lead.... (Source)

Jason Fried A good book I’d recommend is “Quiet” by Susan Cain. (Source)

James Altucher Probably half the world is introverts. Maybe more. It’s not an easy life to live. I sometimes have that feeling in a room full of people, “uh-oh. I just shut down. I can’t talk anymore and there’s a lock on my mouth and this crowd threw away the key.” Do you ever get that feeling? Please? I hope you do. Let’s try to lock eyes at the party. “Quiet” shows the reader how to unlock the secret powers... (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman | 4.30

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Twinkle Khanna Eleanor is awkward, funny, an alcoholic and clearly not fine. A great book for someone who wants to get over a reading slump. Loved it! #mustread #eleanoroliphantiscompletelyfine #TweakIt https://t.co/fVQu4sYhSi (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

Patrick Rothfuss | 4.29

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Chris Albon @WaltHickey I don’t really read fiction and randomly found that book, amazing. (Source)

Matt Schlicht @teej_m Read it. Love it. So amazing. Waiting for the last book and fear it may never come. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)

Margaret Atwood | 4.26

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Matthew Taylor Oryx and Crake is here because it’s about the logical conclusion of a whole set of processes that we could have called progress. In my lecture I talked about the logic of progress: the logic of science and technology, the logic of markets, the logic of bureaucracy. And if you want a wonderful dystopian vision of what happens if you take these forward without any recourse to ethical considerations... (Source)

Tim @Realscientists The theme of hopelessness was the most profound I thought, as the narrative rattles through the devastatingly self-conscious decay of the main character's mind, the echoes of his life writhing and senescing inside his withering brain. Please read this great book :) https://t.co/1XVpw92bbb (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas | 4.25

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bianca Belair For #BlackHistoryMonth  I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 7th Book: The Hate U Give By: Angie Thomas @angiecthomas The movie was really great, but it just hits different when you read the book! https://t.co/rxMH5Uu6JN (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger | 4.24

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A.r. Moxon (Julius Goat) “A beautiful, harrowing, thrilling book....It’s a wild ride and a great read.” —Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife THE REVISIONARIES Published by Melville House Dec 03, 2019 | 608 Pages | Hardcover https://t.co/cKLZBnrQda (Source)

Gabriel Coarna Audrey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveler's Wife" and Garth Stein's "The Art Of Racing In The Rain" made me cry. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)

George R. R. Martin | 4.23

Elon Musk Best books in recent years imo are Iain Banks & George Martin. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)

George R. R. Martin | 4.22

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel | 4.21

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Hillary Chute Alison has a strip that’s been running for a long time called Dykes to Watch Out For, but this is an autobiographical book. ‘Fun Home’ is short for the funeral home Alison’s dad ran when she was a child. It’s a book that blew me away and continues to blow me away every time I read it – and I must have read it five or six times by now: probably the best book I’ve read in the past ten years in any... (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Margaret Atwood | 4.21

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Meghan Camarena While I was walking to the gym I finished the last chapter of The Graveyard Book by @neilhimself. I must’ve looked like a mad woman because I was balling my eyes out in public. Damn, what an incredible story. (Source)

Simon Smith @carveresque ...but The Graveyard Book is one of the best books ever. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Looking for Alaska

John Green | 4.20

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Angel Dei My favorite John Green book 😭😭 https://t.co/Aqkvmuu9Q5 (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Rainbow Rowell | 4.20

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Ashley C. Ford @ALNL I love this book (Source)

Laura Wood A powerful and moving story about identical twins trying to find their individual identities outside of their own powerful relationship. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot | 4.20

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia — a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo — to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family — past and present — is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Carl Zimmer Yes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. (Source)

A.J. Jacobs Great writer. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Freakonomics

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Stephen J. Levitt, Steven D.; Dubner | 4.20

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Malcolm Gladwell I don’t need to say much here. This book invented an entire genre. Economics was never supposed to be this entertaining. (Source)

Daymond John I love newer books like [this book]. (Source)

James Altucher [James Altucher recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Born a Crime

Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah | 4.20

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bill Gates As a longtime fan of The Daily Show, I loved reading this memoir about how its host honed his outsider approach to comedy over a lifetime of never quite fitting in. Born to a black South African mother and a white Swiss father in apartheid South Africa, he entered the world as a biracial child in a country where mixed race relationships were forbidden. Much of Noah’s story of growing up in South... (Source)

Mark Suster Please don't read @Trevornoah's book "Born a Crime." It's such a remarkable story that you need to hear him narrate it on @audible_com. You'll laugh out loud, cry, get angry, be in disbelief. You'll have many "driveway moments" where you can't stop even though you're home (Source)

Heather Zynczak So excited for our latest speaker announcement for #PSLIVE19! Trevor Noah! I am a huge @TheDailyShow fan! And his book -Born a Crime -and life story are amazing. Can't wait! Join us! https://t.co/N6ykJq7TOy https://t.co/r0dIx5RFVI (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.19

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two

The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production

J.K. Rowling | 4.18

The official playscript of the original West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected...

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

The playscript for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was originally released as a 'special rehearsal edition' alongside the opening of Jack Thorne's play in London's West End in summer 2016. Based on an original story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, the play opened to rapturous reviews from theatregoers and critics alike, while the official playscript became an immediate global bestseller.

This definitive and final playscript updates the 'special rehearsal edition' with the conclusive and final dialogue from the play, which has subtly changed since its rehearsals, as well as a conversation piece between director John Tiffany and writer Jack Thorne, who share stories and insights about reading playscripts. This edition also includes useful background information including the Potter family tree and a timeline of events from the Wizarding World prior to the beginning of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child .

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1)

Ransom Rigg | 4.18

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance | 4.18

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bill Gates The disadvantaged world of poor white Appalachia described in this terrific, heartbreaking book is one that I know only vicariously. Vance was raised largely by his loving but volatile grandparents, who stepped in after his father abandoned him and his mother showed little interest in parenting her son. Against all odds, he survived his chaotic, impoverished childhood only to land at Yale Law... (Source)

Ryan Holiday In terms of other surprising memoirs, I found JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to be another well-written gem. (Source)

Ben Shapiro A very well-written book. [...] The whole thing is a critique of individual decisions. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Michelle Obama | 4.17

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Barack Obama Of course, @MichelleObama’s my wife, so I’m a little biased here. But she also happens to be brilliant, funny, wise – one of a kind. This book tells her quintessentially American story. I love it because it faithfully reflects the woman I have loved for so long. (Source)

Piers Morgan Congrats to @MichelleObama on sensational sales of her new book #Becoming. I always take people as I find them & when I met her at the White House, she was a delightfully warm, friendly & genuine lady. A great First Lady & now a best-selling author. https://t.co/nlSUHI01SM (Source)

Randi Zuckerberg "I love the book Becoming by @MichelleObama and Creative Curve by Allen Gannett." @GoldieChan (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)

George R. R. Martin | 4.17

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Emma Donoghu | 4.17

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel, Vincent Chong | 4.16

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Alfred A. Knopf “What sets Station Eleven apart from so many other recent dystopian novels is the warmness of @EmilyMandel's writing, the lived-in details of each of these characters’ lives… It’s the kind of book that stays with you.” —@TomiObaro https://t.co/tWakW2L6Tq (Source)

Holly Brockwell @nmsonline @katebevan Great book though 🤷‍♀️ (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clark | 4.16

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Lev Grossman It’s a magic that feels absolutely real, as if the book were an eyewitness account. Not since Lewis has the supernatural been such a thrilling, immediate, concrete presence on the page. It’s no accident that I began The Magicians in 2004 – Strange is the book that woke me up to the power of the new fantasy. Read it, and you may be woken up too. (Source)

Tendai Huchu I chose this book because it really blurs the line between fiction and history. Just the use of footnotes and references to texts that likely don’t exist yet unless Susanna Clarke writes them in! (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Hilary Mantel | 4.15

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Neera Tanden @BarackObama Wolf Hall is a great book. (Source)

Vanora Bennett The Tudor monarchy has a big moment with England leaving the Church of Rome for love – that’s the moment every film and television writer is interested in. She turns it upside down. (Source)

Thomas Penn Hilary Mantel possesses an extraordinary historical imagination and her recreation of the world of the 1530s through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell is, I think, utterly convincing. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold | 4.15

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones , unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it,...

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones , unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue ."

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife . Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean | 4.15

What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson

Simon Smith @lindsanderson @Misterbodd @PaulWat5 @f33lthesun Awesomely scary book full stop! Great though. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon | 4.13

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Anne Thériault @luzbianca417 Phew! I loved that book so much and then the ending I was just like .... what??? No one is making decisions with this child’s best interests in mind! (Source)

Natasha Lyonne @sepinwall I love this book so much. ♥️ (Source)

Sean Seton-Rogers Sprawling, well researched, historical story. A true pleasure to read. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium, #2)

Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland | 4.11

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)

Robert Galbraith | 4.10

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz | 4.10

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Timothy Ferriss Raised in a culture where men are powerful, sexual, and dominant, the Klingon-speaking, D&D-playing chubby boy thinks he’ll never find true love or physical affection. Oscar struggles as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic living with his older sister and mother in Paterson, New Jersey. A fun read with lots of geek culture, great history, and oh, it also won the Pulitzer Prize. (Source)

Kushanava Choudhury Oscar Wao is very real to me. When I read Wao, I think, there but for the grace of God go I. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)

Dan Brown | 4.09

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy | 4.08

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara | 4.08

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Soman Chainani The greatest work of fiction I’ve ever read, with the simplest theme: All of us come with baggage and wounds and pain; all of us. (Source)

Jane Mcgonigal @rhondakap @kellymcgonigal If you haven't read this only read it if you want to be emotionally brutalized. Virtuoso portrayal of compassion but Jesus you could not make worse things happen to your characters. Almost sadistic. Amazing book but traumatic read (Source)

Ella Botting This may be the best book I’ve ever read. It’s a long old book and I bloody love a long book. I don’t possess the vocabulary to describe this book - it was so good, but I’d say it was an intricate analysis of the character’s daily lives and their daily lives are hella intense at times. This booked reminded me that while success in the workplace is very important to me, so is the time spent with... (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium, #3)

Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland | 4.08

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari | 4.07

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bill Gates Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. All three of his books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead? So far, human history has been driven by a desire to live longer, healthier, happier lives. If science is eventually able to give that dream to most people,... (Source)

Brajesh Kumar Singh Harari, currently, the world's best historian and future analyst, is a gay! He is a Jew and writes his books in Hebrew! Got universal acclaim for his first book Sapiens, followed by Homo Deus and now the latest, 21 lessons for the 21st century! Salute to this genius, keep it up! https://t.co/s7R6oEbwiN (Source)

Eh Bee Family @harari_yuval This book is amazing. After every chapter...I pause...then freak out...then gather myself and keep reading. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

Rick Riordan | 4.07

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes | 4.07

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer | 4.07

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Bryan Callen So here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls | 4.07

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie | 4.06

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Rand Fishkin Empathy is at the core of my beliefs, and this is one of the best books I’ve ever read that fosters empathetic thinking. It’s also a great reminder of how hard it is to accomplish anything when your life circumstances and surroundings negatively contribute to progress and a great reminder to stay humble. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Breaking Dawn (Twilight, #4)

Stephenie Meyer | 4.06

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller | 4.05

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Daniel Mendelsohn I don’t want to know what Achilles did in bed, frankly. If you want to play with the big boys, fine, but don’t turn The Iliad into a Twilight novel. (Source)

Lucy Coats I loved the richness of the language, the descriptions. She really made me feel I was in ancient Greece — the smells, the whole environment. (Source)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)

Margaret Atwood | 4.05

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Guy Kawasaki I love @MargaretAtwood’s message and appreciate her efforts to prevent the end of the world. Her latest book is The Testaments, sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. 📕 Read it and spread its message to help prevent Making America Gilead again. PODCAST 🎧 https://t.co/9wBq98MWf0 https://t.co/W950dsLLN6 (Source)

Mary Burkey Obviously the book is totally fascinating as a print book. What happened with the audiobook is that because of the Netflix adaptation, a lot of the actors who were in the Netflix program were used for the audiobook production. (Source)

Peter Florence It is a completely standalone, independent novel. If you read The Handmaid’s Tale, it will satisfy some of your need for understanding what happened next. If you haven’t—and incredibly, there are people who haven’t read it—it just gives you an extremely savage and exhilarating look at contemporary life and its most alarming manifestations. (Source)

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New Moon (Twilight, #2)

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Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Thomas Piketty

Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

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ISBN 9780674430006

Publication date: 04/15/2014

A New York Times #1 Bestseller An Amazon #1 Bestseller A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Sunday Times Bestseller A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the British Academy Medal Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century , Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality—the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth—today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century , the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty, will be the most important economics book of the year—and maybe of the decade. —Paul Krugman, New York Times
The book aims to revolutionize the way people think about the economic history of the past two centuries. It may well manage the feat. —The Economist
Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an intellectual tour de force, a triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years. —Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post
Piketty has written an extraordinarily important book…In its scale and sweep it brings us back to the founders of political economy. —Martin Wolf, Financial Times
A sweeping account of rising inequality…Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore. —John Cassidy, New Yorker
Stands a fair chance of becoming the most influential work of economics yet published in our young century. It is the most important study of inequality in over fifty years. —Timothy Shenk, The Nation
At a time when the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few has resurfaced as a central political issue, Piketty doesn’t just offer invaluable documentation of what is happening, with unmatched historical depth. He also offers what amounts to a unified field theory of inequality, one that integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labor, and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals into a single frame…Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to. —Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books
The most remarkable work of economics in recent years, if not decades…The discipline of economics, Piketty argues, remains trapped in a juvenile passion for mathematics, divorced from history and its sister social sciences. His work aims to change that. —Nick Pearce, New Statesman
Magnificent…Even though it is a work more concerned with the past 200 years, it’s no coincidence that the full title of Piketty’s book is Capital in the Twenty-First Century . Its ambition is to shape debates about the next two centuries, not the past two. And in that it may succeed. —Christopher Croke, The Australian
Piketty’s ground-breaking work on the historical evolution of income distribution is impressive…One of the best economic books in decades. —Paul Sweeney, Irish Times
[Piketty] is just about to emerge as the most important thinker of his generation…He demonstrates that there is no reason to believe that capitalism can ever solve the problem of inequality, which he insists is getting worse rather than better. From the banking crisis of 2008 to the Occupy movement of 2011, this much has been intuited by ordinary people. The singular significance of his book is that it proves ‘scientifically’ that this intuition is correct. This is why his book has crossed over into the mainstream—it says what many people have already been thinking. —Andrew Hussey, The Observer
The strength of Piketty’s book is his close attention to the different sources of inequality, the massive documentation underpinning his history and conclusions, and his impressive culls from sociology and literature, which exhibit the richness of ‘political economy’ compared to its thin mathematical successor that has attained such prominence…A timely intervention in the current debate about inequality and its causes. —Robert Skidelsky, Prospect
A monumental book that will influence economic analysis (and perhaps policymaking) in the years to come. In the way it is written and the importance of the questions it asks, it is a book the classic authors of economics could have written if they lived today and had access to the vast empirical material Piketty and his colleagues collected. —Branko Milanovic, American Prospect
This book has all the makings of a classic. It has already changed the way economists think about inequality. One hopes that these ideas will percolate into the chambers of policy-makers in governments and lending institutions and bring about changes in their policies to reduce inequality. —K. Subramanian, The Hindu
Piketty’s book is revolutionary…[His] multi-century portrait of wealth and income obliterates economists’ complacent narratives…We are still seeking an economy that is both vibrant and humane, where mutual advantage is real and mutual aid possible. The one we have isn’t it. —Jedediah Purdy, Los Angeles Review of Books
Piketty demonstrates in terrifying detail, with painstaking statistical research, that free-market capitalism, in the absence of major state redistribution, produces profound economic inequalities. —Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune
An extraordinary sweep of history backed by remarkably detailed data and analysis…Piketty’s economic analysis and historical proofs are breathtaking. —Robert B. Reich, The Guardian
Piketty’s treatment of inequality is perfectly matched to its moment. Like [Paul] Kennedy a generation ago, Piketty has emerged as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world…But make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving…By focusing attention on what has happened to a fortunate few among us, and by opening up for debate issues around the long-run functioning of our market system, Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a profoundly important contribution. —Lawrence H. Summers, Democracy
What makes Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century such a triumph is that it seems to have been written specifically to demolish the great economic shibboleths of our time…Piketty’s magnum opus. —Thomas Frank, Salon
Capital reflects decades of work in collecting national income data across centuries, countries, and class, done in partnership with academics across the globe. But beyond its remarkably rich and instructive history, the book’s deep and novel understanding of inequality in the economy has drawn well-deserved attention…The book is an attempt to ground the debate over inequality in strong empirical data, put the question of distribution back into economics, and open the debate not just to the entirety of the social sciences but to people themselves. —Mike Konczal, Boston Review
[A] 700-page punch in the plutocracy’s pampered gut…It’s been half a century since a book of economic history broke out of its academic silo with such fireworks. —Giles Whittell, The Times
Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics has done the definitive comparative historical research on income inequality in his Capital in the Twenty-First Century . —Paul Starr, New York Review of Books
Bracing…Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies. His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. Rather, the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth into the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time. —Eduardo Porter, New York Times
About as close to a blockbuster as there is in the world of economic literature—easily the most discussed book of its genre in years…Piketty challenges one of the underpinnings of modern democracies—namely, that growth and productivity make each generation better off than the previous one. —Barrie McKenna, Globe and Mail
Piketty has unearthed the history of income distribution for at least the past hundred years in every major capitalist nation. It makes for fascinating, grim and alarming reading…Piketty gives us the most important work of economics since John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory . —Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
The strength of [Piketty's] thesis is that it is founded on evidence rather than ideology…What Piketty has done is provide a strong factual understanding for how modern capitalist economies diverge from the image of risk-taking and productive commercial activity. At the very least, the book effectively debunks the notion that there is an economic imperative for low tax rates and a smaller state. —Oliver Kamm, The Times
Defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism…Without what [Piketty] acknowledges is a politically unrealistic global wealth tax, he sees the United States and the developed world on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption. —Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times
Piketty's magnum opus…A lucid tale of why inequality in the world is increasing, and what we should be doing about it. The right leaning crowd may be dismayed with his prescriptions of stiff global wealth taxes, but neither leftists nor rightists can dispute the data that he presents. —Ajit Ranade, Business Today
Anyone remotely interested in economics needs to read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century . —Matthew Yglesias, Slate
[A] timely, important book. —Joseph E. Stiglitz, New York Times
Piketty’s genius lies in proving that inequality is growing and potentially threatens widespread political instability…Piketty has written a trenchant critique of our current economic system. —Michael Washburn, Boston Globe
Piketty has looked at centuries of tax archives to formulate a theory of capitalism that is evidence-based and rigorously researched, but also attempts to answer the most basic questions in economic theory… Capital in the Twenty-First Century is already being hailed as a seminal work of economic thought, and with very good reason. —Thomas Flynn, Daily Beast
Piketty solidifies and gives an intellectual edge to the view that something is wrong here, and something new and bold and radical has got to be done…People like me, and others, are certainly excited by the prospect of where Piketty might take us. —Len McCluskey, The Guardian
The book is a terrific achievement. —Alan Ryan, Literary Review
One of the strengths of Piketty’s book is the depth and rigor of his historical analysis. Yet it is changes taking place now that make his concerns especially urgent. —Andrew Neather, London Evening Standard
There are books that you read and there are books that hit the nail on the head so hard that you want to get your teeth into them. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century …clearly belongs to the second category. —Perry Lam, South China Morning Post
[Piketty] has demolished the Western myth that all who work hard can expect success. —Mary Riddell, The Telegraph
It’s going to be remembered as the economic tome of our era. Basically, Piketty has finally put to death, with data, the fallacies of trickle down economics…We can only hope that the politicians crafting today’s economic programs will take this book to heart. —Rana Foroohar, Time
Magisterial…This book is economics at its best. —Philip Roscoe, Times Higher Education
[A] seminal work on capitalism. —Madan Sabnavis, Financial Express
Piketty has shown that we are living in a Second Gilded Age…Nestled under the book’s mass of data, elegant mathematical formulae, and literary references is an insistence that the turmoil of capitalism is a human turmoil, within the control of human beings. Piketty’s book is a call to citizenship, not as a series of fatalistic poses, but as a political responsibility. That spirit of engagement is more radical, at this moment in history, than any other proposal. —Stephen Marche, Los Angeles Review of Books
Piketty hits bullseye after bullseye about the exacerbating inequalities that disfigure society—especially American society…For [those] who suffer from the relentless blather about why the minimum wage cannot be raised; why ‘job creators’ cannot be taxed; and why American society remains the most open in the world, Piketty is what the doctor ordered. —Russell Jacoby, New Republic
Riveting…[Piketty] embodies a model of engaged and sophisticated public debate, the sort of which politicians can only dream…Capital inequality has dispossessed us of our ‘democratic sovereignty,’ and that’s something we should all really worry about…His book is as much a story about the limits of modern democratic politics as it is about the structures of inequality. —Duncan Kelly, Times Literary Supplement
Very readable and often slyly witty…Piketty does economics in a new way; or more accurately, he returns to an older way…He argues that the degree of inequality is not just the product of economic forces; it is also the product of politics. —George Fallis, Literary Review of Canada
Capital in the Twenty-First Century delivered a well placed kick up the backside to complacent mainstream economics. —Paul Mason, The Observer
This book is the key to understanding how the automatic accumulation and concentration of wealth poses a threat to the peaceful economies in which entrepreneurs prosper. —Geoffrey James, Inc.
Monumental…Translated beautifully by Arthur Goldhammer, [ Capital in the Twenty-First Century ]…smashed into the intellectual world with incredible force…One also has to admire the way Piketty marshals the data to create a sweeping historical narrative, in a style reminiscent of the great thinkers of the 19th century. —Ben Chu, The Independent
Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows how privateers use privatization, debt creation and capital inflation as a mechanism for rent extraction, with catastrophic consequences for public services. —Allyson Pollock, Times Higher Education
Piketty’s great achievement, and one possible reason for the enthusiastic reception of his book, is his effective empirical demonstration of a fact long denied by neoclassical economics and its champions throughout the world: markets, when left to their own devices, do not provide individuals with rewards that are proportional to their efforts…[This book] effectively demolishes mainstream myths about the ability of markets to combat inequality. —Hassan Javid, Dawn
Monumental…[Piketty] documents a sharp increase in such inequality over the last 25 years, not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, with people with the highest incomes far outstripping the rest of society. The book is impressive in its wealth of information. —Robert J. Shiller, New York Times
[Piketty’s] chief intellectual accomplishment is to show how the basic forces of capitalism tend inevitably toward an ever-greater accumulation of wealth at the tip of the pyramid…Piketty shows that the economics of the postwar era—when the West enjoyed strong, widely-shared growth—was a historical exception. For our Western democracies, it was also a political necessity. Capitalism is facing an existential challenge; smart plutocrats will be part of the solution. —Chrystia Freeland, Politico
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most important economics book of the year, if not the decade… Capital in the Twenty-First Century essentially takes the existing debate on income inequality and supercharges it. It does so by asserting that in the long run the economic inequality that matters won’t be the gap between people who earn high salaries and those who earn low ones, it will be the gap between people who inherit large sums of money and those who don’t. —Matthew Yglesias, Vox
Monumental…One of the most thorough and illuminating studies of capitalist economics since Karl Marx published the original Capital 150 years earlier. —Gary Gerstle, Washington Post
Groundbreaking…The usefulness of economics is determined by the quality of data at our disposal. Piketty’s new volume offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of newly compiled data that will go a long way in helping us understand how capitalism actually works. —Christopher Matthews, Fortune
Piketty draws on a vast store of historical data to argue that the broad dissemination of wealth that occurred during the decades following World War I was not, as economists then mistakenly believed, a natural state of capitalist equilibrium, but rather a halcyon interval between Belle Époque inequality and the rising inequality of our own era…[His] most provocative argument is that the discrepancy between the high returns to capital and much more modest overall economic growth—briefly annulled during the mid-century—ensures that the gulf between the rich (who profit from capital investments) and the middle class (who depend chiefly on income from labor) will only continue to grow. —James Traub, Foreign Policy
Piketty’s main point, and his new and powerful contribution to an old topic: as long as the rate of return exceeds the rate of growth, the income and wealth of the rich will grow faster than the typical income from work…If the ownership of wealth in fact becomes even more concentrated during the rest of the twenty-first century, the outlook is pretty bleak unless you have a taste for oligarchy…Wouldn’t it be interesting if the United States were to become the land of the free, the home of the brave, and the last refuge of increasing inequality at the top (and perhaps also at the bottom)? Would that work for you? —Robert Solow, New Republic
Argues that the great equalizing decades following World War II, which brought on the rise of the middle class in the United States, were but a historical anomaly. Armed with centuries of data, Piketty says the rich are going to continue to gobble up a greater share of income, and our current system will do nothing to reverse that trend. —Shaila Dewan, New York Times Magazine
Though an heir to Tocqueville’s tradition of analytic history, Thomas Piketty has a message that could not be more different: Unless we act, inequality will grow much worse, eventually making a mockery of our democratic institutions. With wealth more and more concentrated, countries racing to cut taxes on capital, and inheritance coming to rival entrepreneurship as a source of riches, a new patrimonial elite may prove as inevitable as Tocqueville once believed democratic equality was…Perhaps with this magisterial book, the troubling realities Piketty unearths will become more visible and the rationalizations of the privileged that sustain them less dominant. Like Tocqueville, Piketty has given us a new image of ourselves. This time, it’s one we should resist, not welcome. —Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, American Prospect
A landmark book…which brings a ton of data to bear in reaching the commonsensical conclusion that inequality has to do with more than just blind market forces at work. —George Packer, New Yorker
[Piketty] is now the most talked-about economist on the planet…The book analyzes hundreds of years of tax records from France, the U.K., the U.S., Germany and Japan to prove a simple idea: The rich really are getting richer. And their wealth doesn’t trickle down. It trickles up…The stark historical consequences of unchecked inequality are at the heart of Capital . —Rana Foroohar, Time
Magisterial…Piketty provides a sweeping, data-driven narrative about inequality trends in the United States and other Western economies over the past century or more, identifies a worrisome increase in income and wealth concentration in a small percentage of the population since 1980, and warns that this trend won’t likely correct itself. —Chad Stone, U.S. News & World Report
Piketty’s new book is an important contribution to understanding what we need to do to produce more growth, wider economic opportunity and greater social stability. —David Cay Johnston, Al Jazeera America
The book has made everyone with a stake in capitalism sit up and take notice…[Piketty’s] analysis should challenge Americans to rethink our notions of wealth and poverty and whether any semblance of ‘equal opportunity’ actually exists. —America
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is written in the tradition of great economic texts…This book is significant for its findings, as well as for how Piketty arrives at them. It’s easy—and fun—to argue about ideas. It is much more difficult to argue about facts. Facts are what Piketty gives us, while pressing the reader to engage in the journey of sorting through their implications. —Heather Boushey, American Prospect
How does a rigorous, seven-hundred page economic history become a lionized hit? Through the canny voice of professor Thomas Piketty, and his demystification of inherited wealth, Karl Marx’s true legacy, and what we mean when we talk about monetary ‘growth’ and ‘inequality.’ —Barnes and Noble Review
When it comes to economics…you need to get yourself a hold of Capital in the Twenty-First Century …Piketty’s study will have readers plotting capital’s downfall because what it shows is that the growing inequalities we are seeing between the haves and have nots are endemic to the system…We are entering a new age of capital, he argues; a time, similar to the early 19th century, when many will live off their money. Without the need for work. Meanwhile, those without capital will always struggle to keep ahead of debts. —Thomas Quinn, Big Issue
Intellectually hefty…Piketty has already engendered vigorous argument. Capital is an arduous climb, but the subject is equally weighty, and it demands our best analyses, proposals and dialogues. Capital is an essential volume in the conversation. —Earl Pike, Cleveland Plain Dealer
An important book…which paints a compelling, and scary, picture of the deep forces driving toward ever greater inequality in the modern world. Piketty’s historical focus adds power to his analysis of the trend toward greater financial inequality today. —Charles R. Morris, Commonweal
This important and fascinating book surely ranks among the most influential economic analysis of recent decades. —Andrew Berg, Finance & Development
Piketty has made his name central to serious discussions of inequality…[He] expands upon his empirical work of the last 10 years, while also setting forth a political theory of inequality. This last element of the book gives special attention to tax policy and makes some provocative suggestions—new and higher taxes on the very rich. —Joseph Thorndike, Forbes
The most eagerly anticipated book on economics in many years. —Toby Sanger, Globe and Mail
Is Piketty the new Karl Marx? Anybody who has read the latter will know he is not…Piketty has, more accurately, placed an unexploded bomb within mainstream, classical economics…The power of Piketty’s work is that it also challenges the narrative of the center-left under globalization, which believed upskilling the workforce, combined with mild redistribution, would promote social justice. This, Piketty demonstrates, is mistaken. All that social democracy and liberalism can produce, with their current policies, is the oligarch’s yacht co-existing with the food bank forever. Piketty’s Capital , unlike Marx’s Capital , contains solutions possible on the terrain of capitalism itself. —Paul Mason, The Guardian
The big questions that concerned Mill, Marx and Smith are now rearing their heads afresh…Thomas Piketty—who spent long years, during which the mainstream neglected inequality, mapping the distribution of income—is making waves with Capital in the Twenty-First Century . Nodding at Marx, that title helps explain the attention, but his decidedly classical emphasis on historical dynamics in determining who gets what resonates in a world where an increasing proportion of citizens are feeling fleeced by the elite. —The Guardian
A big book in every sense of the word, using empirical evidence from 30 countries to describe how capitalism has evolved over the past 300 years and is now reverting to what Piketty calls the Downton Abbey world of a century ago…It is rare for economics books to fly off the shelves. Once in every generation, usually when the world has started to recover after a serious recession, there is a search for answers. Will Hutton’s The State We’re In was the must-buy book two decades ago just as Piketty’s is today. —The Guardian
Piketty says he wants the book to be widely read and his ideas debated. He has succeeded. Questions of economic theory have now reached an uncommonly large audience. One could, of course, fill a book twice the size with the reviews and the commentary Capital has prompted. But there is a better way into the debate than consuming the Piketty media phenomenon: spend a little valuable capital and read the original yourself. —Ben Chu, The Independent
The enthusiastic reception in the United States of Piketty’s rigorous Capital in the Twenty-First Century , which answers the empirical spirit of the age with a welcome rush of statistics, may be a promising sign of renewal in the otherwise sedate intellectual pastures of the continent. To have made the word ‘redistribution’ utterable again by mainstream economists is already a considerable achievement…An unignorable account of the history of inequality in capitalist democracies. —Thomas Meaney and Yascha Mounk, The Nation
Not since John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 has a work of political theory been as rapturously received on the left as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century …In this supposedly superficial and anti-intellectual age, his 690-page treatise on inequality, rich in empirical research, has resonated because it speaks to one of the central anxieties of our time: that society is becoming ever more fragmented as the very rich pull away from the rest. —New Statesman
Piketty, a prominent economist, explains the tendency in mature societies for wealth to concentrate in a few hands. —Amy Merrick, New Yorker
[Piketty] has written a 700 page book on inequality which has achieved something few would have thought possible. He has rocked the neo-liberal economic establishment to its foundations…Even some of the most ideologically blinkered of free market economists, having read this book, now openly admit that Professor Piketty has laid down a challenge which they dare not ignore and which could change the political environment. —John Palmer, Red Pepper
Drawing on hundreds of years of economic data (some of which has only recently become available to researchers) Piketty reaches a simple but disturbing conclusion: In the long run, the return on capital tends to be greater than the growth rate of the economies in which that capital is located…Readers can already guess the dire conclusion that flows from combining Piketty’s theory with the plausible assumption that unregulated wealth leads to plutocracy: If the only way to avoid plutocracy would be to employ political processes that the plutocrats themselves will eventually buy lock, stock and barrel, then the only way to avoid being ruled by the Lords of Capital is to become one of them. —Paul Campos, Salon
[Piketty] has been perhaps the most important thinker on inequality of the past decade or so… Capital will change the political conversation in a more subtle way as well, by focusing it on wealth, not income. —Jordan Weissmann, Slate
There is a huge amount to admire and welcome in this book…Like the radicals of the 1790s, who toasted Edmund Burke in gratitude for the fundamental debate his writings on the French Revolution had provoked, even those who find Piketty’s remedies unpalatable and in some ways worse than the disease he is trying to cure should nevertheless applaud his industry, his acuity, and his humane commitment to the ideal of rational, temperate and informed public debate. —David Womersley, Standpoint
Clearly written, ambitious in scope, rooted in economics but drawing on insights from related fields like history and sociology, Piketty’s Capital resembles nothing so much as an old-fashioned work of political economy by the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, or John Maynard Keynes…The book’s major strength lies in Piketty’s ability to see the big picture. His original and rigorously well-documented insights into the deep structures of capitalism show us how the dynamics of capital accumulation have played out historically over the past three centuries, and how they’re likely to develop in the century to come. —Kathleen Geier, Washington Monthly
After receiving widespread attention in his native France, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has received even greater attention on this side of the Atlantic, and deservedly so. It offers a stark and depressing picture for those who believe that some combination of democratic politics and economic growth can protect us from rampant inequality. —Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage, Washington Post
Painstakingly details the dynamics of wealth and income inequality throughout the last two centuries, and offers a somewhat grim picture of the future of economic inequality. Along the way, Piketty also offers his theory of the cause of exploding executive pay and how we can successfully combat this destructive trend. —Matt Bruenig, The Week
It’s a brilliant, surprisingly readable work that synthesizes a staggering amount of careful research to make the case that income inequality is no accident…[Piketty] has starkly and convincingly outlined the stakes for future generations. Either we’ll have a new birth of reformed capitalism…or we’ll have wealth concentration on such a colossal scale that it will threaten the democratic order. —Ryan Cooper, The Week
It is a great work, a fearsome beast of analysis stuffed with an awesome amount of empirical data, and will surely be a landmark study in economics. —The Week
Rarely does a book come along…that completely alters the paradigm through which we frame our worldview. Thomas Piketty’s magisterial study of the structure of capitalism since the 18th century, Capital in the Twenty-First Century , is such a book…This book is more than a must read. It is a manual for action that provides a fresh framework for the new politics of the 21st century. —Nathan Gardels, The WorldPost
[An] enormously important book. —Doug Henwood, Bookforum
Essential reading for citizens of the here and now. Other economists should marvel at how that plain language can be put to work explaining the most complex of ideas, foremost among them the fact that economic inequality is at an all-time high—and is only bound to grow worse. —Kirkus Reviews
An explosive argument. —Liberation
A seminal book on the economic and social evolution of the planet… A masterpiece. —Emmanuel Todd, Marianne
Outstanding… A political and theoretical bulldozer. —Mediapart
The book of the season. —Telerama
In this magisterial work, Thomas Piketty has performed a great service to the academy and to the public. He has written a pioneering book that is at once thoughtful, measured, and provocative. The force of his case rests not on a diatribe or a political agenda, but on carefully collected and analyzed data and reasoned thought. —Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School
This book is not only the definitive account of the historical evolution of inequality in advanced economies, it is also a magisterial treatise on capitalism’s inherent dynamics. Piketty ends his book with a ringing call for the global taxation of capital. Whether or not you agree with him on the solution, this book presents a stark challenge for those who would like to save capitalism from itself. —Dani Rodrik, Institute for Advanced Study
This is a truly path-breaking book offering a hard-hitting and well-founded critique of capitalism in the twenty-first century…Piketty shows himself to be not only a supereconomist but also a skilled politician. No wonder his thoughts have resonated even at the highest political levels. One can only hope that his work will actually influence adoption of his policy recommendations. —Christel Lane, LSE Review of Books
As befits a book of such size, Capital is broad-ranging, both historically and geographically…Impressive. —William Keegan, The Tablet
Piketty is offering something fresh in the discourse: an unimaginably massive data-set that traces the ebb and flow of wealth and productivity around the globe for three centuries…It’s a rare thing to see economists, especially pro-capitalist economists, praising taxation itself, but Piketty—careful, unemotional Piketty—dares…Besides, he says, the thing every red-blooded entrepreneur wants to see is people getting rich by their wits and deeds, not by the birthright of kings. —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
A book of such magisterial sweep…Piketty deserves huge credit for kickstarting a debate about inequality and illuminating the distribution of income and wealth. —Stephanie Flanders, The Guardian
Seven hundred pages on the evolution of inequality in economically advanced societies by the most fashionable new theorist to emerge for a long time. Many have been waiting for such a comprehensive critique of capitalism. —David Sexton, Evening Standard
[A] most unlikely best seller, a crossover from the world of scholarship into general public discussion of a kind that seems rarer than it used to be. The book’s thesis—that economic inequality in the developed world is increasing, with potentially dire consequences for social justice and democratic governance—has struck a nerve in the American body politic. But its implications extend beyond the realm of political economy…The book invites the re-examination of deeply held assumptions about the world. —A. O. Scott, New York Times
Using sophisticated computer modeling and analyses, the professor from the Paris School of Economics debunks a long-held assumption—that income from wages will tend to grow at roughly the same rate as wealth—and instead makes a compelling case that, over time, the apparatus of capitalism grows wealth faster than wages. Result: Inequality between the wealthy and everyone else will widen faster and faster; and, without progressive taxation, his data show we’ll return to levels of inequality not seen since America’s Gilded Age. —Dean Paton, YES!
The depth and range of evidence Piketty marshals allows him to deliver a devastating blow to the confidence of many economists that capitalism is a tide that gradually lifts all boats. In the process, he mounts an effective critique of the tendency of economic writers on both left and right to rely on theories and formal systems…His book challenges both mainstream economists’ faith in untested mathematical models, as well as radicals’ resistance to subjecting Marx’s economic theory to rigorous testing. —Michael W. Clune, Chronicle of Higher Education
In this monumental, vitally important work, [Piketty] forces us to reconsider what we think we know about the baseline functioning of capitalist economies over the long haul, and to grapple with the implications for ourselves and our times…Nearly every page of the book rewards a careful reading with new insights and intriguing questions. —Matthew Carnes, America
We are in danger of entering into an era that, like the 19th century in France and England, is socially and politically dominated by those with vast amounts of inherited wealth…Piketty’s book is important because of the way he has clarified the magnitude of the problem and its dangers. And he has done so at a time of increasing soul-searching about the role technology plays in exacerbating inequality. —David Rotman, Technology Review
This past July, I felt compelled to read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century after reading several reviews and hearing about it from friends. I’m glad I did. I encourage you to read it too…I agree with his most important conclusions, and I hope his work will draw more smart people into the study of wealth and income inequality. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes
[Piketty’s] overarching theme—that increased income disparity as a threat to democratic capitalism—remains prominent…His concerns about social unrest cannot be ignored. —James Halteman, Christian Century
[A] sweeping study of wealth in the modern world…Full of insights but free of dogma, this is a seminal examination of how entrenched wealth and intractable inequality continue to shape the economy. —Publishers Weekly
The best business book on economics of the year. —Daniel Gross, strategy+business
Throws much light upon one of the most important questions in economics: what determines the distribution of income and wealth. With an abundance of data and some simple and powerful theories, Piketty has made an immensely important contribution to the public debate. —Martin Wolf, Financial Times
The year’s most popular and controversial book. —Roland White, Sunday Times
Marx believed that free markets produce inequality, social division and violence. Piketty appears to side with Marx, but this is deceptive. When Piketty talks about ‘capital,’ he means the kind of investments held by today’s leisured rentier class whose money is tied up in property and pensions. Piketty argues that a free market overloaded with this kind of capital may or may not lead to anger and alienation, but it will certainly act like lumpy blockages in the smooth running of the economy. Piketty only wants the economy to work better. —Nicholas Blincoe, The Telegraph
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is arguably the most important popular economics book in recent memory. It will take its place among other classics in the field that have survived changing theoretical and political fashions, such as its namesake by Karl Marx ( Das Kapital , 1867) or other ambitiously titled books such as John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). Anyone who wants to engage in an informed discussion about the economic landscape will have to read Piketty. —Kate Bahn, Women’s Review of Books
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century laid bare the deep structural forces that have made our brave new neoliberal economic order so dangerously topheavy and unstable. —Chris Lehmann, In These Times
The extraordinary resonance of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century suggests that inequality has become the most pressing economic issue of our time. —Michael Rosen, Times Literary Supplement
[Piketty’s] magnum opus, which kicked off years of debate over the causes of and potential solutions for deep poverty in wealthy societies. —Martin Wolk, Los Angeles Times
Piketty presents the problem of inequality afresh, using new forms of historical narration and explanation that cut across disciplines and theoretical frameworks. —William Davies, London Review of Books
Capital in the Twenty-First Century looks back in order to look forward, plumbing economic patterns from the 18th century onward and homing in on the staggering inequities that dominate our age. —Hamilton Cain, The Atlantic
  • 2015, Winner of the PROSE Awards
  • 2015, Winner of the Arthur Ross Book Award

Related Links

  • On the New Republic podcast How to Save a Country, listen to Thomas Piketty explain why addressing global inequality must mean radical changes in economic policy—and what, in the 2020s and beyond, the Global North owes the Global South
  • Thomas Piketty is Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Paris School of Economics and Codirector of the World Inequality Lab.

Book Details

  • 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
  • Belknap Press

From this author

A Brief History of Equality

A Brief History of Equality

Capital and Ideology

Capital and Ideology

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century

The Economics of Inequality

The Economics of Inequality

Recommendations.

Growth

The Triumph of Broken Promises

The Banks Did It

The Banks Did It

Time for Things

Time for Things

       

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Tolstoy Therapy

20 of the best modern novels of the 21st century

I only share books I know and love. If you buy through my links, I may earn a commission (learn more).

best modern novels of the 21st century

I’ve been thinking a lot about classic books lately. I recently shared my list of the best classic books everyone should read , but as I put this together, I kept asking myself one question…

What about the best novels of the 21st century ?

I’ve been chipping away at this list for a few weeks now, including the best contemporary novels from the last twenty years that I think everyone should read.

These are the modern books I think will become classics (if they aren’t already), including Pulitzer Prize-winners, one-of-a-kind graphic novels, and wonderfully immersive multi-generational novels .

Add these to your reading list, turn it into a modern classic books bucket list, or just pick one to escape into next. Enjoy!

The best novels of the 21st century that are becoming modern classics

The overstory by richard powers (2018).

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Overstory   is a Pulitzer Prize winner and, at least in my eyes, one of the best novels of the 21st century so far. It’s a paean to the vast, interconnected, and magnificently intricate world that we depend on in so many ways: the world of trees.

In this stunning and ambitious novel, Richard Powers weaves together interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Not only do I think Cutting for Stone  is one of the best modern classic novels, but it’s also one of my top book recommendations if you  don’t know what to read . It starts fairly slowly, but soon becomes an incredible book that’s just as fantastic as Verghese’s 2023 bestseller The Covenant of Water .

Cutting for Stone is the story of Marion and Shiva Stone, twin brothers bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, coming of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Kafka on the Shore is Murakami at his best : weird, escapist, and still so perceptive about what it feels like to be human. It’s one of my favourite  books to get lost in  and a real modern classic.

Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the life of fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura, who has run away from home, and an aging man called Nakata.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

A Little Life   has become known as  the book with content warnings .  Don’t read  A Little Life  and expect an easy read with a happy ending. But I still think it’s a book that offers beauty and – at times – a glimmer of hope.

Hanya Yanagihara’s modern classic novel is a group coming-of-age story about four bright and ambitious men who meet at college as randomly assigned roommates and remain crucial parts of each other’s lives.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

All the Light We Cannot See book

All the Light We Cannot See  nails the perfect formula for a story. It’s a heartbreaking book about love and life that will change the way you see the world .

As a  New York Times  bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of WWII.

Circe by Madeline Miller (2018)

Circe book cover

One of the best modern novels I’ve read this decade, Circe  is Madeline Miller’s  captivating and defiant reimagining of the daughter of Helios and the ocean nymph Perse.

After unleashing her strange and destructive powers, Circe is banished to the island of Aiaia. But she won’t be left in peace for long, and it’s for an unexpected visitor, the mortal Odysseus, whom Circe will risk everything. If you love reading this, you can also get excited for the  HBO Max adaptation of  Circe .

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

How could I ignore Donna Tartt in a collection of modern classic books? The Goldfinch is Donna Tartt’s 2013 masterpiece of love, loss, and obsession . In this Pulitzer Prize winner, a young New Yorker grieving the loss of his mother is dragged into a gritty underworld of art and wealth.

(Note: At Donna Tartt’s usual cadence of a book a decade, we should be expecting another book soon… at least in theory.)

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (2000)

Book_Prodigal Summer

Although Demon Copperhead won Kingsolver the Pulitzer, it’s Prodigal Summer that I always recommend. Crafted with luscious prose and depicting an abundant summer in bloom , Prodigal Summer  is one of the best modern novels set in nature .

The beautifully written story has three parallel plots, all focused around a farming community in the Appalachians. This trio must  start afresh , discover who they really are, and have faith in new beginnings.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Piranesi is the story of a man who inhabits a mysterious and labyrinthine world of halls and chambers, known as the House, and spends his days exploring its many rooms and tending to its needs.

Susanna Clarke’s unique blend of fantasy and mystery , combined with gorgeous poetic language, has made this novel a true modern classic.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

With her signature combination of cultural commentary and introspective reflection, Alison Bechdel is one of the most significant voices in contemporary queer and feminist literature of the 21st century. (She’s also the name behind the Bechdel Test .)

Bechdel’s graphic novel, Fun Home , is one of the best books of the 21st century, innovatively using the graphic novel format to tell a deeply personal story that explores themes of family, identity, and the nature of memory.

11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

If you ask book lovers for their can’t-put-down book recommendations , you’ll probably get bored of hearing  11/22/63 . But it really is fantastically gripping.

When the world lost President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a country changed. But here, Stephen King asks – in his characteristic gripping way – what if someone could change it back?

That person turns out to be Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Maine, whose friend and owner of the local diner, Al, lets him in on a secret. He shares that his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958, where every turn leads to a troubled loner hatching a plan.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Pachinko  is a modern masterpiece – and absolutely one of the best books of the 21st century so far. This  five-hundred-page epic  about multiple generations of a Korean immigrant family (and their changing fortunes) spans their homeland, Japan, and the US.

I re-read  Pachinko  in time for the Apple TV adaptation and found so much to fall in love with all over again. It’s so raw and compulsively readable – and a recommendation with one of the highest satisfaction rates for people who  don’t know what to read .

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Not only is The Kite Runner one of the most popular books of the twenty-first century, but it’s also one of the most emotional books you’ll ever read. In fact, you’ll probably never forget it .

This is Khaled Hosseini’s story of Amir, a young boy from Kabul, and his relationship with his friend and servant, Hassan, against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

I could choose several novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as the best modern classic books. But if I had to pick just one, I’d recommend Americanah , her striking 2013 story of two Nigerians making their way in the US and the UK.

Ngozi Adichie’s modern bestseller raises universal questions of race , belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

My Brilliant Friend is one of the best portrayals of female friendship in fiction , as seen through the lens of Elena and Lila, who grow up in a working-class neighborhood in Naples in the 1950s.

Read this modern classic for lyrical prose, emotional complexities, and a vivid look at the social and cultural milieu of post-war Italy.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Normal People is the classic modern (and very dysfunctional) love story . It will make you want to scream at its characters, but if you’re anything like me, you can probably recognise something of yourself in them. Sally Rooney’s bestseller should be required reading for twentysomethings .

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Brooklyn is one of the few modern novels I was required to read (in this case, as part of a modern Irish literature university module) that became one of my favourite books.

Colm Tóibín’s transatlantic story is one of the best modern novels about home and belonging , as well as a powerful exploration of how those notions – alongside our identity – are challenged the moment we leave our homeland to live abroad. Now in 2024, you can look forward to the much-awaited sequel, Long Island , in May.

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

As one of the most influential young adult novels ever written, Noughts & Crosses is Malorie Blackman’s groundbreaking exploration of race, identity, and social injustice through the lens of a dystopian alternate reality.

The book tells the story of Sephy, a “Cross”, and Callum, a “Nought”, who fall in love in a society where the racial power dynamic is reversed from that of our world.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The first person to win the Booker Prize for two novels in a trilogy (!), Hilary Mantel was a literary giant . Any of the books in the Thomas Cromwell series can be classed as modern classic books – or the best historical fiction of all time .

With masterful storytelling and meticulous research to begin the trilogy, Wolf Hall is Hilary Mantel’s impeccably crafted tale of Thomas Cromwell’s rise to become one of the most powerful men in the court of King Henry VIII.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Homeg o ing  is Yaa Gyasi’s powerful multi-generational novel that follows the lives of two half-sisters born in the eighteenth century, Effia and Esi, and their descendants across eight generations in Ghana and America .

As one sister marries an Englishman and leads a life of comfort, the other sister is captured and sold into a very different life. With outstanding prose, this extraordinary novel illuminates America’s troubled history and legacy today.

The best modern books of the 90s that are now classics

Northern lights by philip pullman (1995).

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

You can argue that Northern Lights isn’t the best book in the trilogy, but it’s where His Dark Materials all begins for Lyra Belacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon.

With imaginative world-building, complex characters, and thought-provoking explorations of freedom, authority, and morality, Philip Pullman crafted one of the greatest modern classics.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (1993)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

If you loved  The Handmaid’s Tale , read  Parable of the Sower  next. Octavia E. Butler wrote about race and gender at a time when science fiction was almost exclusively the domain of men, and crafted a world that’s eerily similar to our own.

In this influential modern classic, the badass  strong woman protagonist  is a teenager who spends most of the story disguised as a man while the world around her crumbles.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

The Secret History  is Donna Tartt’s bestselling modern classic with dark academia vibes, centered around a group of isolated classic students at an elite New England college.

If you want to nerd out as you read this cult favourite, I’ve compiled a list of  the 30+ books mentioned in  The Secret History .

Looking for more of the best books for your reading list? I share some of the greatest novels of all time in these lists:

  • 30 best books of all time for your bucket list (classics + modern)
  • 10 of the best multi-generational novels to immerse yourself in
  • 20 of the best classic books to read in your lifetime [my must-read list]
  • 12 of the best classics that are actually easy to read

Lucy Fuggle is a professional writer, reader, and creator of Tolstoy Therapy. Drawing on her love for books and a degree in English Literature, she started Tolstoy Therapy in 2012 and has shared the most feel-good, cozy, and beautiful books for over a decade. After working as a content specialist with leading companies for nearly 10 years, she now focuses on her own websites and books ( Mountain Song , Your Life in Bloom , and Simple Business ). She grew up in England and now lives in Denmark with her husband. For more book recommendations, subscribe to Tolstoy Therapy's weekly email to inspire your reading list.

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The Sunday Times 50 Best Crime and Thriller Books

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February 11, 2015

The Sunday Times has pulled together the best 50 crime and thriller novels of the past five years. From Lee Child to Gillian Flynn, Gerald Seymour to C J Sansom, these are the books that have made our hearts race and our pulses jump.

Split into the twenty-five best crime books and twenty-five best thrillers, the list below has been compiled by The Sunday Times ‘s regular crime fiction and thriller reviewers, Joan Smith and John Dugdale .

See the list online at www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/book , or you can view it on their digital special edition which has the first chapters of all the books on the list.

We wanted to celebrate this fantastic selection of crime books and have collected them together here for you to enjoy, in no particular order.

Best crime books:

The Vault cover

The Vault by Ruth Rendell

The Ghost Riders of Ordebec cover

The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas

Hypothermia cover

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason

1. The Vault by Ruth Rendell Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but, for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything.

2. Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas Commissaire Adamsberg takes a case far outside of his jurisdiction: the disappearances of evildoers who have been visited by a band of ghostly horsemen.

3. Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam at her holiday cottage. At first sight, it appears like a straightforward case of suicide. Maria had never recovered from the death of her mother two years previously and she had a history of depression. But then the friend who found her body approaches Detective Erlendur .

The Collini Case cover

The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach

Darkside cover

Darkside by Belinda Bauer

Mercy cover

Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen

4. The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach For thirty-four year, Fabrizio Collini has worked diligently for Mercedes Benz. He is a quiet and respectable person until the day he visits one of Berlin’s most luxurious hotels and kills an innocent man. Young attorney Caspar Leinen takes the case.

5. Darkside by Belinda Bauer It is freezing mid-winter on Exmoor, and in a close-knit community where no stranger goes unnoticed, a local woman has been found murdered in her bed. This is local policeman Jonas Holly’s first murder investigation. But he is distracted by anonymous letters, accusing him of failing to do his job.

6. Mercy / The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen Copenhagen detective Carl Morck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes . His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she’s dead. Everyone says it’s a waste of time. He thinks they’re right. The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy.

Bleeding Heart Square cover

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

Blue Lightning cover

Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves

The Frozen Dead cover

The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier

7. Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor 1934, London. Into the decaying cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square steps aristocratic Lydia Langstone fleeing an abusive marriage. However, unknown to Lydia, a dark mystery haunts the place.

8. Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves Murder can strike more than once…

9. The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier When it comes to crime, France is the new Scandinavia – an isolated, snow-bound valley and a series of strange murders set the scene in this gripping French bestseller.

Heartstone cover

Heartstone by C J Sansom

The House at Sea's End  cover

The House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths

The Death of Lucy Kyte cover

The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson

10. Heartstone by C J Sansom It’s Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII’s invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel…

2. The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths Strongly plotted, fast-paced crime fiction with a quirky, engaging heroine – third in a terrific series featuring forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway.

12. The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson When bestselling crime author Josephine Tey inherits a remote Suffolk cottage from her godmother, it comes full of secrets.

Splinter cover

Splinter by Sebastian Fitzek

Bed of Nails  cover

Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne

Cell 8 cover

Cell 8 by Roslund & Hellstrom

13. Splinter by Sebastian Fitzek What if we could permanently erase our most terrifying experiences from memory? And what could go wrong?

14. Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne The side of Paris the tourists don’t see…

15. Cell 8 by Roslund & Hellstrom A capital crime. A chilling conspiracy.

Thirteen Hours cover

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

Dogstar Rising cover

Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal

Black Water Rising cover

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

16. Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer They killed her best friend. Now they are chasing Rachel Anderson through the streets of Cape Town. The young tourist doesn’t dare trust anyone – except her father, back home in America.

17. Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal The launch of a major new detective series set in modern-day Cairo – moving between its labyrinthine back streets, and its shining towerblocks – and featuring Makana, an exiled Sudanese private investigator, escaping his own troubled past.

18. Black Water Rising by Attica Locke On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start.

Someone to Watch Over Me cover

Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Frozen Moment cover

Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder

Critical Mass  cover

Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky

19. Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdadottir Chilling Icelandic crime from the internationally bestselling author of Last Rituals and Ashes to Dust .

20. Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder One cold morning in December, in a small rural town on the Swedish coast, Ake Melkersson is on his way to work when his car breaks down. Luckily he spots a garage nearby, but as he approaches he realises something is wrong.

21. Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky The sixteenth V.I. Warshawski thriller from one of America’s greatest female crime writers, combining contemporary issues, the fight against injustice and fast-paced suspense.

August Heat cover

August Heat by Andrea Camilleri

Hour of the Wolf cover

Hour of the Wolf by Hakan Nesser

The Night of the Mi'raj cover

The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoe Ferraris

22. August Heat by Andrea Camilleri The tenth novel in Camilleri’s engrossing mystery series featuring the irrepressible Inspector Montalbano.

23. Hour of the Wolf by Hakan Nesser The master of Swedish crime fiction returns with the winner of the prestigious Scandinavian Glass Key Award.

24. Night of the Mi’raj by Zoe Ferraris A compelling page-turner with a wonderful central character, which also gives a fascinating insight into the closed world of Saudi Arabia.

W is for Wasted cover

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

25. W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton Two dead bodies changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. The other was on the beach six weeks later. No identification only a slip of paper with Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone’s name and number in his pocket.

Best thriller books:

An Officer and a Spy cover

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

A Delicate Truth cover

A Delicate Truth by John le Carré

Gone cover

Gone by Mo Hayder

1. An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris Paris, 1895: an army officer, Georges Picquart, watches a convicted spy, Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of a baying crowd. Dreyfus is exiled for life to Devil’s Island; Picquart is promoted to run the intelligence unit that tracked him down.

2. A Delicate Truth by John le Carré A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain’s most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend.

3. Gone by Mo Hayder Night is falling as murder detective Jack Caffrey arrives to interview the distraught victim of a car-jacking. What he hears horrifies him. The car was taken by force, and on the back seat was a passenger. An eleven-year-old girl. Who is still missing. Before long the jacker starts to communicate with the police.

61 Hours cover

61 Hours by Lee Child

Ghostman cover

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

Before I Go To Sleep cover

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

4. 61 Hours by Lee Child It’s winter in South Dakota. Blowing snow, icy roads, a tired driver. A bus skids and crashes and is stranded in a gathering storm. Jack hitched a ride in the back of the bus. A life without baggage has many advantages. And crucial disadvantages too, when it means facing the arctic cold without a coat. But he’s equipped for the rest of his task.

5. Ghostman by Roger Hobbs In a daring operation, two crooks-for-hire rob an Atlantic City casino. But their heist goes horribly wrong, and only one of them makes it out alive.

6. Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love – all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine’s life.

Alex cover

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre

Truth cover

Truth by Peter Temple

Dead Lions cover

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

7. Alex by Pierre Lemaitre In kidnapping cases, the first few hours are vital. Police Commandant Camille Verhoeven has nothing to go on: no suspect, no leads, no hope. But as he begins to understand more about Alex, he starts to realise she is no ordinary victim…

8. Truth by Peter Temple A teenage prostitute is found with her neck broken in an apartment in a wealthy area, three men are found tortured and murdered… Head of Homicide Stephen Villani faces the moral decline of a society and of himself.

9. Dead Lions by Mick Herron When a Cold War-era colleague is murdered far from his usual haunts, a team of disgraced MI5 spies under the leadership of irascible Jackson Lamb uncovers a shadowy tangle of secrets that lead to a man who hides his dangerous powers behind a false identity.

The Expats cover

The Expats by Chris Pavone

A Deniable Death cover

A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

A Foreign Country cover

A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming

10. The Expats by Chris Pavone Kate Moore is an expat mum, transplanted from Washington D. C. In the cobblestoned streets of Luxembourg, her days are filled with play dates and coffee mornings, her weekends spent in Paris or skiing in the Alps. Kate is also guarding a secret – one so momentous it could destroy her neat little expat life.

11. A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour An epic novel of high courage and low cunning, of life and death in the moral maze of the post-9/11 world.

12. A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming Winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year.

Doctor Sleep cover

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Gone Girl cover

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Last Child cover

The Last Child by John Hart

13. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King The instantly riveting Doctor Sleep picks up the story of the now middle-aged Dan, working at a hospice in rural New Hampshire, and the very special twelve-year old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

14. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn Nick Dunne’s wife Amy suddenly disappears on the morning of their 5th anniversary. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. Then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

15. The Last Child by John Hart A thirteen year old boy turns vigilante to investigate the abduction of his twin sister.

The Dispatcher cover

The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn

Natchez Burning cover

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

Norwegian by Night cover

Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller

16. The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn The phone rings. It’s your daughter. She’s been dead for four months.

17. Natchez Burning by Greg Iles The stunning new Penn Cage thriller in which a shocking murder from the 1960s finds new life – and victims – in the present.

18. Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller He will not admit it to Rhea and Lars – never, of course not – but Sheldon can’t help but wonder what it is he’s doing here… Eighty-two years old, and recently widowed, Sheldon Horowitz has grudgingly moved to Oslo, with his grand-daughter and her Norwegian husband.

The Carrier cover

The Carrier by Sophie Hannah

The Lock Artist cover

The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Innocent cover

Innocent by Scott Turow

19. The Carrier by Sophie Hannah An overnight plane delay is bad. Having to share your hotel room with a stranger is worse. But that is only the beginning of Gaby Struther’s problems. Gaby has never met Lauren Cookson. So how does Lauren know so much about her? How does she know that the love of Gaby’s life has been accused of murder? Why is she telling her that he is innocent? And why is she so terrified of Gaby?

20. The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton Prize-winning crime author Steve Hamilton’s hugely commercial mainstream breakout tells the extraordinary story of a safe-cracker trying to unlock the key to his past.

21. Innocent by Scott Turow The eagerly anticipated sequel to the huge bestselling landmark legal thriller Presumed Innocent .

Dare Me cover

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

The Litigators cover

The Litigators by John Grisham

Bad Monkey cover

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiassen

22. Dare Me by Megan Abbott There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls. Coach said that once. She said it like she knew, and understood.

23. The Litigators by John Grisham The Litigators is a tremendously entertaining romp, filled with the kind of courtroom strategies, theatrics and suspense that have made John Grisham the world’s favourite storyteller.

24. Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen Andrew Yancy–late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office–has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner.

Djibouti cover

Djibouti by Elmore Leonard

25. Djibouti by Elmore Leonard ‘The 85-year-old writer reminds us just why his critical standing is so high … Leonard has found his mojo again, and has us in the palm of his hand’ – The Independent .

Is your favourite book in there? How many have you read? Let us know!

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43 Comments

Quinton Jardine writes amazing books. Mo Hayder is absolutely awesome too.

Tana French!

Tana French should be on here. Complex characters, exciting plots and beautifully written

Barbara Nadel, Kate Ellis, Aline Templeton, Christopher Fowler, P. D. James, though Allingham is still re-readable.

Someone suggested L J Ross – really, seriously? I made the mistake of reading one, utterly dreadful, makes the average Mills & Boon look like Shakespeare. I can’t think of a worse written book or one with so many clichés or such a ludicrous ‘plot’.

I loved reading through everyone’s comments – made my list of things to read even longer!!

Good list but no Stuart MacBride and m j Aldridge , they are great reads . Will try go through this list though .

No Donna Leon? Her Commissario Brunetti is the best.

Mr Mercedes is excellent. Julia Wong

I’ve only read 4 of these,looking forward to reading more

Henning Mankel , my favorite and I have read everything he wrote. I cannot fibd an author to match his writing. John Silva is my second favorite and surprused he is not listed nor is Jo Nesbo.

I don’t see any LJ Ross books on this list. Her DCI Ryan series are an addictive read.

Angela Marsons Kim Stone series is excellent.

yes i agree the best crime book for me was..steamboat Barry on amazon

Very good information. From Belgium.

Great list I have read all available Elly Griffiths I like Charles Todd and all so Diana Gabaldon and all sorts of other books. I look forward to some recommendations.

No Kolymsky Heights?

I would agree. I have read it 3 times and bought it for all of my friends!

Has anyone heard of Rachel Caine who wrote Stillhouse Lake? It’s quite gripping.

Great list. Includes my favourites Indridason (no. 1) , Ferraris, Bilal, John Hart, I loved all Gillian Flynn except “Gone Girl”, & Jussi Adler-Olsen. I would include Michael Robotham, John Verdon, Jo Nesbo, Michelle Rowe, Hjorth Rosenfeldt, Karin Slaughter, Ragnar Jonasson and Maurizio De Giovanni.

No Ian .Rankin! Can’t believe it. Looks like some good ones though.

How about Peter May ?

Look at a new author on Amazon Kindle Frank Kaye. It’s perhaps not the best ever written book but the plot and the detail is a gripping read.

I tend to stick to certain authors, but this list wll encourage me to try others. MJ Arlidge and Michael Robotham are my favourites, always reliable.

Only read 5 but now can look out for others.unfortunately here in Zimbabwe we are limited to the quantity and choice which is imported. I live in a retirement village and “I AM PILGRIM” was sent to me by my daughter in Singapore.

I am Pilgrim is one of the best book I have ever read. Period.

Tess Gerristen, Playing with fire

I have been reading Hidden Casino a Ryan James Casino crime thriller gripping read on amazon kindle

Where is Mr Mercedes for God’s sake?! That should surely be on the list!

Hi Fionn! Mr Mercedes was published after this list was created – but we love it too!

Jo Nesbo. I have read many but the king of crime is Nesbo with Harry Hole series. Never dull!!

I can’t believe not one of Ian Rankin’s books are included in this list. Has nobody even read him? What about the Inspector Rutledge novels? Can’t remember author right now, but to me, these 2 are the best of the best. But I am going to start taking your list into consideration – maybe I will prove myself wrong.

All good but no James Ellroy? He is a total master.

no James Lee Burke or Philip Kerr. I don’t think so

No Agatha Christie! This must be a biased list based on snob values.. Also, what about the two Peters, James and Robinson; Val McDermid. I could go on and on. Very disappointing to someone who has read thousands on crime novels in my 70 years.

These books are just from the past five years so unfortunately Agatha Christie couldn’t qualify. When we do a top 50 crime novels of all time, I’m sure she’d feature very heavily. Can’t say why the others weren’t included – the list was created by The Sunday Times.

SORRY MO HAYDER IS ON THE LIST BUT TRY JTELLISON

I CANT FIND SHARON BOLTON THE QUEEN OF CRIME MO HAYDER XXX M R HALL ?????

i can’t find NicciFrench can you tell me way? dick Olsthoorn utrecht, The Netherlands

Especially Bernard Minier&Camilla Ceder

Great list. I’ve read some. Can’t wait to read the others.

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The 50 bestselling cookbooks of the century

They’re the books that have changed the way we eat over the past two decades. but which one sold the most copies.

Which book has claimed the top spot?

H ow we cook and eat has changed a lot since the millennium. Veggie and vegan cuisine has entered the mainstream, everyone owns a wok, and we’re getting our recipes from an enthusiastic HIIT instructor.

Nielsen has compiled a list of all the cookbooks which sold over 100,000 copies in the 21st century, and the stats tell a story — but which chef comes out top?

50. The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet Recipe Book Dr Clare Bailey (2016, 302,650)

49. Mary Berry’s Baking Bible Mary Berry (2009, 305,174)

48. Jamie’s Kitchen Jamie Oliver ( 2002, 307,997 )

Lorraine Pascale

47. Home Cooking Made Easy Lorraine Pascale ( 2011, 309,565 )

46. Pinch of Nom Comfort Food Kay Featherstone & Kate Allinson (2021, 311,184)

45. Nigella Bites Nigella Lawson

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The 21 Best Novels of the 21st Century

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Blog – Posted on Friday, Jan 18

The 21 best novels of the 21st century.

The 21 Best Novels of the 21st Century

When you think of the best novels of the 21st century, what are the first titles that come to mind? Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ? Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides? Perhaps The Corrections , or The Road , or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ? Those are some great novels, but they also all fit into a mold — heavy dramas tackling themes of family, love, conflict, and hate, written by critically-lauded white male authors. In other words, the same as nearly every other contender for title of the Great American Novel .

Make no mistake, those are indeed some of the best novels of the 21st century. But there are many others out there that are being overlooked, either because they are deceptively straightforward or wildly experimental, too commercial, or not commercial enough.

Some of these titles you might never have heard of, while others have spawned billion-dollar franchises. But at their core, they are all the same: a collection of words on paper telling a story that became one of the 21 best novels of the 21st century.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great classics out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized book recommendation  😉

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1. 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami

As the first decade of the 21st century came to a close, the Japanese master of magical realism Haruki Marukami published 1Q84 — a novel that can only be defined as the Eastern version of 1984 , but on acid. Marukami’s novel starts in 1984, when a woman named Aomame assassinates a guest at a glamorous hotel. Soon after, however, she faces a reality check — quite literally, as she finds herself in an alternate, dystopian Tokyo she calls 1Q84. Hundreds of pages long and published in three separate volumes, this epic story defies categorization. But it fills one category perfectly: that of a Great Novel.

2. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

This eerie, mystical depiction of violence and death in Juárez was published posthumously — its influential Chilean author Robert Bolaño died a year before it was released, and its plot is a clear meditation on mortality. 2666 follows five different threads, all of which seem initially disconnected except for their relation to hundreds of unsolved homicides that targeted impoverished women in Juárez. However, there turns out to be a lot more in common between a literary critic, a professor of philosophy, an American journalist, and a mysterious writer than meets the eye… and things take a turn for the cosmic. But once the dust settles, only one story remains: 2666 , a massive and tragic accomplishment, and easily one of the best novels of the 21st century.

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3. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

These days, more people “watch Game of Thrones ” than “read A Song of Ice and Fire ,” the series of epic fantasy novels that the popular TV show was based on. But the books have garnered a ravenous fanbase themselves, ever since the first installment came out in the ‘90s. In a series with hundreds of characters scattered across an entire medieval world, it’s probably hard for those fans to agree on much, but most will tell you that of the five books published so far, A Storm of Swords is the best.

A spoiled prince and his estranged grandfather compete for the highest throne of the kingdom Westeros. Meanwhile, the lord of a powerful northern city declares independence and threatens to secede. And if that weren’t enough, a band of natives from outside the kingdom’s walls launches an attack on Westeros, with only the scarce Night Watch in place to protect it. Like the rest of the series, A Storm of Swords is told from multiple perspectives following every significant character’s individual plot lines. This novel just happens to cover the best ones.

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

What is it with these great novels telling loosely connected stories? This Pulitzer-Prize-winning work from Jennifer Egan could almost be considered a collection of short stories if the author herself didn’t insist it was a novel. But whether it’s a kleptomaniac confessing her vice to a therapist, a night of partying in NYC that ends in disaster, or an ill-fated gig for the punk band The Flaming Dildos, the 13 chapters of A Visit from the Goon Squad do eventually amalgamate into a single story: one of the connections made and lost in the world of rock and roll.

5. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

At last, a novel with a fairly straightforward plot! Indeed, the classic hero’s journey at the heart of Gaiman’s modern fantasy might actually be part of why the book is often overlooked when listing the best novels of the 21st century. Here’s how the journey unfolds: The protagonist, Shadow, is released from prison early to mourn the shocking death of his wife. With nothing left to lose, he falls in with Mr. Wednesday, a grifter and, it turns out, a god. If that sounds like pulpy paperback fiction, it’s because Gaiman takes as much influence from dime novels as he does from the classics, fusing the two into one truly great novel.

6. The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan

Amy Tan has received nearly equal amounts of acclaim and criticism since the publication of The Joy Luck Club in 1989, but whether you love or hate her work, there’s no denying she did what she does best in The Bonesetter’s Daughter .

Ruth is a successful ghostwriter and first-generation Chinese immigrant supporting her ailing mother Lu Ling, whose erratic behavior and belief in spirits has only increased with her dementia. Ruth eventually translates her mother’s autobiography, uncovering the secrets that haunted Lu Ling’s life, as well as her own.

7. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

British-Nigerian author Helen Oyeyemi only started her publishing career in 2004, and she already has a handful of classic novels, stories, and plays under her belt. But none are quite so dazzling as White is for Witching .

A coming-of-age ghost story, this book follows Miri, a young woman with a rare eating disorder, as she moves to a freewheeling haunted house with her newly-widowed father. But when they hire a Yoruba housekeeper who practices juju in her spare time, the supernatural becomes a benevolent presence in the story, shining a spotlight on the real malicious forces in the world: racial violence, illness, displacement, and xenophobia.

8. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz may have taken a fall from grace this past year, but that only makes his uncomfortably personal examination of toxic masculinity in this novel that much more captivating. Oscar Wao is an overweight child whose greatest fear in life is that he’ll die a virgin. The lengths he goes to avoid that in his “brief, wondrous life” are alternatively shocking, nauseating, and gutting. But as he travels everywhere from New Jersey to the Dominican Republic in pursuit of a masculine ideal, Díaz leaves in his wake a rumination on oppression and sexual identity that may serve as something of a confession, too.

9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

There are essentially two novels at play in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time : a classic, Sherlock-Holmes-inspired murder mystery for adults and a heartwarming coming-of-age story for children. Maybe that’s the reason it has found success with both demographics, and is known as one of the best books of all time . Or maybe it’s simply because of the singular narrative at the center.

Christopher Boone, a teenager on the spectrum, investigates the death of a dog impaled on a garden fork. While on the “case,” however, he unravels a different mystery: that of his own family and childhood. By treating Christopher’s autism as more than just another procedural plot device, Haddon wrote one of the century’s definitive novels on one of the century’s defining phenomena.

10. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

It’s hardly been a year since its 2017 publication, but Exit West is already one for the ages. A young couple emigrate from a mysterious, civil-war-torn country through a series of doors that teleport them all over the globe. Like Monsters Inc. meets Salt Houses , this magical realist mediation on love, home, displacement, and survival will undoubtedly go down as the quintessential novel on the refugee crisis, and one of the best novels of the 21st century to boot.

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

The series that spawned seven novels, ten films (and counting), four amusement parks, two Broadway plays, and one author richer than the Queen of England already had three excellent novels to its name by the turn of the century. So, it’s easy to forget that in 2000, Harry Potter was still just another great young adult trilogy. That all changed when Harry Potter’s name flew out of the Goblet of Fire, forcing him to compete in the magical interscholastic sporting event known as the Triwizard Tournament. If you’re the one person in the world who has yet to read it, we won’t spoil it for you… but, predictably, things get extracurricular.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was bigger than the previous three novels in almost every way — length, scope, and acclaim. The first movie adaptation dropped the next year, and then it was off to the races. But with the publication of Goblet of Fire , the franchise’s fantastical fate was already sealed.

12. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Not every great YA novel of the 21st century hit it big like Harry Potter — though not for lack of trying. People have been attempting to adapt Rick Riordan’s mythology-meets-coming-of-age tale The Lightning Thief for years, be it to film or stage musical . Percy Jackson is your average, ADHD 12-year-old, sent to a different remand school each year by his mother where trouble nevertheless always finds him. Only lately, it has started to take a very different form: satyrs, magical swords, and Furies straight from the Underworld. Whisked off to a mysterious summer camp, Percy finds out that his absent father might actually be a Greek God… and he’s not the only one.

With a story like that, it’s no wonder Hollywood has tried again and again to make The Lightning Thief happen. But so far, it’s been to no avail — maybe because it simply works so well as a novel that no adaptation will ever quite measure up.

13. Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel by George Saunders

After decades of writing short stories, George Saunders finally released his debut novel in 2017… and it’s a doozy. Lincoln in the Bardo takes place over the course of one evening in the as Abraham Lincoln’s late son Willie passes into the afterlife and the president mourns the loss of a child. Saying much more would spoil this wildly inventive work of fiction, but the idea that the bardo (the Buddhist concept also known as “limbo”) contains ghosts of those “disfigured by desires they failed to act upon while alive” is especially poignant in the context of this novel that Saunders had conceived for twenty years before finally deciding to write it.

14. Looking for Alaska by John Green

There’s a reason this book regularly beats out Of Mice and Men , Fahrenheit 451 , and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on lists of books most commonly challenged or banned at schools. Ask many parents, and they’ll tell you why: this young adult novel simply isn’t for young adults. Miles Halter transfers to a boarding school in Alabama, quickly falling in with the troublemaking crowd (and falling in love with the lead troublemaker, Alaska). Skipping school, playing pranks, smoking cigarettes, suicide — name a taboo of adolescence, and it’s covered in Looking for Alaska . But that’s exactly what makes this coming-of-age novel so authentic. It is, quite simply, The Catcher in the Rye of the 21st century.

15. Mother’s Milk by Edward St. Aubyn

The fourth novel in the heart wrenching, almost-autobiographical series Patrick Melrose barely qualifies as a novel. Change a few names, pull apart a few composite characters, and you’d have a precise memoir of a final member from the old British elite generation. Edward St. Aubyn’s fictional avatar Patrick, the great-grandson of a baron, never had to worry financially in his youth — his struggles came instead at the hands of his atrociously abusive parents and the life of addiction and self-destruction that followed. But now, married and with two children, he returns to his childhood estate to care for his negligent mother as she squanders the rest of her fortune on an evangelical Ponzi scheme.

The details of St. Aubyn’s life depicted in Mother’s Milk aren’t as immensely disquieting as the earlier entries in the series, such as the horrific childhood abuse portrayed in Never Mind or the prolonged drug binge that comprises Bad News . But as a rumination on hereditary trauma and generational change, it stands alone.

16. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pigs with human brains. Men with glowing genitalia. A man named Snowman. In a dystopian future ravaged by rampant genetic engineering, he appears to be the last human alive, starving and alone but for a group of primitive humanoids. Set in both the past and future — before and after the collapse of a society run by monopolist corporations — there’s a lot about this novel that could categorize it as “science fiction.” Maybe that’s why it’s often overlooked when discussing 21st century classics. But the reason this novel stands apart from the dystopian fiction pack is the very same reason Margaret Atwood would push back against that label: like The Handmaid’s Tale , nothing is included in the novel that “we can’t yet do or begin to do.”

17. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead became a household name in 2016 with his unfortunately timely novel The Underground Railroad , and made a huge impact with 2019's The Nickel Boys . But in 2009, he published Sag Harbor , which is his true claim to fame. Tackling the African-American experience through a far more subdued approach than his later books, this novel tells the story of Benji Cooper, a black teen in a primarily-white vacation neighborhood who reinvents himself to fit in — a pressure that readers of all races can no doubt relate to.

18. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

When it comes to unfortunately timely novels, this winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize is the definite standout. This biting satire concerns an unnamed protagonist who attempts to reintroduce segregation to his suburban LA neighborhood so that he can employ a slave to man his weed/watermelon farm. Despite the excellent, exaggerated set-up and the dark humorous prose, it’s the serious, urgent topics underlining the narrative that earn this novel a place on this list.

19. Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

This superhero satire by Austin Grossman goes unsung for a number of reasons — an oversaturated market, the shadow of his brother Lev (author of The Magicians , the popular trilogy and television show), and the simple question of, “Who wants to read a book about superheroes?” But anyone who overlooks Soon I Will Be Invincible is missing out on a quintessential piece of superhero media of the 21st century.

The novel follows two protagonists: Fatale, a cyborg recently recruited to an Avengers-style super team, and Dr. Impossible, a Lex-Luthorian super genius recently imprisoned but plotting the next in an extensive series of attempts at world domination. In under 300 pages, Grossman manages to embrace nearly every aspect, trope, and era of superhero history. But, simultaneously, he creates his own world of gossip, grudges, and grief, and it’s one just as engrossing as any golden age comic book out there.

20. Swamplandia!  by Karen Russell

After the death of their mother, the three Bigtree children embark on a quest to find her ghost, while their father struggles to keep the family business open. The wrinkle is that said family business is an alligator wrestling amusement park — the eponymous “Swamplandia!” This stylish, wildly original blend of magical realism, dark comedy, Southern Gothic, and family drama tackles far deeper themes than its silly premise would suggest. But it’s Karen Russell’s immersive prose that leaves the long-lasting impression that the world of Swamplandia! is not so different from our own.

21. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is quite simply one of the most important authors of the 21st century, and she has a handful of titles to her name that could make this list. But her debut novel stands apart as a mission statement of sorts. The story at its center is fairly simple: two friends, one from England and the other from Bangladesh, return from to London from war and spend time in a pub. A lot of time in a pub. But this simple set-up allows Smith to use her abundant talents to explore nearly everything under the sun, from post-traumatic depression to religious dogma to Britain’s relationship with its former colonies. If there’s one novel that comes the closest to encapsulating the Western world at the turn of the century, it’s White Teeth .

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Out of the ordinary … Wangechi Mutu’s video The End of Eating Everything at In the Black Fantastic exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London, until 18 September.

Top 10 21st-century fantasy novels

In recent decades, the best world-building fiction has begun to shed its roots in European mythology in favour of new ideas challenging the limits of the real

A t the heart of every fantasy is something unreal, impossible, or at the very least, so extraordinary as to take us outside the universe we think we live in. Fantasy world-building surrounds those unreal things with recognisable furniture and plausible emotion, so that Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” can kick in. As writers from Tolkien to Pratchett have taught us, the task for both writers and readers is easier when the impossible involves motifs and storylines we recognise from oral narratives such as tales, legends and myths. That also ties most fantasy literature, up to the turn of the millennium, to European culture, because the myths we know are likely to be Greco-Roman or Norse; the tales, German or French or sometimes Scandinavian.

However, in this century, a new wave of fantasy challenges that European dominance. Writers of colour and writers from indigenous cultures use magical narratives to depict experiences and express viewpoints difficult to convey within the constraints of realism. One of the effects of fantasy is the way it forces us to consider the categories of the real, the possible and the ordinary – all the norms that fantasy violates. And, in particular, the new fantasy reveals how culture-bound those norms are. Non-European traditions mark off boundaries differently and include as natural entities things we might think of as supernatural. Out of those different ways of setting the limits of the possible and assigning meaning to the impossible come different versions of the fantastic.

The works I list here not only tell engaging stories set in vividly imagined worlds, they are also worth reading for the way their versions challenge our sense of the ordinary and the limits of the real.

1. The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson (2007) Caribbean Canadian writer Hopkinson is known for her science-fiction world-building, but she also excels at more intimate fantasies. The magic in this book involves the menopausal protagonist’s manifesting objects from her childhood as well as her encounter with a selkie child. The novel immerses readers in the sensory experience and social dynamics of its island setting, and its focus on the belated coming-of-age of a middle-aged woman challenges expectations about fantasy narratives.

2. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (2010) Like much of Okorafor’s work, this novel draws on her experiences as the child of Nigerian immigrants, hearing stories and spending time with extended family in Africa. Protagonist Onyesonwu, whose name translated from Igbo provides the book’s title, is the child of rape, fitting into neither of two societies but inheriting powers from both sides of her parentage. In a switch from the conventional “chosen hero” narrative, Onyewonsu ends up rewriting the prophecies and remaking her world. In this and other science fantasies, Okorafor helped to invent a form she calls Africanfuturism , which has been embraced by readers and emulated by a talented new generation of African and diasporic writers including Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.

3. Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (2011) Playwright and scholar Hairston pits Native and African American folklore against racism in this journey from the Jim Crow south to the beginnings of a Black movie industry at the Chicago World’s Fair. Stage magic converges with genuine conjuring to challenge violence and oppression. In a sequel, Will Do Magic for Small Change, Hairston follows her protagonists back to their African roots and forward into a future among artists, ghosts, and (surprisingly) aliens.

4. Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson (2012) Wilson was working as a journalist in Cairo during the Arab spring uprisings of the early 2010s. This World Fantasy award-winner combines computer hacking and Arabic mysticism in a dazzling tale of love, economic disparity, adventure, and the power of metaphor. Along the way, Wilson also satirises herself in the minor character of an American convert to Islam who is blind to most of the magic going on around her.

5. A Stranger in Ol ondria by Sofia Samatar (2013) In this gorgeously written tour of a complex secondary world, Samatar explores ghosts, culture clashes and the effect of written language on a purely oral culture, while also providing engaging characters and a rousing adventure story. The imagined world of the fiction reflects Samatar’s own immersion in multiple cultures as the daughter of a Somali immigrant and a scholar of Arabic literatures with teaching experience in Sudan and Egypt.

All the awards … NK Jemisin at New York Comic Con 2019.

6. The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin (2015) Jemisin won all the awards, and justly so, for the books of her Broken Earth trilogy, of which this is the first. The books might take place in a far future on a world that is not our Earth, but clearly they also connect with the here and now, with themes of climate change, environmental degradation, racial injustice and the burdens of the past. A daring second-person narration and a complex, admirable but not always likable hero make this book much more than the sum of its themes.

7. The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard (2015) Alternating between science fiction and fantasy, de Bodard has already amassed an impressive number of Nebula, Locus, and British Science Fiction Association awards. This novel is the beginning of a gothic fantasy series involving fallen angels and a war that has left Paris half in ruins and contaminated by magical pollution. The contamination reaches the depths of the Seine, where, unknown to most people (and other beings) on land, a community of Annamese, or Vietnamese, dragons has taken refuge. The series reflects the multi-racial politics and multicultural reality of contemporary European cities.

8. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020) Roanhorse caught the attention of the fantasy and science fiction community in 2017 with a satirical short story called Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience . She followed that up with a pair of science fantasies juxtaposing Diné legends on a post-apocalyptic landscape, and, in Black Sun and its sequels, has ventured into epic fantasy. Her fantasy world is a magical version of Meso-America without European invasion: its conflicts result from tensions within and between the factions and religious cults of the continent of Meridien.

9. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2020) With this book, Coates moved deftly from nonfiction to novel-writing. His story is set in the pre-civil war south but rarely uses the word “slave” to describe the people Coates calls Tasked. Rich historical detail conveys the terrible effect of the Task on everyone caught in the system, and especially young, gifted Hiram Walker. Walker’s own Task includes tending to the feckless legitimate son of the master, who is his half-brother. From his mother, Hiram has inherited an unpredictable magical gift of escape, the Water Dancing of the title. As he learns to harness this gift, he goes to work for the great Harriet Tubman. Like Octavia Butler in Kindred, Coates finds the horrors of slavery too overwhelming for mere realism: only the fantastic can take the reader into such a world.

10. A Master of Djinn by P Djèlí Clark (2021) Historian Clark departs from his studies of the American past in this magical alternate history set in a steampunk Cairo in the early 20th century. The novel is a mystery featuring a stubborn female detective taking on powerful human and non-human adversaries. The real interest is not so much in the plot as the characters’ interaction and the richly detailed setting. This Cairo is a meeting-place of east and west, north and south (one of the recurring themes is the racial profiling of Nubians and Abyssinians by the paler Egyptian aristocracy), past and present, science and magic, all deftly invoked in details of architecture, costume and custom.

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Why the Race to Replace George Santos Is So Close

The special house election in new york pits mazi pilip, who is running as a republican, against tom suozzi, a democrat..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”

Today, voters in New York will choose the successor to George Santos, the disgraced Republican who was expelled from Congress in December. Democrats would seem to have the advantage. Instead, it’s a dead heat.

My colleague, Nick Fandos, explains why and tells me how the results of the race will hold important clues for both parties come November.

It’s Tuesday, February 13.

So Nick, you’ve been following the race for the seat formerly occupied by George Santos. And setting aside Santos’s brief and kind of riveting congressional tenure, I’d like to start with the most basic question, which is, Why does this race over this one House seat on Long Island matter?

It’s a great question. Now, I’d start by saying, let’s not just so quickly race over George Santos. This was a guy whose yearlong embarrassment put this district on the map and, I think, left a lot of voters there really exacerbated.

I mean, it is probably the reason why you and I are talking right now.

That’s very true. But we’re also talking because this is a really special district. We’re talking about a slice of Queens and Long Island that is racially diverse, ethnically diverse, got people of all kinds of socioeconomic statuses. And as such, it’s the type of place that we see all over the country, where elections are probably going to be decided later this year for president and for control of the House of Representatives.

This area has swung back and forth a lot. So President Biden won this district by eight points in 2020, and then two years later, in 2022, George Santos was one of a handful of Republicans who flipped seats right here in New York that helped the Republican Party take the majority in the House.

I remember that. That was a big election that Republicans just had a wipeout in New York.

Yeah, so when Santos was expelled in December, this race becomes a really big deal for both parties. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. If the Democrats can win and flip this seat, they could narrow Republicans’ majority right now in the present at a time when they’re trying to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary or fund the government and make their life a lot more difficult.

But it also is a race that’s going to set the tone for the rest of 2024 and give the parties kind of an early preview of where the elections are headed. For all of those reasons, Democrats feel like this is a really good pickup opportunity for us.

And also, they’re coming out of DeSantis’ train crash, so it’s logical they would think that.

Right, exactly. But instead, as we head into election day today, we’re looking at a statistical dead heat.

And Nick, what’s your understanding of why the race is so close?

I think that there’s really two issues that have come to dominate this race above anything else. One of them is a big international issue that has a kind of particular local resonance, and that’s the war unfolding right now in Gaza. So this is one of the most Jewish districts in the country, and a lot of voters are looking very closely at both candidates and how they’re approaching this.

The other one is an issue that’s in headlines and conversations in Washington and all over the country right now. And that is the situation at the Southern border, where we’ve seen a historic influx of migrants trying to cross, and the Biden administration is struggling to figure out what to do about it.

OK, so let’s talk about the candidates and how they’re dealing with those issues. So introduce me to the Republican.

Right. So the Republican in this race is a woman named Mazi Pilip.

The future of our nation is at stake in this race for the third congressional district on February 13.

She’s a local part-time legislator in Nassau County with relatively little political experience. And this is shown on the campaign trail. She’s really not doing a lot of public events.

She doesn’t speak in an unscripted way. A lot of her positions, frankly, have been hard for us to hash out. But in this particular moment, she has a really remarkable personal story that I think she’s been able to kind of definitely use in the campaign.

I grew up in Israel. Israel, for me, a special place.

So she was actually born in Ethiopia and, as a young child, was airlifted to Israel, where she grew up —

I got my education. I served in the Israeli army, very proud.

— and served as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Wow, so she served in the military.

She did, yeah, and has family members who still live over there.

My family, my entire family, live in Israel. My nephews, as we speak, fighting the terrorists.

She married a Ukrainian-American doctor, moved to New York, and settled on Long Island. Yeah, and she said very explicitly that October 7 changed her in a very significant way.

For me, this is so personal, so painful. It propelled her to want to run in this race —

This is attack on the world. So we have to remember, we have to be strong, and Am Yisrael Chai. Thank you.

— to confront both what she sees as anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism creeping up all around the world and in American politics, particularly, she says, on the left of the Democratic Party.

And how does she present what she would do on Israel? I mean, who is she in terms of the policy stuff with Israel?

Yeah, so she is a very staunch defender of Israel. You wouldn’t be surprised. She doesn’t want to put any condition on American aid to Israel. She thinks a ceasefire is a deeply unjust solution.

She, in fact, has gone so far since October 7, that she now says a two-state solution — a Palestinian and Israeli state — is no longer even possible.

It should just all be Israel.

So that’s very different than President Biden’s position, for example.

That’s right. And it’s one of the few things that separates her from her Democratic opponent on this issue.

So tell me about her Democratic opponent. Who is he?

All right, everybody. Well, my name is Tom Suozzi, and I’m running for the United States Congress. [CROWD CHEERING]

So the Democrat in this race is Tom Suozzi. He’s a really well known Democrat locally. He’s been around for 30 years. He was the Nassau County Executive. And he was, in fact, a three-term member of Congress representing this very seat.

In my case, you’ve got somebody that you know, somebody who’s been around, somebody who’s got a proven record of getting things done.

Before he decided to run for governor, it didn’t go so well, and Santos got elected. And on this issue, he’s presented himself as as staunchly pro-Israel as Pilip is. He doesn’t want to condition aid. He’s against a ceasefire.

OK, I got to Israel about seven hours ago to show solidarity with our friends here in Israel and with our Jewish friends throughout the world.

And even in this incredibly short campaign, he took time out to fly over to Israel to prove his bona fides.

It reminds us that evil exists in the world. And we have to stand strong and defeat this terrorist operation.

OK, so clear why they’re both doing that, because it’s a very Jewish district. But why is this an issue in this district at all then? They’re both pretty similar.

I think there’s two parts to understanding this. One is the unique appeal of Pilip’s story. So remember how I said she was in the IDF? She’s also an Orthodox Jew. She has seven kids, who she says she worries about facing anti-Semitism in the United States. She has family in Israel.

Our brothers and sisters got attacked by a terrorist organization.

She has made concerns about this issue visceral in her campaign, a centerpiece of her campaign in a way that, frankly, I haven’t really seen another candidate do out on the trail.

I promise you the Jewish people, the state of Israel, the American people, will make you pay the price you deserve!

[CROWD CHEERING]

And so she’s basically giving Jewish voters who are uncomfortable or nervous in this moment, feel historically unsettled, an opportunity to vote for someone like them and somebody who is really going to go to Congress and be a voice. Like, nobody doubts that this is going to be a centerpiece of her identity in Congress. And at the same time, Suozzi is dealing with this other problem, which is not so much about him but about his party.

There’s a concern right now, I think, among a lot of American Jews and a lot of voters that I’ve talked to in this race and rabbis that the Democratic Party’s left flank has become increasingly skeptical or even hostile to Israel. And so they may be fine with Tom Suozzi, but they’re just really worried about voting for Democrats at all right now. They either want to make a protest or punish the party. Because they don’t like the direction that it’s going.

And what’s his message to them?

Yeah, so Suozzi is directly addressing this and saying, actually, I agree with you. But that’s the reason you’ve got to elect me.

Another Republican that supports Israel is not adding much to the equation.

You don’t need another super strong, pro-Israel Republican. We’ve got plenty of those. You need somebody that is going to stand up and get in the trenches and fight with his own party. That’s how we put up a bulwark against this. It’s within the Democratic Party.

What we need are strong, outspoken, pro-Israel Democrats that will stand up for Israel and will stand up to the extreme left.

And I’m the guy to do that.

I am uniquely set up to fight exactly the force that you are most afraid of, which is progressives on the left side of the Democratic Party.

Exactly. And in my reporting, I’ve seen all kinds of signs that voters are really kind of torn over this. So in one part of the district — and this is where Pilip is actually from — you have a really large population of Orthodox Jews and Iranian Jews, who have become very politically conservative in recent years.

And her campaign is banking on the fact that they are going to be super motivated and come out with huge numbers. And that matters in a low-turnout election. There’s also a group of voters that are just die-hard Democrats.

They are Jews. They might be concerned about Israel. But they can’t support her, because of her ties to the Republican Party and Trump or whatever the reason.

But there seems to be a kind of contingent in the middle of moderate-to-liberal American Jews who maybe would have sided with Democrats, who have been an important part of their coalition for a long time, that are now looking a lot more closely at this choice. I’ve talked to rabbis who are describing congregations that are pretty split down the middle, Jewish voters who say they don’t know which way to go.

They like Suozzi personally, but they’ve never seen a candidate quite so outwardly Jewish as Pilip is. And so frankly, I don’t think we’re going to the answer until later today as to how all of this broke down. But in a race that’s really, really close, this group actually has the potential to swing it one way or the other.

It’s pretty interesting. I mean, the people in the middle, had it not been for October 7, perhaps they would have just voted for the Democrat, because that’s kind of maybe how they tended to vote. But now, October 7 has kind of made this chemical reaction, and it’s a little bit of a wild card. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

Right. And this is one of these issues that I think is being watched by political strategists all over the country who are wondering, OK, what could this mean, potentially, in other districts? Have the foundations of American politics been shaken so hard that Republicans can drive a wedge between Jewish voters and Democrats? And that could potentially have a real impact across the country.

And as if that wasn’t enough, remember, this district is going to offer us a second test case on something that is arguably even a bigger issue right now. And that’s immigration.

We’ll be right back.

So Nick, tell me about how immigration is shaping this race.

So let me start by just zooming out for a second. Since the pandemic, there has been an incredible buildup of people from Venezuela, Latin America, other countries, trying to cross the Southern border. And it’s become a big issue in Washington right now. Last week, we saw President Biden and Congress really tangling over a potential border deal, and it’s become one of the biggest issues for the 2024 campaign as well.

Former President Trump has made clear that this is the issue that he wants to run on, one of the ones that he really thinks he can beat President Biden up on. And so on a national level, this issue is kind of everywhere at the moment. But there’s an unusual resonance, I think, here in New York and in this district in particular as well.

Now, I’ve been on the show before, talking about the migrant crisis here in New York. And all those people streaming over the Southern border, 170,000 of them and counting, have come here to New York City. And it’s been a huge quandary for the city and for the state and the Democrats who run New York.

It’s been expensive. The mayor has talked about having to the budget. And all of that is kind of playing out in this district. There’s actually a migrant shelter that the city has erected that sits squarely in the Congressional district, and a lot of voters in it are commuting into the city all the time and maybe are seeing people lined up outside of hotels.

And if nothing else, they’re reading all kinds of daily headlines. Just last week, the Police Commissioner of New York was talking about a migrant crime wave in New York City, all of which is kind of suggesting chaos, and chaos under Democrats’ watch, both in Washington and in New York.

OK, so where do we see this play out on the campaign?

So this issue starts to show up in polls very early in this race as a top priority of voters. But I think the moment that it really crystallized on the campaign trail that this thing, that immigration is going to be the center of this campaign, was a couple of weeks ago, when Mazi Pilip, the Republican candidate, decided to have her first major press conference of the campaign outside that migrant shelter in Queens.

My name is Mazi Pilip. I’m a legal immigrant and a candidate for Congress.

She shows up. She introduces herself as a legal immigrant before she even says she’s the Republican candidate for Congress —

The third congressional district residents worry about our border crisis.

— and talked about, basically, how bad things have gotten on Democrats’ watch. She says —

He created this problem.

He’s been for sanctuary cities in the past. Like, the crisis that we have here right now, it’s their fault, and I’m the one that will make it better.

So she’s saying, I came here the right way, legally, these people didn’t, and all of this is happening under Democrats.

Exactly. So this looks like a typical kind of Republican issue, right? It’s the things that Republicans are doing all over the country right now. But the really kind of wild thing that happens is, Suozzi finds out that this is going to happen. And he gets in his car and drives to the migrant shelter himself —

— and sets up a press conference right next to her —

Oh, my gosh.

— so that when she wraps up, he steps up to the microphones and says —

As we saw in the press conference that my opponent just did a few minutes ago, she didn’t give any solutions. She recounted why it’s a problem. We all know it’s a problem. Some of us have been talking about it for decades.

Hi. I’m the Democrat in this race. And I agree this is a total problem for this district.

Key to solving problems, complicated problems, is compromise. You’ve got to get both sides to cut a deal. That’s the only way you can solve these problems.

But here’s how I would deal with it. I want to find a bipartisan solution, and my opponent isn’t going to do that.

So he basically wants to show everybody he’s no less tough on the issue than she is. He’s like, OK, I see your press conference. I’ll raise you mine. But like, what’s he really doing here?

Yeah, it’s a striking moment. Because I think that we are used to, in the kind of political world, thinking of immigration as an issue that Republicans attack on and Democrats either stay quiet or try to ignore it. And here, you have the Democratic candidate really diving headfirst into an issue that polls show voters are blaming his party for.

In some ways, this is really kind of typical for somebody like Tom Suozzi, who’s a centrist who likes to buck his party. But I think it also reflects that he learned an important lesson from 2022, when Republicans performed much better here in New York than they did in the rest of the country. And they did it in part by really speaking to and kind of channeling fears about rising crime in New York.

And Democrats, by their own admission, didn’t take it seriously enough. And they ceded it to Republicans. Suozzi saw that, and his takeaway was, this can’t be a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. This is an issue that voters care about and that they’re talking about.

And if I don’t dive into it and show them that I’m taking it seriously and trying to solve it, well, then yeah, I am going to be politically washed out with President Biden and other Democrats who are getting the blame. So he’s really trying to both kind of separate himself from his party here in an important way and dive into an issue that we’ve seen Democrats pretty uncomfortable grappling with.

Which, in a way, is a pretty bad sign for national-level Democrats, right? Including Biden, heading into November. Like, that a Democrat in a swing district of a blue state is running away from his own party’s position on immigration. But that’s also a pretty tricky needle for him to thread.

Yeah, no doubt, especially in a special election, where, by the way, candidates usually win and lose based on their ability to turn out their most loyal voters. Normally, you’re not reaching across the aisle. But I think that Suozzi is finding himself having to do this is emblematic of just how bad this issue is for Democrats, and how bad their brand has become in a place like the suburbs of New York City.

Remember, Biden won this district pretty easily four years ago. But now, in the latest polling in this race — and I’m talking to voters out in the field — it’s quite clear that Biden’s numbers have dropped precipitously. In fact, he’s trailing Donald Trump in head-to-heads here in the suburbs, and a large part of that has to do with immigration.

Voters seem to be very exorcized about the sense of this issue being out of control and Democrats, the ones that they put in power, not doing enough about it. And so if Pilip is trying to make this race into, basically, a referendum on President Biden and the Democratic Party vis-a-vis immigration, what Suozzi is trying to do is make it a battle between Tom Suozzi, the Democrat, and Mazi Pilip, the Republican, over who’s got the better idea to help solve this problem. He’s saying, yeah, I agree with you that we have a problem. But let’s argue about the way to fix it and get voters to really focus in on that. And in that area, he may have gotten some help last week.

You’re referring to the deal that the Republicans actually wanted, and then bailed on at the last minute — this deal in the Senate on immigration.

That’s right. So Suozzi is able to go out and say, look, here’s a bipartisan solution that Democrats agreed to give Republicans almost everything that they wanted. There’s some money for the wall. There’s money to speed up and change the asylum process. We can increase deportations.

This is the kind of thing that’s going to help us solve the problem in the country. This is the kind of thing that I support. So when his Republican opponent comes out and trashes it and says, this is a legalization of the invasion that we’re seeing in the border, Suozzi moves really quickly to say, OK, remember, my Republican was telling you, this was a really big problem. Now, she seems to be putting politics over solving that policy problem, because President Trump and her party would rather not give President Biden the victory.

Basically saying, look, this is a pretty cynical political move. They’re using it for their own political gain instead of actually trying to fix the problem.

And how does Pilip respond to that?

Pilip responds by basically doubling down and saying, Why should we trust you on the solution when you arguably helped create this problem in the first place? And this is where Suozzi runs into some trouble with that long record of his.

It turns out, when you’ve been in politics for 30 years, you accumulate a record that’s pretty easy to go in and pluck things out of to support an argument like this. So national Republicans and the Pilip campaign have been airing millions of dollars of ads that showed he voted with Biden 100 percent of the time when he was still in Congress. So it really connects him to the president on all kinds of issues. And then, there’s this one ad in particular that has been running over and over and over again —

Illegal immigrants arriving by the busload. Why? Because Tom Suozzi repeatedly weakened America’s borders.

— that includes a clip of Suozzi during his ill-fated run for governor a couple of years ago —

When I was county executive of Nassau County, I kicked ICE out of Nassau County.

— bragging on a debate stage about how he kicked ICE — that is Immigration and Customs Enforcement — out of Nassau County when he was county executive.

Essentially, a pro-immigration stance.

Right. That’s how it looks.

In Congress, he’ll make it worse. Congressional Leadership Fund is responsible for the content of this advertising.

Now, Suozzi has explained he had good reason. The ICE officers pulled guns on Nassau County Police officers. But when you really get under the data and talk to strategists that are working on this race, that ad has taken a real bite out of Suozzi’s image and seems to be helping Pilip undermine voters’ trust in his ability to solve the problem. So we’ve also seen in polls that voters who care the most about the border — and that’s a plurality of voters, as we’ve said — trust Pilip more than they trust Suozzi.

OK. So given all of this — of course, we’re not going to know the answer until tonight, when we get the election results. But Nick, just casting a little bit ahead here, say the Republican wins. Say Pilip wins. What should Republicans take away from that? What’s the lesson there?

Republicans took a big hit last week for pulling out of that bipartisan immigration deal that they themselves demanded and helped negotiate.

But they did it for a reason, arguably. They did it because it is a very good political issue for them, and they want to run their 2024 campaigns on it. And if they end up being successful in this race, which is really kind of the very first test of that strategy, I think it may tell them that was worth it, at least politically, and that this is the path that they ought to continue going down, both as they run against President Biden, but also in Senate and House races all over the country, where things are close, and voters may be similarly disposed to blame the Democrats for it.

And on the other hand, if Mazi Pilip loses and Suozzi wins, while I don’t think that we’ll see Republicans completely abandon immigration as an issue by any means, I think they’re going to have to take a hard look at the kind of suite of issues that they’re running on and whether that alone is enough to get candidates across the finish line in these tough districts.

And Nick, what about the Democrat? I mean, what if Suozzi wins? What would that tell Democrats?

So Suozzi, if he can win, would essentially be writing a playbook for Democrats across the country. And I think it would go something like this. Keep pounding your Republican opponent on abortion and Trump and issues like that. Right?

But you can’t ignore the issues that Republicans really like either. You got to dive in the mud and start wrestling with them. And if you can separate yourself from President Biden a little bit along the way, or you can otherwise show you’re willing to push against party orthodoxy, then voters might just reward you for that. They might look at you and say, OK, this is the kind of politician who might be able to help solve problems for us. Let’s give them a shot.

And on the other hand, if having done all of that, a candidate like Tom Suozzi who entered this race well known and well liked — he had a Democratic registration advantage and a lot more money than his Republican opponent — can’t pull this out, I think that’s going to be a very potent warning sign for President Biden and his party that this fall is going to be one heck of a fight.

Nick, thank you.

My pleasure, Sabrina.

In a troubling sign for turnout in Tuesday’s special election, there is heavy snow in the New York metro area. A significant storm could create even greater uncertainty in a contest whose outcome is likely to be decided by a small margin.

Here’s what else you should know today. On Monday, Israel’s military said it had conducted a wave of attacks on the southern Gazan city of Rafah to provide cover for soldiers undertaking a hostage rescue mission there. Israeli special forces raided a building there before dawn, freeing two hostages held by Hamas.

The Gazan Health Ministry said at least 67 Palestinians had been killed. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The operation was met with elation in Israel and was a major boost for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But for Palestinians, it carried a sense of foreboding that a broader Israeli operation to capture the city was beginning. Netanyahu has ordered the military to draw up plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah, but aid groups say there is no place left for them to go.

And a judge in Atlanta said that he would move ahead with the hearing later this week delving into a romantic relationship between the two prosecutors who are leading an election interference case against Donald Trump and his allies. The revelations about the relationship have created turmoil around the case, one of several against Trump involving the 2020 election and his alleged efforts to subvert it.

The defense is trying to get the two prosecutors, Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and Nathan Wade, whom she hired to run the case, disqualified, arguing that the relationship gives the appearance of impropriety and would lead to an unfair prosecution.

Today’s episode was produced by Mooj Zadie, Eric Krupke, Summer Thomad, and Stella Tan. It was edited by Marc Georges with help from Rachel Quester, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.

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Featuring Nicholas Fandos

Produced by Mooj Zadie ,  Eric Krupke ,  Summer Thomad and Stella Tan

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Original music by Marion Lozano and Rowan Niemisto

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Voters in New York are choosing the successor to George Santos, the disgraced Republican who was expelled from Congress in December.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, explains how the results of the race will hold important clues for both parties in November.

On today’s episode

sunday times top 100 books 21st century

Nicholas Fandos , a reporter covering New York politics and government for The New York Times.

A group of men are sitting around a table. On a TV, a woman and a man stand at podiums in front of American flags.

Background reading

What to Know About the Race to Replace George Santos

Days before a special House election in New York, Tom Suozzi and Mazi Pilip traded blows in the race’s lone debate .

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Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos

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