Top 20 Greatest Books of the Century (So Far)
#20: “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006)
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie All three of Adichie’s novels are worthy of being on our list, with the other two being “Purple Hibiscus” and “Americanah.” “Half of a Yellow Sun” is her second novel, published in 2006, set primarily during the tumultuous Nigerian Civil War of the late 60s. If you’re remotely interested in Nigerian history or this unfortunately forgotten corner of the twentieth century, then this novel is an excellent portrayal of the conflict, as well as being a key postcolonial book. It’s about love, poverty, family, and war, and won numerous awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and Women’s Prize for Fiction.
#19: “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” (2000)
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Michael Chabon This frenetic novel has an extraordinary depth of subject matter, tackling both the experience of Jewish diaspora during and after the Second World War, and the dawn of the Golden Age of comic books and the earliest superheroes. Two young Jewish residents of New York City – one who recently fled from Nazi-occupied Prague – invent a Houdini-esque superhero called “the Escapist” as the antidote to the world’s rampant fascism. It’s about religious persecution, the immigrant experience, and pursuing your own creative goals and passions, winning Chabon the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. You definitely want to read it for its fictionalized version of the American Dream and overview of comic book history.
#18: “Cloud Atlas” (2004)
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David Mitchell This epic was adapted into a star-studded movie in 2012 by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and you know it’s got to be good if it attracts their attention. A British novel, it was published in 2004 and claimed a few awards, even getting shortlisted for the UK’s most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize. It’s about a group of characters from across the globe and throughout time, beginning with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century and ending with a post-apocalyptic vision of Hawaii. The different stories interweave and transcend genre, with science-fiction in Neo Korea and a darkly comedic look at a sinister hotel that preys on debtors.
#17: “Klara and the Sun” (2021)
Kazuo Ishiguro Kazuo Ishigur is one of Britain’s most decorated authors, having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, and he released his eighth novel in 2021 to tackle that most modern moral threat: artificial intelligence. The point-of-view character is Klara, an android – known in the narrative as an “Artificial Friend” – who is the sole companion of a terminally ill teenage girl in the US. This was another sci-fi outing for Ishiguro, who’s also written acclaimed novels on the British class system and clones falling in love, and he definitely hasn’t lost any talent. It’s heart-warming and tragic, an interrogation of what values make up a human being and whether our definition of “human” is too narrow.
#16: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2005)
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Stieg Larsson Originally slated to be the first novel in a long-running series of ten, it was unfortunately cut short after Larsson’s tragic death, and we only got three novels in the series penned by him. The first is certainly the most famous, getting adapted into a movie starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig – directed by David Fincher – in 2011. It’s a dark thriller about the suspicious disappearance of a girl in the 1970s, identified only by the distinct tattoo of a dragon. It’s ultimately an unflinching, harrowing look at violence against women, and it remains one of the most famous and popular Swedish novels ever written.
#15: “The Goldfinch” (2013)
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Donna Tartt If you’re familiar with “The Goldfinch,” you’ll also be familiar with its contentious reputation and lackluster movie adaptation starring Ansel Elgort and Finn Wolfhard. There’s no denying that “The Goldfinch” is flawed, but certain parts shine so brightly it’s easy to overlook its faults – and it remains a deeply important twenty-first-century novel regardless. It’s a bildungsroman almost eight hundred pages long, following the life of Theo Decker after a bomb is shockingly detonated in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The recipient of 2014’s Pulitzer Prize and a wild best-seller, Tartt’s novel examines American life, misguided youths, art thievery, and tragedy. You’ll either love it or hate it.
#14: “The Book Thief” (2005)
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Markus Zusak The point-of-view character of “The Book Thief” is Death himself – and if that doesn’t get you interested, we don’t know what will. Through the Grim Reaper, we learn the story of Liesel, a girl beset by family tragedy who ends up growing up in 1930’s Germany with a foster family – a foster family who agrees early on to harbor a Jew being pursued by the Nazis. It’s dark and at some points extremely upsetting, as you’d expect given the subject matter, but it’s also one of the most beautiful novels ever written and a true, modern classic, reframing the horrors of the Second World War through the eyes of Death, who bears witness to them all.
#13: “All the Light We Cannot See” (2014)
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Anthony Doerr Another World War II novel, this one tackles life in occupied France and was 2015’s Pulitzer winner. It’s about a blind Parisian girl, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, and her father as they attempt to evade the Nazis by initially leaving Paris for more rural pastures. As well as the LeBlancs, the other main character is the German boy Werner Pfennig, a technological wizard who is turned into another instrument of the Nazis. Their stories ultimately, and memorably converge in France, examining both the people the Third Reich heavily relied upon and the people in the French Resistance working tirelessly to undermine the occupying forces.
#12: “Life of Pi” (2001)
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Yann Martel A Canadian novel, Martell’s masterpiece was eligible for and won the Booker Prize, turning even more attention to this stunning novel that eventually became a widely successful movie directed by Ang Lee. On the surface, it’s a tense and exhilarating novel about Pi Patel, a young boy stranded in a boat in the ocean with a deadly Bengal tiger while his family attempts to emigrate across the Pacific. But upon further inspection, it’s really a story about the nature of “truth” and what you choose to believe about the world – should you forgo with accuracy entirely to spin a worthy yarn?
#11: “Atonement” (2001)
Ian McEwan Getting on the Booker Prize’s 2001 shortlist, “Atonement” has been acclaimed in the two decades since its release. It follows the life of Briony Tallis throughout her life, beginning in the 1930s, going through World War II, and ending in “present-day” – which here is 1999, so it’s another historical artifact by now. It traverses the dominant genres of its three time periods, ending with a postmodernist twist that forces you to think about that age-old trope once again: the unreliable narrator. We won’t spoil it, of course, but it’s definitely a book more about the journey than the destination, and about what dwelling on one’s regrets does to a person.
#10: “The Known World” (2003)
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Edward P. Jones This hard-hitting novel takes us to Virginia in the 1840s, and follows the life of Black slave and eventual former slave Henry Townsend as he becomes educated and ultimately comes to own his own plantation. It’s an unflinching look at this darkest chapter of American history, focusing on an area that isn’t often talked about. Released in 2003, years later it’s still an extremely unique portrayal of antebellum society that has been widely acclaimed, with Jones taking home 2004’s Pulitzer Prize for his work. Not only is this a novel about slavery, but also dying young and what it means to be part of a nationwide system of oppression.
#9: “The Kite Runner” (2003)
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Khaled Hosseini His first novel remains perhaps his most acclaimed – though the follow-up, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” is just as good in a lot of ways. Like Hosseini’s other books, “The Kite Runner” is about life in Afghanistan – specifically, the capital of Kabul – before, during, and after the 1979 Soviet invasion and the American installation of the Taliban. On a more micro level, it’s about two young boys, Amir and Hassan, from completely different walks of life who bond over a mutual love of flying kites – something the Taliban would later make illegal. It’s profound, dark, and remains just as relevant today as it was when it was published in 2003.
#8: “The Road” (2006)
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Cormac McCarthy If there’s one thing the modern age loves, it’s a story about a bleak, unforgiving, post-apocalyptic landscape, and McCarthy’s “The Road” is one of the greatest post-apocalypse narratives ever written. The US has been ravaged by a cataclysm; exactly what the cataclysm is isn’t important, what matters is the struggle of a lone father and his young son as they traverse the wasteland and encounter untold horrors. It’s not a book for the faint of heart, as it gets so dark and gruesome even early on, but it’s still a vitally important novel that has influenced popular culture in the years since its 2006 release.
#7: “Gilead” (2004)
Marilynne Robinson Reverend John Ames is writing a chaotic, disjointed memoir, and the finished product is Marilynne Robinson’s critically acclaimed sophomore novel, published in 2004. Its title is the town in which it’s set – Gilead, Iowa – and chronicles Ames’ own recollection of his life from his childhood in the 19th century to the looming end of his life in the 50s. It’s the first novel of Robinson’s Gilead tetralogy, and as well as focusing on Ames’ desire to leave something of himself for his young son. It’s also about America’s long and complex relationship with religion and small-town life.
#6: “Gone Girl” (2012)
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Gillian Flynn Another novel adapted into a hit movie directed by David Fincher, “Gone Girl” – starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck – is undeniably a cinematic classic and one of the century’s greatest movies. And it’s also one of the century’s greatest novels, written by Gillian Flynn in 2012. It’s about a woman, Amy Dunne, who disappears under mysterious circumstances, and the investigation into her vanishing and whether her husband, Nick, is responsible. Through this premise, Flynn looks at male violence against women and – through that masterful plot twist – reframes the novel as one about female agency. It’s a masterful thriller that certainly deserved its place on the bestseller lists.
#5: “White Teeth” (2000)
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Zadie Smith The pinnacle of the post-colonial epic, Zadie Smith’s electric debut explored in great detail the UK’s large and diverse immigrant population, with characters coming from South Asia, the Caribbean, and England itself. These characters span generations and all converge at the end in a climax about religious extremism, post-war Nazi scientists, and genetic modification. With “White Teeth,” Smith immediately established herself as one of the UK’s greatest living writers, and she’s consistently proven herself to be immensely talented through her subsequent novels and essay collections. But there’s something about “White Teeth” that means it’s still a cut above the rest, even decades on.
#4: “The Underground Railroad” (2016)
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Colson Whitehead Long a successful American author, Colson Whitehead became one of the nation’s most decorated novelists with the release of “The Underground Railroad” in 2016. It’s about a young slave named Cora who escapes from her plantation, and her treacherous journey out of the Deep South while being pursued by a notorious slavecatcher. But Whitehead’s genius was in reimagining pre-Civil War America’s underground railroad as a literal underground railroad, a complex network of trains run by abolitionists who want to help escaped slaves reach the US’s safer, northern states. He won myriad awards, including the coveted Pulitzer, and the novel became an Amazon Prime miniseries in 2021.
#3: “Middlesex” (2002)
Jeffrey Eugenides Almost a decade after the success of “The Virgin Suicides,” Eugenides came back with “Middlesex,” a long epic about Greek diaspora and modern gender issues in equal measure. The main character is Cal, whose family are Greek immigrants who have relocated to Detroit. Cal tells the story as an adult who already knows about and understands that they are intersex, something their parents also didn’t know – raising them as a girl. In a lot of ways, “Middlesex” is an even more relevant and important novel today; it’s a thoughtful and empathetic look at intersex people and how liberating breaking free of gender norms can be.
#2: “A Visit from the Goon Squad” (2010)
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Jennifer Egan Whether “A Visit from the Goon Squad” is a standalone novel or a short story collection remains hotly debated – but Egan herself categorizes it as a novel, so we’re going with that. It’s a series of connected stories focusing on characters who all loosely know one another as their lives overlap – and many of the stories and characters are associated with music. Released in 2010, it’s been heralded as stylistically fresh and unique, transcending genre, era, character, and even medium at certain points. It’s an unforgettable, modern love letter to New York that you won’t be able to put down.
#1: “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (2007)
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Junot Díaz There are plenty of novels about the American immigrant experience, and “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” stands tall with many of the genre’s other greats. It’s not told from Oscar’s perspective, but it follows his life in New Jersey as a Dominican immigrant trying to balance his passion for sci-fi magazines and comic books with his unquenchable desire to fall in love. But it’s also a generation-spanning family saga about Oscar’s family, their lives in the Dominican Republic before moving to America, and Oscar’s desire to find more of a purpose by returning to his familial homeland. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll never be the same again; undoubtedly, it’s the century’s best novel yet.
