Losing yourself in a great novel is one of life’s joys. From fantasy, science fiction, to political satire, here are 12 contemporary Russian novels from the the post-Soviet literary scene that every literature lover should read. I mean, would you expect the quintessential novel of New York in the 80s to be anything other than ridiculously large and gilded and poisonous as all hell? As well as being genuinely useful, it’s a fascinating chronicle of literary persistence, and of a lifelong love affair with language and narrative.Read the review, Henrietta Lacks was a black American who died in agony of cancer in a “coloured” hospital ward in 1951. 86,285 ratings —
Mysteriously. This may not be the only account of living in a religious household in the American midwest (in her youth, the author joined a group called God’s Gang, where they spoke in tongues), but it is surely the funniest. Paranoid yet plausible, Roth’s alternative-world novel is only more relevant in the age of Trump.
Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (548 pages).
An exploration of misogyny, the origins of “gendered speech” in the classical era and the problems the male world has with strong women, this slim manifesto became an instant feminist classic.
Her focus is on the dislocation and uncertainty of millennial life, but her elegant prose has universal appeal. Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (531 pages). The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages Long Books, Worth Your Time.
Read the review, A love story to the golden age of comics in New York, Chabon’s Pulitzer-winner features two Jewish cousins, one smuggled out of occupied Prague, who create an anti-fascist comic book superhero called The Escapist.
published 1960, avg rating 3.68 — Flynn’s stylishly written portrait of a toxic marriage set against a backdrop of social and economic insecurity combines psychological depth with sheer unputdownable flair.Read the review, Written after a near-fatal accident, this combination of memoir and masterclass by fiction’s most successful modern storyteller showcases the blunt, casual brilliance of King at his best.
Here Asriel’s struggle against the Authority reaches its climax, Lyra and Will journey to the Land of the Dead, and Mary investigates the mysterious elementary particles that lend their name to his current trilogy: The Book of Dust. Donna Tartt, The Secret History (576 pages). Carson charts the course of a doomed marriage in loose-limbed lines that follow the switchbacks of thought and feeling from first meeting through multiple infidelities to arrive at eventual divorce. It’s not my favorite of French’s novels (that would be The Likeness, obviously, I’m not a crazy person), but it’s the only one that tips over the 500-page mark, and honestly, even my third favorite French ranks above most other people’s books. As Ames concludes, to his son and himself: “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” Read the review, Mantel had been publishing for a quarter century before the project that made her a phenomenon, set to be concluded with the third part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, next March. When the Madigans do finally come together halfway through the book, Enright masterfully reminds us of the weight of history and family. published 1939, avg rating 4.30 — She hears from other people about relationships, ambition, solitude, intimacy and “the disgust that exists indelibly between men and women”. 750,012 ratings — In this riotous memoir, Satrapi focuses on one young life to reveal a hidden history.
42,615 ratings — System Two is slow, calculated and deliberate, like long division. Read the review, Rooney’s second novel, a love story between two clever and damaged young people coming of age in contemporary Ireland, confirmed her status as a literary superstar. Robert McCrum reflects on who got left out, and why, Test your knowledge of the English language’s greatest fiction – and see if you can guess the identity of Robert McCrum’s final choice, In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation, A writer of ‘frightening perception’, Don DeLillo guides the reader in an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture, This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the faultlines of Irish patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world, Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American speech to perfection, Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration, Kazuo Ishiguro’s study of guilt, ageing and solitude in postwar, post-imperial Japan is a tour de force of unreliable narration, Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self, Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis, The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing novel about a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence, VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece, The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century. Here are the rules: I only counted single volumes (it’s fine for them to be part of a series, but they have to meet the size requirements on their own), published in English since 1970. published 1966, avg rating 3.77 —
38,340 ratings — published 2000, avg rating 3.87 — Here are the 15 books that received most votes to join the list The good ones always seem to create space for the reader: space to sink and settle, and time to really learn what you’re dealing with, both in terms of character and in terms of author. Confiding and self-deprecating, she has a way of always managing to sound like your best friend – even when writing about her apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. So if you’re looking for a long-term relationship with a book right now, you couldn’t do much better than the books below. Read 47 196 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Read the review, One of the most underrated prose writers demonstrates the literary firepower of science fiction at its best. Working first as a waitress, then a cleaner and a nursing home aide, she still struggled to survive, and the stories of her co-workers are shocking.
1,040 pages . Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Whether or not you regard him as the Proust of memoir, his compulsive honesty created a new benchmark for autofiction.
The best part of the novel is the narration—Eli is the ambivalent moral compass normally absent from Westerns, a kind of extreme normalcy and humanity amidst a desolate and unforgiving landscape and livelihood. Their own adventures are as exciting and highly coloured as the ones they write and draw in this generous, open-hearted, deeply lovable rollercoaster of a book.Read the review, A beautifully written and profound book, which takes the form of aseries of (often hair-raising and claustrophobic) voyages underground– from the fjords of the Arctic to the Parisian catacombs.
)”, Makina sets off from her village in Mexico with a package from a local gangster and a message for her brother, who has been gone for three years. It is also, as Francine Prose put it, the most “dense, filthy, brilliant” history you’ll ever read. Writers, waiters, doctors, soldiers, former Kremlin apparatchiks, gulag survivors: all are given space to tell their stories, share their anger and betrayal, and voice their worries about the transition to capitalism. This sounds like hell but actually it is the weirdest, most hypnotic drug, once you just give in to it. published 1948, avg rating 3.98 — Haddon’s fascinating portrayal of an unconventional mind was a crossover hit with both adults and children and was adapted into a very successful stage play. Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (528 pages). Read the review, An electrifying memoir that captured a moment in thinking about gender, and also changed the world of books. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), The West in Pieces: On the Reimagined Grammar(s) of C. Pam Zhang. Rovelli’s keen insight and striking metaphors make this the best introduction to subjects including relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, elementary particles and entropy outside of a course in advanced physics. Luckily, it’s the first in a trilogy (though the other two stop just short of making the page count for this list).
Read the review, British fiction’s most anarchic author is as prolific as she is playful, but this freewheeling, visionary epic set around the Thames Gateway is her magnum opus. The longest novel on this list is both a family story and a political one—but really shows how hard it can be to find the right guy for your intellectual daughter. I never remember how long The Secret History actually is—it is slim and sharp in my mind. Kate Atkinson, Life After Life (704 pages). Read the review, An eye-opening study, based on overwhelming evidence, which revealedthat among rich countries, the “more equal societies almost always dobetter” for all. Argue about the connections between them all you like, but for sheer delight, you could hardly do any better than this epic novel. The US economy as she experienced it is full of routine humiliation, with demands as high as the rewards are low. The book ranges widely from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, to the invention of Viagra. Read the review, This warm yet biting collection of short stories by the Booker-winning American author will restore your faith in humanity. Joseph McElroy, Women and Men (1,192 pages). The fates of three young people are altered by a young girl’s lie at the close of a sweltering day on a country estate in 1935. The 40 best books to read during lockdown. All rights reserved. published 1961, avg rating 3.98 — 24,531 ratings — Read the review, In this urgent examination of free-market fundamentalism, Klein argues – with accompanying reportage – that the social breakdowns witnessed during decades of neoliberal economic policies are not accidental, but in fact integral to the functioning of the free market, which relies on disaster and human suffering to function. A historical novel so beloved that I’d get multiple disgruntled emails if I didn’t include it here. Read the review.
37,783 ratings — Read the review, Inspired by both Proust and The Sopranos, Egan’s Pulitzer-winning comedy follows several characters in and around the US music industry, but is really a book about memory and kinship, time and narrative, continuity and disconnection.
But Amis also has much fun recollecting his “velvet-suited, snakeskin-booted” youth, and paints a moving portrait of his father’s comic gusto as old age reduces him to a kind of “anti-Kingsley”.
The celebrated Vietnam novel of a celebrated literary hero. Read the review, The British novelist combines fiction and non-fiction to form a searing essay on grief and love for his late wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh. A funny, brash, messy and totally necessary postmodern novel about a public defender—the son of Colombian immigrants—who at the start of the book has never lost a case, and who stumbles into the “perfect” crime. Strap in for a 512-page book about trees. April 9, 2020. 4,580 ratings — (Soon, I hope.
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