100 Best Novels in English Since 1900 by Counterpunch
Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn's favorite novels since 1900.
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1. Ulysses by James Joyce
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyss...
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2. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during,...
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3. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest undertake...
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4. Native Son by Richard Wright
The novel tells the story of 20-year old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. Bigger was always getting into troubl...
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5. Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
In her most exuberant, most fanciful novel, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, Orlando is a young noble...
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6. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
Set in the rural midlands of England, The Rainbow revolves around three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than sixty years, setting them against the emergence of modern Engla...
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7. Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime a...
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8. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marx...
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9. The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor
The Violent Bear It Away is a novel published in 1960 by American author Flannery O'Connor. It is the second and final novel that she published. The first chapter of the novel was published as the ...
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11. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Set in France (primarily Paris) during the 1930s, it is the tale of Miller's life as a struggling writer. Combining fiction and autobiography, some chapters follow a strict narrative and refer to M...
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12. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The novel explores the lives and values of the so-called "Lost Generation," chronicling the experiences of Jake Barnes and several acquaintances on their pilgrimage to Pamplona for the annual San F...
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13. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Bertha is the madwoman locked in the attic by her husband Rochester, the simmering Englishman whose children Jane has been hired to tutor. In Bronte's novel we lear...
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14. The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
“To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.”—Ben Schott Follow the adventures of Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s gentleman, J...
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15. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The story is that of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychoanalyst and his wife, Nicole, who is also one of his patients. It would be Fitzgerald's first novel in nine years, and ...
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16. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's...
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17. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
In a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmith introduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young America...
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18. At Swim Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated ex...
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19. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
On the Road is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the post...
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20. JR by William Gaddis
A great masterpiece by William Gaddis, with a new introduction by Rick Moody. Winner of the 1976 National Book Award, J R is a biting satire about the many ways in which capitalism twists the Ameri...
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21. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The novel is presented as a poem titled "Pale Fire" with commentary by a friend of the poet's. Together these elements form two story lines in which both authors are central characters. The int...
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22. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The End of the Affair (1951) is a novel by British author Graham Greene, as well as the title of two feature films (released in 1955 and 1999) that were adapted for the screen based on the novel. ...
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23. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The story is narrated by The Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction. Hammett based the story on his own experiences in Butte, Montana as a Pinkerton agent.The Continental Op is c...
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24. Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel by African-American author Ishmael Reed. Set in 1920s New York City, the novel takes its plot from the struggles of "The Wallflower Order," an international conspiracy d...
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25. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Willa Cather's A Lost Lady was first published in 1923. It tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester who live in the Western town of Sweet Water, along the Trans...
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26. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a crime novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialized in the Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it ...
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27. Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself.
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28. The Iron Heel by Jack London
The Iron Heel is a dystopian[1] novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian",[2] it chronicles the rise of an ...
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29. Jazz by Toni Morrison
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At...
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30. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a ...
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31. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The main character, an African American woman in her early forties named Janie Crawford, tells the story of her life and journey via an extended flashback to her best friend, Pheoby, so that Pheoby...
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32. Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess
Nothing Like the Sun is a fictional biography of William Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess first published in 1964. The novel concerns alleged relationships of Shakespeare from his perspective, includ...
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33. Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
A simple invitation to join his friend Davies on a yachting expedition in the Baltic is the beginning of an extraordinary and dangerous adventure for the bored and worldly but clever Carruthers. As...
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34. The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West
West’s thoughtful romantic novel—now available as an ebook A tale of love found, lost, rekindled, and redefined Isabelle, a wealthy American widow, arrives in France to restart her life and discove...
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35. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1943 onwards, is frequently cite...
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37. The Indian Lawyer by James Welch
Author weaves metaphor with reality in this poignant novel about Native Americans and the penal system.
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38. The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a se...
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39. Neuromancer by William Gibson
The novel tells the story of a washed-up computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to work on the ultimate hack. Gibson explores artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, ...
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40. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh
Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menth...
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41. Light Years by James Salter
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is ...
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42. The Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
A tour de force examination of the historical conflict between Native and Anglo Americans by critically acclaimed author Leslie Marmon Silko, under the hot desert sun of the American Southwest. In ...
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43. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Death of the Heart is a 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen set between the two world wars. It is about a sixteen year old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Tho...
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44. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III returns home to the desert only to find his beloved canyons and rivers now threatened by industrial development. Joining forces with Bronx exile and fe...
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45. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
A welcome reissue of one of Patrick Hamilton's best, with an introduction by Doris Lessing. The Slaves of Solitude is set in a wartime boarding house in a small town on the Thames. The Rosamund Tea...
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46. The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Winter is an Earth-like planet with two major differences: conditions are semi arctic even at the warmest time of the year, and the inhabitants are all of the same sex. Tucked away in a remote corn...
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47. Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
Pompey Casmilus works as a secretary and records her thoughts about love and marriage, death, sex, art, Greek tragedy, friendship, her aunt, Nazism, gossip, the suburbs, and more love and marriage.
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48. A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews
A small Georgia town, filled with a curious assortment of losers, anticipates the promise of bizarre new possibilities with the upcoming rattlesnake hunt
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49. Vida by Marge Piercy
In the 1960's, Vida was a political star of the anti-war movement and a charismatic red-headed beauty. Orginally published in 1979, this vivid novel follows Vida on the run a decade later, her exub...
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50. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
In a classic work of alternate history, the United States is divided up and ruled by the Axis powers after the defeat of the Allies during World War II. Reissue. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best N...
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51. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs himself stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie Willia...
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52. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Set during the French Revolution, this "riveting historical novel" ("The New Yorker") is the story of three young provincials who together helped destroy a way of life and, in the process, destroye...
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53. Voss by Patrick White
Set in nineteenth-century Australia, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his cro...
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54. Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
Dog Soldiers' is a 1974 novel by American novelist Robert Stone. The story revolves around journalist John Converse, Merchant Marine sailor Ray Hicks, Converse's wife Marge, and their involvement i...
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56. Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
"Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latte...
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57. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, the University of Chicago, ...
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58. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what...
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58. The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
English crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki. It is from him that he first hears of the mysterious Dimitr...
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59. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
The Known World is a 2003 historical novel by Edward P. Jones. It was his first novel and second book. Set in antebellum Virginia, it examines issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by free...
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60. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
A combined love story and philosophical meditation on the body as a physical phenomenon thrusts the reader into the life of a married woman and her erotic relationship with an unidentified lover wh...
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61. Disgrace by J M Coetzee
Disgrace is a 1999 novel by South African-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature; the book itself won the Booker Prize in 1999, the year in which it was published. ...
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62. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
Call It Sleep is the story of an Austrian-Jewish immigrant family in New York in the early part of the twentieth century. Six-year-old David Schearl has a close and loving relationship with his mot...
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63. July's People by Nadine Gordimer
For years, it has been what is called a ‘deteriorating situation'. Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family - liberal whites - are rescued from the t...
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64. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep (1939) is a crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and a...
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65. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relat...
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66. Julian by Gore Vidal
The remarkable bestseller about the Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, "Julian" is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal's finest historical novels.
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67. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou's known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and all of his coworkers--the low-lifes, ...
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68. An American Dream by Norman Mailer
In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he ...
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69. If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days i...
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70. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition (as opposed to the usual 10...
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71. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's ...
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72. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
In the tradition of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones's "The Thin Red Line," Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and...
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73. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
A hard-drinking private eye sets out to find a missing writer and slowly realizes that he is really being used to find a woman who disappeared ten years before
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74. Salvage the Bones: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
Winner of the 2011 National Book Award A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard dri...
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75. Underworld by Don DeLillo
Underworld is a postmodern novel written in 1997 by Don DeLillo. It was nominated for the National Book Award, is one of his better-known novels, and was a best-seller.
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77. Regeneration by Pat Barker
The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy and a Booker Prize nominee In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World...
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78. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Hiro Protagonist—yeah, that's his name—is a freelance hacker and unemployed pizza deliveryman lost in a post-lapsarian, hyper-capitalist future America in which the central government has withered ...
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79. Ray by Barry Hannah
Nominated for the American Book Award, Ray is the bizarre, hilarious, and consistently adventurous story of a life on the edge. Dr. Ray--a womanizer, small-town drunk, vigilante, poet, adoring husb...
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80. Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston
Driven by his dream to write and stage an epic stage production of interwoven Chinese novelsWittman Ah Sing, a Chinese-American hippie in the late '60s. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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81. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
Written in verse, this was Vikram Seth's first novel. Set in the 1980s, in the affluence and sunshine of California's silicon valley, it is the story of twenty-somethings looking for love, pleasure...
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82. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Set sometime around 1950, Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant Medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. Having made a bad fir...
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84. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, depicting the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of i...
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84. Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Wealth . . . or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. T...
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85. Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips
In her highly acclaimed debut novel, the bestselling author of Shelter introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history. H...
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86. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
The only novel by avant-garde literary star Jane Bowles, the highly influential wife of legendary writer Paul Bowles, Two Serious Ladies is a modernist cult classic, mysterious, profound, anarchic,...
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87. Mr. American by George MacDonald Fraser
For this riotous Edwardian caper, the author of the bestselling "Flashman Papers" presents a raucous adventure that brings America's Wild West to London's West End and features arch-cad Harry Flash...
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88. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Zuleika Dobson is a highly accomplished and superbly written book whose spirit is farcical," said E. M. Forster. "It is a great work--the most consistent achievement of fantasy in our time . . . so...
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89. The Dogs of March by Ernest Hebert
"His life had come to this: save a few deer from the jaws of dogs. He was a small man sent to perform a small task." Howard Elman is a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yar...
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90. The Deceivers by John Masters
In 1825 William Savage is an official in the East India Company committed to the people of his remote district and British rule in India. He witnesses a double murder and stumbles upon the society ...
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91. The King Must Die by Mary Renault
“Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows...
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92. Sleeping Beauty by Ross Macdonald
In Sleeping Beauty, Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands--including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a s...
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94. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Tree of Smoke is about a man named Skip Sands who joins the CIA in 1965, and begins working in Vietnam during the American involvement there. The time frame of the novel is from 1963 to 1970, with ...
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94. The House Of Splendid Isolation by Edna O'Brien
Josie, the ailing, elderly inhabitant of an Irish country mansion, dwells in the shadowy world of remembered pain and loneliness. McGreevy, the terrorist, reintroduces the possibility of compassion...
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95. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to America to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple. She begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade at the same time that the mysteries of ...
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97. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
Back at Oxford for her reunion, Harriet Vane, Lord Peter’s beloved, finds herself in mortal danger Since she graduated from Oxford’s Shrewsbury College, Harriet Vane has found fame by writing novel...
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98. Flicker by Theodore Roszak
Jonathan Gates finds himself on an unwitting quest to discover the secret life of a forgotten director of silent movies, only to discover that the truth behind the director's strange films may be m...
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99. Greenmantle by John Buchan
Greenmantle is the second of five novels by John Buchan featuring the character of Richard Hannay, first published in 1916 by Hodder & Stoughton, London. It is one of two Hannay novels set during t...
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