21 books for the XXI century

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Cultura/s, 20 Books

In a reflection on the turn from the second to the third decade of this century, Cultura/s has selected 21 books that are particularly representative of those published since the year 2000. This list, compiled at the close of 2020—a year likely to be remembered as historically pivotal—offers an international perspective based on the publication date of the books in their original language.

note: even though it says 21 books, the list seems to only have 20

This list was originally published in 2020 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
17010 Men In The Off Hours Anne Carson 2000 Canadian English
261 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
17010 Chwila Wislawa Szymborska 2002 Polish Polish
4606 Gulag Anne Applebaum 2003 American English
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
17010 El Metall Impur Julià de Jòdar 2006 Spanish Catalan
10409 Gomorrah Roberto Saviano 2006 Italian Italian
803 The Vegetarian Han Kang 2007 Korean Korean
2310 To The End Of The Land David Grossman 2008 Israeli Hebrew
2803 Summertime J. M. Coetzee 2009 South African English
1816 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot 2010 American English
1252 Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 2011 Israeli Hebrew
1024 Secondhand Time Svetlana Alexievich 2013 Belarusian Russian
17010 Hunger Martin Caparros 2014 Argentinian Spanish
2304 Solenoid Mircea Cărtărescu 2015 Romanian Romanian
8714 A Girl's Story Annie Ernaux 2016 French French
1019 Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders 2017 American English
9522 Binti Nnedi Okorafor 2015 Nigerian English
2703 Lost Children Archive Valeria Luiselli 2019 Mexican English
17010 The Annual Banquet Of The Gravediggers' Guild Mathias Enard 2023 French French