21 books for the XXI century

This is one of the 759 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 almost 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
17168 Men In The Off Hours Anne Carson 2000 Canadian English
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
17168 Chwila Wislawa Szymborska 2002 Polish Polish
4615 Gulag Anne Applebaum 2003 American English
232 2666 Roberto Bolaño 2004 Chilean Spanish
17168 El Metall Impur Julià de Jòdar 2006 Spanish Catalan
10438 Gomorrah Roberto Saviano 2006 Italian Italian
804 The Vegetarian Han Kang 2007 Korean Korean
2318 To The End Of The Land David Grossman 2008 Israeli Hebrew
2808 Summertime J. M. Coetzee 2009 South African English
1817 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot 2010 American English
1252 Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 2011 Israeli Hebrew
1027 Secondhand Time Svetlana Alexievich 2013 Belarusian Russian
17168 Hunger Martin Caparros 2014 Argentinian Spanish
2312 Solenoid Mircea Cărtărescu 2015 Romanian Romanian
8733 A Girl's Story Annie Ernaux 2016 French French
1022 Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders 2017 American English
9544 Binti Nnedi Okorafor 2015 Nigerian English
2706 Lost Children Archive Valeria Luiselli 2019 Mexican English
17168 The Annual Banquet Of The Gravediggers' Guild Mathias Enard 2023 French French