The Best Books of the 21st Century
This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
Aladin.co.kr, 48 Books
Aladin asked 106 litterateurs, including writers, translators, editors, publishers, researchers, activists, and journalists, to select the 25 'Best Books of the 21st Century' from 1,118,869 books (excluding reference books and magazines) first published in Korean from 2000 to 2024.
This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3601 | Human Acts | Han Kang | 2014 | Korean | Korean | |
| 8562 | The Challenges of Feminism | Jeong Hee-jin | 2015 | Korean | Korean | |
| 3165 | Gender Trouble | Judith Butler | 1990 | American | English | |
| 8590 | 사람, 장소, 환대 | 김현경 | 2015 | Korean | Korean | |
| 7942 | Phantom Pain Wings | Kim Hye-soon | 2019 | Korean | Korean | |
| 2627 | Capital in the Twenty-First Century | Thomas Piketty | 2013 | French | French | |
| 1206 | Pachinko | Min Jin Lee | 2017 | American | English | |
| 9513 | If We Can't Go At The Speed Of Light | Kim Cho-yeop | 2019 | Korean | Korean | |
| 1698 | Stories of Your Life and Others | Ted Chiang | 2002 | American | English | |
| 804 | The Vegetarian | Han Kang | 2007 | Korean | Korean | |
| 6222 | Justice | Michael J. Sandel | 2007 | American | English | |
| 4136 | The Faraway Nearby | Rebecca Solnit | 2013 | American | English | |
| 5615 | The Mushroom At The End Of The World | Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing | 2015 | American | English | |
| 1142 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel | 2001 | Canadian | English | |
| 7627 | Whale | Cheon Myeong-kwan | 2004 | Korean | Korean | |
| 670 | Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | 2000 | French | French | |
| 8507 | 사당동 더하기 25 | 조은 | 2012 | Korean | Korean | |
| 2183 | Far From the Tree | Andrew Solomon | 2012 | American | English | |
| 8753 | 금요일엔 돌아오렴 | 세월호 참사 기록위원회 작가기록단 엮음 | 2014 | Korean | Korean | |
| 1138 | The Unwomanly Face Of War | Svetlana Alexievich | 1985 | Russian | Russian | |
| 409 | My Brilliant Friend | Elena Ferrante | 2012 | American | Italian | |
| 2323 | The End And The Beginning | Wislawa Szymborska | 1993 | Polish | Polish | |
| 6454 | Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 | Cho Nam-Joo | 2016 | Korean | Korean | |
| 4935 | Exile And Pride | Eli Clare | 1999 | American | English | |
| 8168 | Returning To Reims | Didier Eribon | 2009 | French | French | |
| 3472 | We Do Not Part | Han Kang | 2021 | Korean | Korean | |
| 17 | The Lord Of The Rings | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1959 | English | English | |
| 2603 | Regarding the Pain of Others | Susan Sontag | 2003 | American | English | |
| 7999 | Journey To Diaspora | Seo Kyung-sik | 2006 | Unknown | Korean | |
| 370 | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | 2005 | American | English | |
| 8104 | A Salt-flowered Tree | Kim Jin-sook | 2007 | Korean | Korean | |
| 266 | Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | 2005 | British | English | |
| 6814 | The Owl's Absence | Bae Suah | 2010 | Korean | Korean | |
| 7999 | The Great Transformation | Karen Armstrong | 2006 | British | English | |
| 8575 | 한국 신자유주의의 기원과 형성 | 지주형 | 2011 | Korean | Korean | |
| 6900 | 오월의 사회과학 | 최정운 | 1997 | Korean | Korean | |
| 791 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | 2012 | American | English | |
| 2326 | Being Mortal | Atul Gawande | 2014 | American | English | |
| 8575 | Deviations | Gayle Rubin | 2011 | American | English | |
| 1252 | Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | 2011 | Israeli | Hebrew | |
| 1027 | Secondhand Time | Svetlana Alexievich | 2013 | Belarusian | Russian | |
| 513 | Kindred | Octavia E. Butler | 1979 | American | English | |
| 9563 | 아픔이 길이 되려면 | 김승섭 | 2017 | Korean | Korean | |
| 9726 | 실격당한 자들을 위한 변론 | 김원영 | 2018 | Korean | Korean | |
| 1620 | Sister Outsider | Audre Lorde | 1984 | American | English | |
| 9901 | 디디의 우산 | 황정은 | 2019 | Korean | Korean | |
| 5374 | A Hen | Clarice Lispector | 1964 | Brazilian | Portuguese | |
| 10980 | 유언을 만난 세계 | 정창조 외 | Korean | Korean |