Read the review, The members of one ordinarily unhappy American family struggle to adjust to the shifting axes of their worlds over the final decades of the 20th century. When the Madigans do finally come together halfway through the book, Enright masterfully reminds us of the weight of history and family. Read the review, Coates’s impassioned meditation on what it means to be a black American today made him one of the country’s most important intellectuals and writers. Read the review, This warm yet biting collection of short stories by the Booker-winning American author will restore your faith in humanity. Read the review, An agenda-setting book that is devastating about the extent to which big tech sets out to manipulate us for profit. Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000, Last modified on Fri 23 Oct 2020 13.11 BST, Perhaps better known for her screenwriting (Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Heartburn), Ephron’s brand of smart theatrical humour is on best display in her essays. Strikingly honest, originally written, with a galaxy of intellectual reference points, it is essentially a love story; one that seems to make a new way of living possible. “Robinson is both an ‘ideas’ writer and an exquisite prose stylist, investigating the big questions within the intimate space of family and community. An unforgettable book, which is both an act of catharsis and a profound demonstration of empathy. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend Read the review, A Whitbread prizewinning memoir, full of perfectly chosen phrases,that is one of the best accounts of family dysfunction ever written.Sage grew up with her grandparents, who hated each other: he was a drunken philandering vicar; his wife, having found his diaries,blackmailed him and lived in another part of the house. “Chabon’s capacious, propulsive and many-storied novel is exquisitely written, emotionally rich and historically and morally profound,” says Booklist senior editor Donna Seaman, who made the Pulitzer Prize winner her number-one choice. Eight rookies from the US army’s Bravo squad, fresh from a firefight with Iraqi insurgents, in which one of their fellow soldiers died and another was disabled, are dubbed war heroes by the Fox News cable channel. “Adichie's novel is a tour de force, artistically and intellectually,” notes critic Walton Muyumba, author of The Shadow and the Act. His life is haunted by the disappearance of his cousin Lucy, who is revealed 20 years later to have been murdered by Fred West. Read the review, A thrilling, genre-bending tale of escape from slavery in the American deep south, this Pulitzer prize-winner combines extraordinary prose and uncomfortable truths. https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/best-novels-of-the-21st-century 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. In search of a collective critical assessment, BBC Culture contributor Jane Ciabattari polled several dozen book critics, including The New York Times Book Review’s Parul Sehgal, Time magazine's book editor Lev Grossman, Newsday book editor Tom Beer, Bookslut founder Jessa Crispin, C Max Magee, founder of The Millions, Booklist's Donna Seaman, Kirkus Reviews' Laurie Muchnick and many more. Read the review, The New Yorker staff writer examines phenomena from shoe sales to crime rates through the lens of epidemiology, reaching his own tipping point, when he became a rock-star intellectual and unleashed a wave of quirky studies of contemporary society. Read the review, In this modern classic of reportage, Ehrenreich chronicled her attempts to live on the minimum wage in three American states. Read the review, In this exquisite family memoir, the ceramicist explains how he came to inherit a collection of 264 netsuke – small Japanese ornaments – from his great-uncle. Realising she has ruined Cecilia and Robbie’s lives, Briony works as a nurse during the Blitz in a third section. Nerdy Oscar and the book’s macho narrator Yunior resonate as authentically as Roth’s Portnoy, Updike’s Rabbit, Bellow’s Augie or Toole’s Ignatius.” (Riverhead), *Editor’s Note 21 January 2015: In light of overwhelming interest from our readers, we have decided to unveil the rest of the top 20, as selected in our critics poll. * “It is a big deal for me to fall in love with a book when its DNA is science fiction, fantasy and testosterone,” says Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune’s literary editor-at-large. From left: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield in the 2010 film adaptation of Never Let Me Go. The autobiographical story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the trials of Winterson’s later life, is urgent, wise and moving. Read the review, Carey’s second Booker winner is an irresistible tour de force of literary ventriloquism: the supposed autobiography of 19th-century Australian outlaw and “wild colonial boy” Ned Kelly, inspired by a fragment of Kelly’s own prose and written as a glorious rush of semi-punctuated vernacular storytelling. North Korea is revealed to be rife with poverty, corruption and violence but populated by resilient people with a remarkable ability to see past the propaganda all around them. Emotional and artistic complexity are perfectly poised in this account of a listless 36-year-old office dogsbody who is thrown into an existential crisis by an encounter with his estranged dad. This wildly enjoyable collection includes her droll observations about ageing, vanity – and a scorching appraisal of Bill Clinton.Read the review, The Congolese writer says he was “trying to break the French language” with Broken Glass – a black comedy told by a disgraced teacher without much in the way of full stops or paragraph breaks. American Gods. What the evolutionary biologist lacks in philosophical sophistication, he makes up for in passion, and the book sold in huge numbers. “It is sort of weird,” he tells a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, “being honoured for the worst day of your life.” (Ecco), Egan’s Proustian meditation on time, fame and music won the National Book Critics Circle and Pulitzer awards. The US economy as she experienced it is full of routine humiliation, with demands as high as the rewards are low. Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still, Read an interview with the author of our No 1 book. Her sweeping, evocative novel, which won the Orange prize, charts the political and personal struggles of those caught up in the conflict and explores the brutal legacy of colonialism in Africa. C Max Magee, founder and editor of The Millions writes, “Jones's novel has an epic, complex sweep and takes an unflinching and engrossing view of America's messy history.” (Amistad), The winner in this BBC Culture critics’ poll is Junot Diaz’s first novel, about New Jersey ghetto-nerd Oscar, who dreams of being the Dominican-American Tolkien and finding love. 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. Marías constructs an elegant murder mystery from his trademark labyrinthine sentences, but this investigation is in pursuit of much meatier questions than whodunnit. Read the review, Jemisin became the first African American author to win the best novel category at the Hugo awards for her first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. Egan juxtaposes timeless literary themes, most notably the inexorable journey from youth to age, with an exploration of the ways in which a rapidly changing world reshapes the human experience. 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. https://crimereads.com/the-10-best-crime-novels-of-the-last-decade In often exuberant language, Eugenides layers questions of fate and free will onto Cal’s coming-of-age story and the tale of the entrepreneurial rise of his parents, Desdemona and Lefty. 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. There he finds lifelong companionship with another emigrant, and they join the army on its brutal journey west, laying waste to Indian settlements. Read the review, A father and his young son, “each the other’s world entire”, trawl across the ruins of post-apocalyptic America in this terrifying but tender story told with biblical conviction. Against this apocalyptic backdrop she explores urgent questions of power and enslavement through the eyes of three women. 16. One of Canada’s most celebrated poets examines love and desire in a collection that describes itself as “a fictional essay in 39 tangos”. What is the American experience?” Critic and playwright Gregg Barrios concurs, “Díaz’s deft mash-up of Dominican history, comics, sci-fi, magic realism and footnotes totally rocks. Read the review, A reunion dominates the Irish novelist’s family drama, but the individual stories of the five members of the Madigan clan – the matriarch, Rosaleen, and her children, Dan, Emmet, Constance and Hanna, who escape and are bound to return – are beautifully held in balance. Robinson’s meditative, deeply philosophical novel is told through letters written by elderly preacher John Ames in the 1950s to his young son who, when he finally reaches an adulthood his father won’t see, will at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation: “While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.” This is a book about legacy, a record of a pocket of America that will never return, a reminder of the heartbreaking, ephemeral beauty that can be found in everyday life. The end result is sublime. The book doubles as a set of profound reflections on objects and what they mean to us. Pages in category "21st-century British novels" The following 19 pages are in this category, out of 19 total. Two decades on, Gladwell is often accused of oversimplification and cherry picking, but his idiosyncratic bestsellers have helped shape 21st-century culture. Thank you Powell’s! The story of her crossing to the US examines the blurring of boundaries, the commingling of languages and the blending of identities that complicate the idea of an eventual return. This list may not reflect recent changes . Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. 14. The book’s combination of honesty, scholarly rigour and poetry made it a benchmark in literary memoir and understanding of mental health. Parts with disparate themes – 19th-century ballooning, photography and marriage literary memoir and understanding of mental health as. 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