The Best Fiction Books

Since the publication of Samuel Smiles' Self-Help (1859) in Victorian Britain, self-help has become a billion dollar industry—and its influence is even felt in the contemporary novel, says Harvard literary scholar Beth Blum, author of The Self-Help Compulsion, a new history of the rise of self-help narratives in modern literature.

From her early novellas to the Neapolitan quartet, the elusive Elena Ferrante has achieved deserved superstar status for the compulsively readable, addictive quality of her writing. Two of the authors of The Ferrante Letters, Sarah Chihaya and Merve Emre, introduce us to Ferrante and recommend what to read next after My Brilliant Friend.

Looking for captivating, eccentric novels, essays and letters to read at the turn of the new year? Five Books literary editor Stephanie Kelley shares favorites from her year in reading—new and old.

From All The Pretty Horses to Blood Meridian to The Road, American novelist Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) was a titan of literary fiction for his philosophical, violent, often deeply moving novels. Cormac McCarthy expert Stacey Peebles introduces us to the author's oeuvre—and tells us that despite its apocalyptic bleakness, The Road is actually McCarthy's “happiest book.”

Friendships: they can be hard to keep and even harder to understand. Yet so often they end up having enormous impacts on our lives. Lauren Mechling, contributing editor at Vogue and author of the novel How Could She, picks the novelists that best portray the thorny underside of friendship as well as its joys.

Bettany Hughes, author of Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities and chair of this year's Booker International Prize judging panel, talks us through the six books they have shortlisted for the title of best novel in translation.

“I’ve been reading Quebec literature since the 1980s. I can tell when I’ve found a voice that I resonate with, when something is really beautiful or when it’s just trash.” Georgetown University Professor Miléna Santoro picks her favourite Quebec writers and showcases some of the region's best contemporary fiction and poetry translated from the original French.

The best fiction allows us to hold ideas in our heads about time and space and causality and connection that are difficult to articulate in other ways, argues the Australian author James Bradley. It helps its readers engage with dangers and possibilities that are at the very edge of imagination

Though biographical sensation has often diverted attention from her work, Sylvia Plath remains one of the finest lyric poets of the twentieth century, argues Professor Tim Kendall, Academic Director of Arts and Culture at Exeter and author of Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. Here, he recommends the best places to start (or return to) with Plath, from a fresh look at Ariel to illuminating an oft-overlooked, brilliant appendix in her unabridged journals.

An ever-growing body of authors are writing about the reality of what it means to be black in America, says Farah Jasmine Griffin, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Here she recommends five works of African American literature, from greats like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to lesser-known gems by Ann Petry.