The Best Fiction Books
Last updated: December 22, 2024
The Best Love Stories, recommended by Jenny Davidson
From Jane Austen to James Baldwin, the best love stories in literature recommended by Jenny Davidson, novelist, historian and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
The Best American Poetry, recommended by Elisa New
With the help of a good anthology and a heaping dose of American classics, anyone can be converted to being a lover of poetry. Elisa New, Harvard scholar and host of the PBS series Poetry in America, recommends her favorite American poets, from Emily Dickinson to Elizabeth Bishop.
The Best Caribbean Fiction, recommended by Alexia Arthurs
From the humorous and dark stories of a young V. S. Naipaul to recent coming-of-age novels, set in a cut-throat Jamaican holiday resort or American’s urban battlefields, Alexia Arthurs explores the myriad expressions of Caribbean identity in fiction
Shanghai Novels, recommended by Paul French
Though it was the fifth biggest city in the world in the years following the Second World War, there aren’t nearly as many novels set in Shanghai as there are in Paris, Berlin and other international cities. Author and expert on modern Chinese history Paul French takes a look at the literary history of an often underwritten city from the 1930s through to the new millennium.
The Best Samuel Beckett Books, recommended by Mark Nixon
Samuel Beckett remains one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. Ruthlessly experimental, his plays, novels, and poems represent a sustained attack on the realist tradition. Dr Mark Nixon looks at the mutating nature of Beckett’s literary style and explains why he didn’t choose Waiting for Godot.
Best Baltic Literature, recommended by Jayde Will
A century ago, the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—became independent. This year, 2018, we highlight five of the best works of Baltic literature recently translated into English. Baltic literature expert Jayde Will breaks each of them down, and introduces us to an area of the world with a vibrant literary culture too often overlooked.
The best books on Dickens and Christmas, recommended by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
When it was published on December 19th, 1843, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was an instant classic. Oxford Professor of English Literature Robert Douglas-Fairhurst runs through the best of Dickens’s prolific writings about Christmas.
The Best Fiction of 2018, recommended by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Looking for the best novels of the year? Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at New York University and chair of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for fiction, gives an in-depth breakdown of the six books that made this year’s shortlist, and reflects on why the novel as a form is stronger than ever.
The best books on The Odyssey, recommended by Emily Wilson
The Odyssey has been constantly rewritten by centuries of writers, but like so much of Greek myth, it's always already open to revising its own narrative. Emily Wilson, Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English, recommends the best books to read after (or alongside) the Ancient Greek epic, and offers sage wisdom about both translating ancient epics and why everyone can learn from the Odyssey today.
The Best of Autofiction, recommended by Olivia Laing
All writers draw from lived experience, but today’s most exciting experimental writers aren’t afraid to mine theirs explicitly. Here, the acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing – author of Crudo and The Lonely City – discusses five works of ‘autofiction’ that have influenced her.