121 best 20th/21st century novels

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The Rules

Peter Ackroyd: English Music
Rudolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima
Ivo Andrić: Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina)
Oğuz Atay: Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected)
J G Ballard: Crash
Andrei Bely: Петербург (Petersburg)
Salvador Benesdra: El traductor [The Translator]
Roberto Bolaño: Los Detectives Salvajes (The Savage Detectives)
H.C. Branner: Ingen kender natten (No Man Knows the Night)
Hermann Broch: Die Schlafwandler (The Sleepwalkers)
Mikhail Bulgakov: Мастер и Маргарита (The Master and Margarita)
Michel Butor: L’Emploi du temps (Passing Time)
Mary Butts: Ashe of Rings
Dino Buzzati: Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe; later: The Stronghold)
Italo Calvino: Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities)
Héctor Aguilar Camín: La Guerra de Galio [Galio’s War]
Albert Camus: L’Etranger (UK: The Outsider; US: The Stranger)
Martín Caparrós: La Historia [History]
Peter Carey: Illywhacker
Mircea Cărtărescu: Solenoid
Camilo José Cela: La colmena (The Hive)
Syl Cheney-Coker: The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
Alberto Chimal: La torre y el jardín [The Tower and the Garden]
Hugo Claus: Het verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium)
J M Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians
Joseph Conrad: Nostromo
Robert Coover: The Public Burning
Miquel de Palol: El jardí dels set crepuscles (The Garden of Seven Twilights)
Fernando del Paso: Palinuro de México (Palinuro of Mexico)
Don DeLillo: Falling Man
Tahar Djaout: L’invention du désert [The Invention of the Desert]
Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (Alexanderplatz, Berlin; Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf)
José Donoso: Obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night)
John Dos Passos: U.S.A.
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying
Agustín Fernández Mallo: Trilogía de la guerra (The Things We’ve Seen)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Ford Madox Ford: Parade’s End
Max Frisch: Stiller (I’m not Stiller)
Marianne Fritz: Dessen Sprache du nicht verstehst [Whose Language You Do Not Understand]
Carlos Fuentes: La muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz)
William Gaddis: The Recognitions
Konstantine Gamsakhurdia: დიდოსტატის მარჯვენა/Десница великого мастера (The Hand of a Great Master)
Gao Xingjian: 灵山 (Soul Mountain)
Gabriel García Márquez: Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years Of Solitude)
William H. Gass: The Tunnel
William Gerhardie: The Polyglots
Lewis Grassic Gibbon: The Scots Quair
André Gide: Les faux-monnayeurs (US: The Counterfeiters; UK: The Coiners)
Natalia Ginzburg: La città e la casa (The City and the House)
Ellen Glasgow: Life and Gabriella
Nadine Gordimer: Burger’s Daughter
Caroline Gordon: The Women on the Porch
Juan Goytisolo: La saga de los Marx (The Marx Family Saga)
Günter Grass: Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)
Alasdair Gray: Lanark
Lars Gustafsson: Bernard Foys tredje rockad (Bernard Foy’s Third Castling)
Peter Handke: Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick)
Jaroslav Hašek: Osudy Dobrého Vojáka švejka Za Svetové Valky (The Good Soldier Schweik)
Joseph Heller: Catch-22
H L Humes: The Underground City
Qurratulain Hyder: آگ کا دریاا (River of Fire)
Elfriede Jelinek: Die Kinder der Toten [The Children of the Dead]
James Joyce: Ulysses
Franz Kafka: Der Prozess (The Trial)
Yasunari Kawabata: 雪國 (Snow Country)
A L Kennedy: Paradise
Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)
Halldór Laxness: Íslandsklukkan (Iceland’s Bell)
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook
Clarice Lispector: A paixão segundo G.H. (The Passion according to G.H.)
Miki Liukkonen: O [O]
Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano
Naguib Mahfouz: Cairo Trilogy
André Malraux: La Condition humaine (Storm in Shanghai; Man’s Estate)
Thomas Mann: Doktor Faustus (Doctor Faustus)
Leopoldo Marechal: Adán Buenosayres
Javier Marías: Corazón tan blanco (A Heart So White)
Ana María Matute: Paraíso inhabitado [Uninhabited Paradise]
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men)
Cormac McCarthy: Suttree
Carson McCullers: The Member of the Wedding
John McGahern: That They May Face the Rising Sun (US: By the Lake)
Minae Mizumura: 本格小説 新潮社 (A True Novel)
Harry Mulisch: De ontdekking van de hemel (The Discovery of Heaven)
Antonio Muñoz Molina: El invierno en Lisboa (Winter In Lisbon)
Haruki Murakami: ねじまき鳥クロニクル(The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
Robert Musil: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities)
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
Joyce Carol Oates: them
Flann O’Brien: At Swim-Two-Birds
Flannery O’Connor: Wise Blood
Anna Maria Ortese: L’iguana (The Iguana)
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Ignacio Padilla: Si volviesen sus majestades [If Their Majesties Were to Return]
Orhan Pamuk: Kar (Snow)
Boris Pasternak: Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago)
Walker Percy: The Moviegoer
Georges Perec: La Vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual)
Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; Remembrance of Things Past)
James Purdy: Cabot Wright Begins
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow
Mercè Rodoreda: La plaça del Diamant (UK: The Pigeon Girl; US: The Time of the Doves)
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
Ernesto Sabato: Sobre heroes y tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs)
Tayeb Salih: بندر شاه مريود (Bandarshah)
Aksel Sandemose: Varulven (The Werewolf)
Jean-Paul Sartre: Les Chemins de la liberté (The Roads to Freedom)
W G Sebald: Austerlitz (Austerlitz)
Vladimir Sharov: До и во время (Before and During)
Mikhail Shishkin: Венерин Волос (Maidenhair)
Hjalmar Söderberg: Doktor Glas (Doctor Glas)
Antonio Tabucchi: Sostiene Pereira (UK: Declares Pereira; US: Pereira Declares)
Donna Tartt: The Secret History
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces
Gonzalo Torrente Ballester: La saga/fuga de J.B [The Saga/Flight of J. B.]
Michel Tournier: Météores (Gemini)
Vladislav Vančura: Markéta Lazarová
Mario Vargas Llosa: Conversación en la catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral)
Paolo Volponi: Le mosche del capitale [The Flies of Capital]
David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest
Martin Walser: Halbzeit [Half Time]
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth
Patrick White: The Vivisector
Colson Whitehead: The Intuitionist
Henry Williamson: The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight
Stanisław Witkiewicz: Nienasycenie (Insatiability)
Christa Wolf: Nachdenken über Christa T. (The Quest for Christa T)
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
Kyūsaku Yumeno; ドグラマグラ (Dogra Magra)