The best fiction (novels, short stories, and plays) that I’ve read in the past few years.
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2021
- No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
- Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen
- Stoner, John Williams
- The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar
- All for Nothing, Walter Kempowski
- The Morning Star, Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Second Place, Rachel Cusk
- Heat Wave, Penelope Lively
- Passing On, Penelope Lively
- Last Night: Stories, James Salter
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2020
- The Collected Stories, Grace Paley
- The Golovlovs, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
- The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante
- My Struggle, Book 6, Karle Ove Knausgaard
- Sweet Days of Discipline, Fleur Jaeggy
- Mortals, Norman Rush
- Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill
- A Breath of Life, Clarice Lispector
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2019
- History, Elsa Morante
- Selected Stories, Nadine Gordimer
- Across the Bridge, Mavis Gallant
- The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald
- Honored Guest, Joy Williams
- Escapes, Joy Williams
- Vertigo, W.G. Sebald
- The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
- Two Lives and a Dream, Marguerite Yourcenar
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2018
- In Transit, Mavis Gallant
- Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams
- A Heart So White, Javier Marías
- Thérèse Desqueyroux, François Mauriac
- Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
- Spring Snow, Yukio Mishima
- Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
- Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- Florida, Lauren Groff
- King, Queen, Knave, Vladimir Nabokov
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2017
- The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald
- The Complete Stories, Clarice Lispector
- The Visiting Privilege, Joy Williams
- Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
- My Struggle, Book 5, Karl Ove Knausgaard
- The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner
- The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
- Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
- The Question of Bruno, Aleksandar Hemon
- The Afterlives, Thomas Pierce
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2016
- The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector
- The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante
- Blow-Up and Other Stories, Julio Cortázar
- The Friendly Persuasion, Jessamyn West
- The Wallcreeper, Nell Zink
- The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
- The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Mahajan
- My Struggle, Book 4, Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Troubling Love, Elena Ferrante
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2015
- The Stories of John Cheever
- The Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante
- My Struggle, Books 1 and 2, Karl Ove Knausgaard
- A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
- Independent People, Halldór Laxness
- Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf
- The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald
- In Persuasion Nation, George Saunders
- Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively
- Coup de Grâce, Marguerite Yourcenar
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2014
- The Stories of Paul Bowles
- Alexis, Marguerite Yourcenar
- Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
- The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
- The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
- Can’t and Won’t, Lydia Davis
- Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
- Light Years, James Salter
- Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2013
- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
- The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
- Time Regained, Marcel Proust
- Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar
- Tenth of December, George Saunders
- Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams
- The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2012
- Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
- The Captive and The Fugitive, Marcel Proust
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
- King Lear, William Shakespeare
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
- Close Range, Annie Proulx
- Evidence of Things Unseen, Marianne Wiggins
- May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes
- The Wonders of the Invisible World, David Gates
- A Mercy, Toni Morrison
10 Best Fiction Books I Read in 2011
- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
- Sodom and Gomorrah, Marcel Proust
- What the Living Do, Marie Howe
- Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
- Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
- Light in August, William Faulkner
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
- The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
- I, Claudius, Robert Graves
10 Best Books I Read in 2010
- The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
- The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
- The Guermantes Way, Marcel Proust
- Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
- Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
- Ulysses, James Joyce
- The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Vladimir Nabokov
10 Best Books I Read in 2009
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- Cane, Jean Toomer
- For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
- The Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Basho
- Within a Budding Grove, Marcel Proust
- The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
- Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy
- Drown, Junot Diaz
10 Best Books I Read in 2008
- Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
- Rashomon and Other Stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Sula, Toni Morrison
- The Duel, Anton Chekhov
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
- The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki
- What is the What, Dave Eggers
- Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster
- Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald