NYT The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers, with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
- 1
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante · 2011 · 6 lists
- 2
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson · 2010 · 6 lists
- 3
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel · 2009 · 12 lists
- 4
The Known World
Edward P. Jones · 2003 · 11 lists
- 5
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen · 2001 · 16 lists
- 6
2666
Roberto Bolaño · 2004 · 12 lists
- 7
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead · 2016 · 8 lists
- 8
Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald · 2001 · 11 lists
- 9
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · 11 lists
- 10
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson · 2004 · 12 lists
- 11
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz · 2007 · 14 lists
- 12
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion · 2005 · 9 lists
- 13
The Road
Cormac McCarthy · 2006 · 14 lists
- 14
Outline
Rachel Cusk · 1919 · 2 lists
- 15
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017 · 7 lists
- 16
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon · 2000 · 10 lists
- 17
The Sellout
Paul Beatty · 2015 · 7 lists
- 18
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders · 2017 · 7 lists
- 19
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2018 · 7 lists
- 20
Erasure
Percival Everett · 2001 · 1 list
- 21
Evicted
Matthew Desmond · 2016 · 7 lists
- 22
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo · 2012 · 3 lists
- 23
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Alice Munro · 1998 · 3 lists
- 24
The Overstory
Richard Powers · 2018 · 4 lists
- 25
Random Family
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc · 2003 · 2 lists
- 26
Atonement
Ian McEwan · 2001 · 18 lists
- 27
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · 9 lists
- 28
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell · 2004 · 7 lists
- 29
The Last Samurai
Helen DeWitt · 2000 · 2 lists
- 30
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017 · 6 lists
- 31
White Teeth
Zadie Smith · 2000 · 17 lists
- 32
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst · 2004 · 6 lists
- 33
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward · 2011 · 3 lists
- 34
Citizen
Claudia Rankine · 2014 · 2 lists
- 35
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel · 2000 · 3 lists
- 36
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015 · 6 lists
- 37
The Years
Virginia Woolf · 1722 · 2 lists
- 38
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño · 1998 · 5 lists
- 39
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan · 2010 · 9 lists
- 40
H is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald · 2006 · 4 lists
- 41
Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan · 2020 · 3 lists
- 42
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James · 2014 · 3 lists
- 43
- 44
The Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin · 2015 · 4 lists
- 45
The Argonauts
Maggie Nelson · 2015 · 2 lists
- 46
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt · 2013 · 9 lists
- 47
A Mercy
Toni Morrison · 1998 · 2 lists
- 48
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi · 2000 · 4 lists
- 49
The Vegetarian
Kang Han · 2004 · 6 lists
- 50
Trust
Hernan Diaz · 2022 · 6 lists
- 51
Life after life
Kate Atkinson · 2013 · 6 lists
- 52
Train Dreams
Denis Johnson · 2006 · 2 lists
- 53
Runaway
Alice Munro · 1987 · 3 lists
- 54
Tenth of December
George Saunders · 2012 · 3 lists
- 55
The Looming Tower
Lawrence Wright · 2006 · 6 lists
- 56
The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner · 2013 · 5 lists
- 57
Nickel and Dimed
Barbara Ehrenreich · 2001 · 4 lists
- 58
- 59
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides · 2002 · 12 lists
- 60
Heavy
Kiese Laymon · 2005 · 2 lists
- 61
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver · 2022 · 5 lists
- 62
10:04
Ben Lerner · 2014 · 2 lists
- 63
Veronica
Mary Gaitskill · 1909 · 2 lists
- 64
The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai · 2018 · 4 lists
- 65
The Plot Against America
Philip Roth · 2004 · 8 lists
- 66
We the Animals
Justin Torres · 2011 · 2 lists
- 67
- 68
The Friend
Sigrid Nunez · 1848 · 2 lists
- 69
- 70
All Aunt Hagar’s Children
Edward P. Jones · 2006 · 1 list
- 71
Childhood / Youth / Dependency
Tove Ditlevsen · 2020 · 1 list
- 72
Secondhand Time
Svetlana Alexievich · 2013 · 2 lists
- 73
The Passage of Power
Robert Caro · 1999 · 2 lists
- 74
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout · 2007 · 5 lists
- 75
Exit West
Mohsin Hamid · 2017 · 4 lists
- 76
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin · 2022 · 2 lists
- 77
An American Marriage
Tayari Jones · 2018 · 5 lists
- 78
- 79
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Lucia Berlin · 2015 · 3 lists
- 80
The Story of the Lost Child
Elena Ferrante · 2019 · 3 lists
- 81
Pulphead
John Jeremiah Sullivan · 2011 · 2 lists
- 82
Hurricane Season
Fernanda Melchor · 2019 · 1 list
- 83
When We Cease to Understand the World
Benjamín Labatut · 2021 · 2 lists
- 84
The Emperor of All Maladies
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 2010 · 3 lists
- 85
Pastoralia
George Saunders · 2000 · 3 lists
- 86
Frederick Douglass
David W. Blight · 1845 · 3 lists
- 87
Detransition, Baby
Torrey Peters · 2021 · 1 list
- 88
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis · 2009 · 1 list
- 89
The Return
Hisham Matar · 1950 · 6 lists
- 90
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen · 2015 · 6 lists
- 91
The Human Stain
Philip Roth · 2000 · 6 lists
- 92
The Days of Abandonment
Elena Ferrante · 2002 · 2 lists
- 93
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel · 2014 · 3 lists
- 94
On Beauty
Zadie Smith · 2005 · 4 lists
- 95
Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel · 2012 · 5 lists
- 96
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Saidiya Hartman · 1 list
- 97
Men We Reaped
Jesmyn Ward · 2013 · 1 list
- 98
Bel Canto
Ann Patchett · 2001 · 7 lists
- 101
How to Be Both
Ali Smith · 2014 · 3 lists
- 102
Tree of Smoke
Denis Johnson · 2007 · 4 lists