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.
Position
Details
Rating
#1
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante
Ann Goldstein (Translator)
4.05
#2
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
4.53
#3
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
3.93
#4
The Known World
Edward P. Jones
3.4
#5
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen
3.89
#6
2666
Roberto Bolaño
Natasha Wimmer (Translator)
3.87
#7
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
4.06
#8
Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald
James Wood
4.42
#9
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
3.81
#10
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
4.06
#11
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz
3.77
#12
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion
4.06
#13
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
4.04
#14
Outline
Rachel Cusk
3.67
#15
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
4.25
#16
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
4.23
#17
The Sellout
Paul Beatty
3.78
#18
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
3.9
#19
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
Patrick Radden Keefe
4.47
#20
Erasure
Percival Everett
4.52
#21
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond
4.58
#22
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity