Ninety-nine Novels
Encyclopedia
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
's book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice (1984
1984 in literature
The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....
, ISBN 0-85031-585-9) covers a 44-year span between 1939 and 1983. Burgess was a prolific reader, in his early career reviewing more than 350 novels in just over two years for the Yorkshire Post. In the course of his career he wrote over thirty novels.
The list represents his personal choices.
In an interview with Don Swaim
Don Swaim
Don Swaim is an American journalist and broadcaster.Born in Kansas, Swaim earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Ohio University and worked as editor, writer, producer, reporter and anchor at WCBS in New York and CBS in Baltimore....
Burgess reveals that the book was originally commissioned by a Nigerian publishing company, and written in two weeks.
Sorted by author
- Chinua AchebeChinua AchebeAlbert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
- A Man of the PeopleA Man of the PeopleA Man of the People is a 1966 satirical novel by Chinua Achebe. It is Achebe's fourth novel. The novel tells the story of the young and educated Odili, the narrator, and his conflict with Chief Nanga, his former teacher who enters a career in politics in an unnamed modern African country...
- (1966) - Brian AldissBrian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
- Life in the West (1980) - Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
- Lucky JimLucky JimLucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
(1954) - Kingsley Amis - The Anti-Death League (1966)
- James BaldwinJames Baldwin (writer)James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
- Another CountryAnother Country (novel)Another Country is a 1962 novel by James Baldwin. The novel tells of the bohemian lifestyle of musicians, writers and other artists living in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. It portrayed many taboo themes such as bisexuality, interracial couples and extramarital affairs.-Plot summary:The first...
(1962) - J. G. BallardJ. G. BallardJames Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
- The Unlimited Dream CompanyThe Unlimited Dream CompanyThe Unlimited Dream Company is a novel by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1979. It was nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1980.- Plot :...
(1979) - John BarthJohn BarthJohn Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
- Giles Goat-BoyGiles Goat-BoyGiles Goat-Boy is a 1966 novel by the American writer John Barth. It is a satire and allegory of the American campus culture of the time. In 2001, Barth told Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm that while he wrote the novel thinking the name 'Giles' was pronounced with "a hard 'G'.....
(1966) - Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
- The Victim (1947) - Saul Bellow - Humboldt's GiftHumboldt's GiftHumboldt's Gift is a 1975 novel by Saul Bellow, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year....
(1975) - Elizabeth BowenElizabeth BowenElizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
- The Heat of the DayThe Heat of the DayThe Heat of the Day is a novel written by Elizabeth Bowen, first published in 1948 in Great Britain, and in 1949 in the United States of America....
(1949) - Malcolm BradburyMalcolm BradburySir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
- The History ManThe History ManThe History Man is a campus novel by the British author Malcolm Bradbury set in 1972 in the fictional seaside town of Watermouth in the South of England. Watermouth bears some resemblance to Brighton. For example, there is a frequent and fast train service to London.-Plot introduction:Howard Kirk...
(1975) - John BraineJohn BraineJohn Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually associated with the Angry Young Men movement.-Biography:...
- Room at the TopRoom at the Top (novel)Room at the Top , by John Braine, tells the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origin, and the socio-economic struggles undergone in realising his social ambitions in post-war Britain...
(1957) - Joyce CaryJoyce CaryJoyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist and artist.-Youth and education:...
- The Horse's MouthThe Horse's MouthThe Horse's Mouth is a 1944 novel by Joyce Cary, the third in his First Trilogy, whose first two books are Herself Surprised and To Be A Pilgrim...
(1944) - Raymond ChandlerRaymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
- The Long GoodbyeThe Long Goodbye (novel)The Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work...
(1953) - Ivy Compton-BurnettIvy Compton-BurnettDame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.-Life:...
- The Mighty and Their Fall (1961) - William CooperWilliam Cooper (novelist)Harry Summerfield Hoff was an English novelist, writing under the name William Cooper.-Life:H.S.Hoff was born in Crewe, the son of elementary school teachers , and read natural sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge...
- Scenes from Provincial Life (1950) - Robertson DaviesRobertson DaviesWilliam Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
- The Rebel AngelsThe Rebel AngelsThe Rebel Angels is Canadian author Robertson Davies's most noted novel, after those that form his Deptford Trilogy.First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1981, The Rebel Angels is the first of the three connected novels of Davies' Cornish Trilogy...
(1982) - Len DeightonLen DeightonLeonard Cyril Deighton is a British military historian, cookery writer, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine....
- BomberBomber (novel)Bomber is a novel written by Len Deighton and published in the UK in 1970. It is the fictionalised account of the events of 31 June [sic], 1943 in which an RAF bombing raid on the Ruhr area of western Germany goes wrong...
(1970) - Lawrence DurrellLawrence DurrellLawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
- The Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the books present four perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II.As Durrell...
(1957) - Ralph EllisonRalph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
- Invisible ManInvisible ManInvisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he published during his lifetime . It won him the National Book Award in 1953...
(1952) - William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
- The MansionThe Mansion (book)The Mansion is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, written in 1959. It is the last in a trilogy of books about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi, following The Hamlet and The Town...
(1959) - Ian FlemingIan FlemingIan Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
- Goldfinger (1959) - John FowlesJohn FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
- The French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant’s Woman , by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977...
(1969) - Michael FraynMichael FraynMichael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
- Sweet DreamsSweet Dreams (novel)Sweet Dreams is a 1973 novel by Michael Frayn.The plot addresses the question of what happens when a middle-class intellectual man dies. Why, he goes to a middle-class intellectual Heaven of course...
(1973) - William GoldingWilliam GoldingSir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
- The SpireThe SpireThe Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire of Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin...
(1964) - Nadine GordimerNadine GordimerNadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...
- The Late Bourgeois World (1966) - Alasdair GrayAlasdair GrayAlasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...
- LanarkLanark (book)Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow....
(1981) - Henry GreenHenry GreenHenry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...
- Party Going (1939) - Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
- The Power and the GloryThe Power and the GloryThe Power and the Glory is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often added to the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever , amen." This novel has also been published in the US under the name The...
(1940) - Graham Greene - The Heart of the MatterThe Heart of the MatterThe Heart of the Matter , a novel by the English author Graham Greene, won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. During World War II, Greene worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, the setting for his novel...
(1948) - Wilson HarrisWilson HarrisSir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
- Heartland (1964) - L. P. HartleyL. P. HartleyLeslie Poles Hartley was a British writer, known for novels and short stories. His best-known work is The Go-Between , which was made into a 1970 film, directed by Joseph Losey with a star cast, in an adaptation by Harold Pinter...
- Facial JusticeFacial JusticeFacial Justice is a dystopian novel by L. P. Hartley, published in 1960. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic society that has sought to banish privilege and envy, to the extent that people will even have their faces surgically altered in order to appear neither too beautiful nor too ugly...
(1960) - Joseph HellerJoseph HellerJoseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
- Catch-22Catch-22Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
(1961) - Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
- For Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
(1940) - Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...
(1952) - Russell HobanRussell HobanRussell Conwell Hoban is an American writer, now living in England, of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books-Biography:...
- Riddley WalkerRiddley WalkerRiddley Walker is a science fiction novel by Russell Hoban, first published in 1980. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel in 1982, as well as an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983...
(1980) - Richard HughesRichard Hughes (writer)Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
- The Fox in the AtticThe Fox in the AtticThe Fox in the Attic is a 1961 novel by Richard Hughes, who is best known for A High Wind in Jamaica. It was the first novel in his unfinished "Human Predicament" trilogy.-Plot summary:The novel opens in 1923...
(1961) - Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- After Many a SummerAfter Many a SummerAfter Many a Summer is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death; it was published in the United States as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan...
(1939) - Aldous Huxley - Ape and EssenceApe and EssenceApe and Essence is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, similar to that in Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work...
(1948) - Aldous Huxley - IslandIsland (novel)Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often...
(1962) - Christopher IsherwoodChristopher IsherwoodChristopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
- A Single ManA Single Man (novel)A Single Man is a 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood.Set in Southern California during 1962, it depicts one day in the life of George, a middle-aged, gay Englishman who is a professor at a Los Angeles university....
(1964) - Pamela Hansford JohnsonPamela Hansford JohnsonPamela Hansford Johnson, Baroness Snow was an English novelist, playwright, poet, literary and social critic.-Career:...
- An Error of Judgement (1962) - Erica JongErica JongErica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
- How to Save Your Own Life (1977) - James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
- Finnegans WakeFinnegans WakeFinnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
(1939) - Doris LessingDoris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
- The Golden NotebookThe Golden NotebookThe Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing. This book, as well as the couple that followed it, enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called Lessing's "inner space fiction", her work that explores mental and societal breakdown...
(1962) - David LodgeDavid Lodge (author)David John Lodge CBE, is an English author.In his novels, Lodge often satirises academia in general and the humanities in particular. He was brought up Catholic and has described himself as an "agnostic Catholic". Many of his characters are Catholic and their Catholicism is a major theme...
- How Far Can You Go?How Far Can You Go?How Far Can You Go? is a novel by British writer and academic David Lodge. It was renamed Souls and Bodies when published in the United States...
(1980) - Malcolm LowryMalcolm LowryClarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- Under the VolcanoUnder the VolcanoUnder the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...
(1947) - Colin MacInnesColin MacInnesColin MacInnes was an English novelist and journalist.-Early life:MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell McInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, who was also related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. His family moved to Australia in 1920, MacInness returning in 1930...
- The London Novels (1957) - Norman MailerNorman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
- The Naked and the DeadThe Naked and the DeadThe Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel by Norman Mailer. It was based on his experiences with the 112th Cavalry Regiment during the Philippines Campaign in World War II...
(1948) - Norman Mailer - Ancient EveningsAncient EveningsAncient Evenings is a novel by American author Norman Mailer. It deals with the lives of two protagonists, one young, one old, in a very alien Ancient Egypt marked by journeys by the dead, reincarnation, and violent and hyper-sexual gods and mortals in a complex combination of historical fiction,...
(1983) - Bernard MalamudBernard MalamudBernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...
- The AssistantThe Assistant (novel)The Assistant is Bernard Malamud's second novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships between them: an aging Jewish refugee...
(1957) - Bernard Malamud - Dubin's LivesDubin's LivesDubin's Lives is a novel by the American writer Bernard Malamud . The title character is a biographer working on a life of D. H. Lawrence.-Epigraphs:The novel begins with two quotations.What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?...
(1979) - Olivia ManningOlivia ManningOlivia Mary Manning CBE was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. She often wrote from her personal experience, though her books also...
- The Balkan Trilogy (1960) - W. Somerset MaughamW. Somerset MaughamWilliam Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
- The Razor's EdgeThe Razor's EdgeThe Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
(1944) - Mary McCarthyMary McCarthy (author)Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
- The Groves of AcademeThe Groves of AcademeThe Groves of Academe is the title of a novel by American writer Mary McCarthy. Considered to be one of the first academic novels, it concerns the sequence of events that take place after Henry Mulcahy, a literary instructor at the fictive Jocelyn College, learns that his teaching appointment will...
(1952) - Brian MooreBrian Moore (novelist)Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The...
- The Doctor's WifeThe Doctor's Wife (Brian Moore novel)The Doctor's Wife is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, published in 1976. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it tells the story of Sheila Redden, a doctor's wife from Belfast, who takes an American lover eleven years her junior while in Paris. She then separates from both her...
(1976) - Iris MurdochIris MurdochDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
- The BellThe Bell (novel)The Bell is a novel written by Iris Murdoch in 1958. It was her fourth to be published, and is set in Imber Court, a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire.-Plot summary:...
(1958) - Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
- Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
(1962) - Vladimir Nabokov - The DefenseThe DefenseThe Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...
(1964) - V. S. NaipaulV. S. NaipaulSir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
- A Bend in the RiverA Bend in the RiverA Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century...
(1979) - R. K. NarayanR. K. NarayanR. K. Narayan , shortened from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami Tamil: ) , Madras Presidency, British India. His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school...
- The Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of Sweets is a 1967 English novel by R. K. Narayan.-Plot summary:R.K Narayan’s The Vendor of Sweets like his other books is composed in simple, lucid English that can be read and undestood without turning and returning the pages after a single read...
(1967) - Robert NyeRobert NyeRobert Nye FRSL is an English poet who has also written novels and plays as well as stories for children. His bestselling novel Falstaff published in 1976 was described by Michael Ratcliffe as 'one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade,' and went on to win both The Hawthornden...
- FalstaffFalstaffSir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
(1976) - Flann O'BrienFlann O'BrienBrian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist regarded as a key figure in postmodern literature. Best known for novels such as At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and An Béal Bocht and many satirical columns in The Irish Times Brian O'Nolan (5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966) was...
- At Swim-Two-BirdsAt Swim-Two-BirdsAt Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction....
(1939) - Flannery O'ConnorFlannery O'ConnorMary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
- Wise BloodWise BloodWise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from several disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review...
(1952) - John O'HaraJohn O'HaraJohn Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
- The Lockwood Concern (1965) - George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
- Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
(1949) - Mervyn PeakeMervyn PeakeMervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
- Titus GroanTitus Groan (novel)Titus Groan is a novel by Mervyn Peake. It is the first novel in the Gormenghast series.-Plot introduction:The book is set in the huge castle of Gormenghast, a vast landscape of crumbling towers and ivy-filled quadrangles that has for centuries been the hereditary residence of the Groan family and...
(1946) - Walker PercyWalker PercyWalker Percy was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962...
- The Last Gentleman (1966) - James PlunkettJames PlunkettJames Plunkett Kelly, or James Plunkett , was an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS.Plunkett grew up among the Dublin working class and they, along with the petty bourgeoisie and lower intelligentsia, make up the bulk of the dramatis personae of his oeuvre...
- Farewell Companions (1977) - Anthony PowellAnthony PowellAnthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
- A Dance to the Music of TimeA Dance to the Music of TimeA Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
(1951) - J. B. PriestleyJ. B. PriestleyJohn Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
- The Image Men (1968) - Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
- Gravity's RainbowGravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
(1973) - Mordecai RichlerMordecai RichlerMordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...
- CocksureCocksureCocksure is a novel by Mordecai Richler. It was first published in 1968 by McClelland and Stewart.A satirical work, the novel centres on Mortimer Griffin, a middle-class Anglican from Caribou, Ontario who has built a successful career as a publisher and editor in 1960s London, England...
(1968) - Keith RobertsKeith RobertsKeith John Kingston Roberts , was an English science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" and "Escapism.Several of his early stories were written using the pseudonym...
- PavanePavane (novel)Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alternate history science fiction fix-up novel first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd in 1968. Most of the original stories were published in Science Fantasy...
(1968) - Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
- Portnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's Complaint is the American novel that turned its author Philip Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver...
(1969) - J. D. SalingerJ. D. SalingerJerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....
- The Catcher in the RyeThe Catcher in the RyeThe Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
(1951) - William SansomWilliam SansomWilliam Sansom FRSL was a British novelist, travel and short story writer known for his highly descriptive prose-style...
- The Body (1949) - Budd SchulbergBudd SchulbergBudd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his 1941 novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, his 1947 novel The Harder They Fall, his 1954 Academy-award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront, and his 1957 screenplay for A Face in the...
- The Disenchanted (1950) - Paul Mark Scott - Staying OnStaying OnStaying On is a novel by Paul Scott, which was published in 1977 and won the Booker Prize.-Plot summary:Staying On focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who are briefly mentioned in the latter two books of the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, and are the last British...
(1977) - Nevil ShuteNevil ShuteNevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...
- No HighwayNo HighwayNo Highway is a 1948 novel by Nevil Shute. It later formed the basis of the 1951 film No Highway in the Sky. The novel contains many of the ingredients that made Shute popular as a novelist, and, like several other of Shute's later novels, includes an element of the supernatural.Nevil Shute...
(1948) - Alan SillitoeAlan SillitoeAlan Sillitoe was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s.. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.- Biography :...
- Saturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday Morning is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Author's Club First Novel Award.It was adapted by Sillitoe into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney, directed by Karel Reisz, and in 1964 was adapted by David Brett as a play for the Nottingham...
(1958) - C. P. SnowC. P. SnowCharles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
- Strangers and BrothersStrangers and BrothersStrangers and Brothers is a series of novels by C. P. Snow, published between 1940 and 1974. They deal with – amongst other things – questions of political and personal integrity, and the mechanics of exercising power....
(1940) - Muriel SparkMuriel SparkDame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
- The Girls of Slender MeansThe Girls of Slender MeansThe Girls of Slender Means is a novella written in 1963 by Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was included in Anthony Burgess's 1984 book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice.-Plot introduction:...
(1963) - Muriel Spark - The Mandelbaum GateThe Mandelbaum GateThe Mandelbaum Gate is a novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark published in 1965 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize that year. The title refers to the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem around which the novel is set...
(1965) - William StyronWilliam StyronWilliam Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
- Sophie's ChoiceSophie's Choice (novel)Sophie's Choice is a novel by William Styron published in 1979. It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps...
(1979) - Alexander TherouxAlexander TherouxAlexander Theroux is an American novelist, poet, and essayist.He was born in Medford, Massachusetts. His brother is Paul Theroux. He studied at Harvard University and Yale University...
- Darconville's CatDarconville's CatDarconville's Cat is a novel by Alexander Theroux, first published in 1981. The main story is a love affair between Alaric Darconville, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, and one of his students, Isabel....
(1981) - Paul TherouxPaul TherouxPaul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...
- The Mosquito CoastThe Mosquito CoastThe Mosquito Coast is a 1986 American film directed by Peter Weir, based on the novel by Paul Theroux. The film stars Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and River Phoenix. The film tells the story of a family that leaves the United States and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of...
(1981) - John Kennedy TooleJohn Kennedy TooleJohn Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best-known for his posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected...
- A Confederacy of DuncesA Confederacy of DuncesA Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother Thelma Toole, quickly becoming a cult classic, and later a...
(1980) - John UpdikeJohn UpdikeJohn Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
- The Coup (1978) - Gore VidalGore VidalGore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
- Creation (1981) - Rex WarnerRex WarnerRex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome , an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home...
- The AerodromeThe AerodromeThe Aerodrome was a nightclub located at 1588 State Street in Schenectady, New York.The Aerodrome was established in 1967 by Jack Rubin of Chicago. The building was originally a 32-lane bowling alley named 'Woodlawn Lanes', which was converted by Rubin into a music venue...
(1941) - Evelyn WaughEvelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
- Brideshead RevisitedBrideshead RevisitedBrideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
(1945) - Evelyn Waugh - Sword of HonorSword of HonorThe Sword of Honour is an honorary sword awarded to that “Gentleman Cadet” or “Gentlewoman Cadet” who achieves an overall best performance during his or her entire training period at the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, the Pakistan Air Force Academy at Risalpur, or the Pakistan Naval Academy at...
(1952) - T. H. WhiteT. H. WhiteTerence Hanbury White was an English author best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.-Biography:...
- The Once and Future KingThe Once and Future KingThe Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T. H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works written in a period between 1938 and 1941....
(1958) - Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
- Riders in the ChariotRiders in the ChariotRiders in the Chariot is the sixth published novel by Australian Author Patrick White, Nobel Prize winner of 1973. It was published in 1961 and won the Miles Franklin Award in that year...
(1961) - Henry WilliamsonHenry WilliamsonHenry William Williamson was an English naturalist, farmer and prolific author known for his natural and social history novels. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter....
- A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (1951) - Angus WilsonAngus WilsonSir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, CBE was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.-Biography:Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to...
- The Old Men at the ZooThe Old Men at the ZooThe Old Men at the Zoo is a novel written by Angus Wilson, first published in 1961 by Secker and Warburg, and by Penguin books in 1964. It was adapted into a 1983 BBC Television serial by scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin.-Cast:...
(1961) - Angus Wilson - Late Call (1964)
- Herman WoukHerman WoukHerman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
- The Caine MutinyThe Caine MutinyThe Caine Mutiny is a 1952 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships...
(1951)
1930s
- 1939 - Henry GreenHenry GreenHenry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...
- Party Going (1939) - 1939 - Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- After Many a SummerAfter Many a SummerAfter Many a Summer is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death; it was published in the United States as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan...
(1939) - 1939 - James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
- Finnegans WakeFinnegans WakeFinnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
(1939) - 1939 - Flann O'BrienFlann O'BrienBrian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist regarded as a key figure in postmodern literature. Best known for novels such as At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and An Béal Bocht and many satirical columns in The Irish Times Brian O'Nolan (5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966) was...
- At Swim-Two-BirdsAt Swim-Two-BirdsAt Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction....
(1939)
1940s
- 1940 - Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
- The Power and the GloryThe Power and the GloryThe Power and the Glory is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often added to the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever , amen." This novel has also been published in the US under the name The...
(1940) - 1940 - Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
- For Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
(1940) - 1940 - C. P. SnowC. P. SnowCharles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
- Strangers and BrothersStrangers and BrothersStrangers and Brothers is a series of novels by C. P. Snow, published between 1940 and 1974. They deal with – amongst other things – questions of political and personal integrity, and the mechanics of exercising power....
(1940) - 1941 - Rex WarnerRex WarnerRex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome , an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home...
- The AerodromeThe AerodromeThe Aerodrome was a nightclub located at 1588 State Street in Schenectady, New York.The Aerodrome was established in 1967 by Jack Rubin of Chicago. The building was originally a 32-lane bowling alley named 'Woodlawn Lanes', which was converted by Rubin into a music venue...
(1941) - 1944 - Joyce CaryJoyce CaryJoyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist and artist.-Youth and education:...
- The Horse's MouthThe Horse's MouthThe Horse's Mouth is a 1944 novel by Joyce Cary, the third in his First Trilogy, whose first two books are Herself Surprised and To Be A Pilgrim...
(1944) - 1944 - W. Somerset MaughamW. Somerset MaughamWilliam Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
- The Razor's EdgeThe Razor's EdgeThe Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
(1944) - 1945 - Evelyn WaughEvelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
- Brideshead RevisitedBrideshead RevisitedBrideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
(1945) - 1946 - Mervyn PeakeMervyn PeakeMervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
- Titus GroanTitus Groan (novel)Titus Groan is a novel by Mervyn Peake. It is the first novel in the Gormenghast series.-Plot introduction:The book is set in the huge castle of Gormenghast, a vast landscape of crumbling towers and ivy-filled quadrangles that has for centuries been the hereditary residence of the Groan family and...
(1946) - 1947 - Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
- The Victim (1947) - 1947 - Malcolm LowryMalcolm LowryClarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- Under the VolcanoUnder the VolcanoUnder the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...
(1947) - 1949 - Elizabeth BowenElizabeth BowenElizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
- The Heat of the DayThe Heat of the DayThe Heat of the Day is a novel written by Elizabeth Bowen, first published in 1948 in Great Britain, and in 1949 in the United States of America....
(1949) - 1948 - Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
- The Heart of the MatterThe Heart of the MatterThe Heart of the Matter , a novel by the English author Graham Greene, won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. During World War II, Greene worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, the setting for his novel...
(1948) - 1948 - Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- Ape and EssenceApe and EssenceApe and Essence is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, similar to that in Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work...
(1948) - 1948 - Nevil ShuteNevil ShuteNevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...
- No HighwayNo HighwayNo Highway is a 1948 novel by Nevil Shute. It later formed the basis of the 1951 film No Highway in the Sky. The novel contains many of the ingredients that made Shute popular as a novelist, and, like several other of Shute's later novels, includes an element of the supernatural.Nevil Shute...
(1948) - 1948 - Norman MailerNorman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
- The Naked and the DeadThe Naked and the DeadThe Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel by Norman Mailer. It was based on his experiences with the 112th Cavalry Regiment during the Philippines Campaign in World War II...
(1948) - 1949 - George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
- Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
(1949) - 1949 - William SansomWilliam SansomWilliam Sansom FRSL was a British novelist, travel and short story writer known for his highly descriptive prose-style...
- The Body (1949)
1950s
- 1950 - William CooperWilliam Cooper (novelist)Harry Summerfield Hoff was an English novelist, writing under the name William Cooper.-Life:H.S.Hoff was born in Crewe, the son of elementary school teachers , and read natural sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge...
- Scenes from Provincial Life (1950) - 1950 - Budd SchulbergBudd SchulbergBudd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his 1941 novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, his 1947 novel The Harder They Fall, his 1954 Academy-award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront, and his 1957 screenplay for A Face in the...
- The Disenchanted (1950) - 1951 - Anthony PowellAnthony PowellAnthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
- A Dance to the Music of TimeA Dance to the Music of TimeA Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
(1951) - 1951 - J. D. SalingerJ. D. SalingerJerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....
- The Catcher in the RyeThe Catcher in the RyeThe Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
(1951) - 1951 - Henry WilliamsonHenry WilliamsonHenry William Williamson was an English naturalist, farmer and prolific author known for his natural and social history novels. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter....
- A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (1951) - 1951 - Herman WoukHerman WoukHerman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
- The Caine MutinyThe Caine MutinyThe Caine Mutiny is a 1952 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships...
(1951) - 1952 - Ralph EllisonRalph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
- Invisible ManInvisible ManInvisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he published during his lifetime . It won him the National Book Award in 1953...
(1952) - 1952 - Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
- The Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the SeaThe Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...
(1952) - 1952 - Mary McCarthyMary McCarthy (author)Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
- The Groves of AcademeThe Groves of AcademeThe Groves of Academe is the title of a novel by American writer Mary McCarthy. Considered to be one of the first academic novels, it concerns the sequence of events that take place after Henry Mulcahy, a literary instructor at the fictive Jocelyn College, learns that his teaching appointment will...
(1952) - 1952 - Flannery O'ConnorFlannery O'ConnorMary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
- Wise BloodWise BloodWise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from several disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review...
(1952) - 1952 - Evelyn WaughEvelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
- Sword of HonorSword of HonorThe Sword of Honour is an honorary sword awarded to that “Gentleman Cadet” or “Gentlewoman Cadet” who achieves an overall best performance during his or her entire training period at the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, the Pakistan Air Force Academy at Risalpur, or the Pakistan Naval Academy at...
(1952) - 1953 - Raymond ChandlerRaymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
- The Long GoodbyeThe Long Goodbye (novel)The Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work...
(1953) - 1954 - Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
- Lucky JimLucky JimLucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
(1954) - 1957 - John BraineJohn BraineJohn Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually associated with the Angry Young Men movement.-Biography:...
- Room at the TopRoom at the Top (novel)Room at the Top , by John Braine, tells the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origin, and the socio-economic struggles undergone in realising his social ambitions in post-war Britain...
(1957) - 1957 - Lawrence DurrellLawrence DurrellLawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
- The Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the books present four perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II.As Durrell...
(1957) - 1957 - Colin MacInnesColin MacInnesColin MacInnes was an English novelist and journalist.-Early life:MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell McInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, who was also related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. His family moved to Australia in 1920, MacInness returning in 1930...
- The London Novels (1957) - 1957 - Bernard MalamudBernard MalamudBernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...
- The AssistantThe Assistant (novel)The Assistant is Bernard Malamud's second novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships between them: an aging Jewish refugee...
(1957) - 1958 - Iris MurdochIris MurdochDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
- The BellThe Bell (novel)The Bell is a novel written by Iris Murdoch in 1958. It was her fourth to be published, and is set in Imber Court, a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire.-Plot summary:...
(1958) - 1958 - Alan SillitoeAlan SillitoeAlan Sillitoe was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s.. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.- Biography :...
- Saturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday Morning is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Author's Club First Novel Award.It was adapted by Sillitoe into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney, directed by Karel Reisz, and in 1964 was adapted by David Brett as a play for the Nottingham...
(1958) - 1958 - T. H. WhiteT. H. WhiteTerence Hanbury White was an English author best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.-Biography:...
- The Once and Future KingThe Once and Future KingThe Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T. H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works written in a period between 1938 and 1941....
(1958) - 1959 - William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
- The MansionThe Mansion (book)The Mansion is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, written in 1959. It is the last in a trilogy of books about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi, following The Hamlet and The Town...
(1959) - 1959 - Ian FlemingIan FlemingIan Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
- Goldfinger (1959)
1960s
- 1960 - L. P. HartleyL. P. HartleyLeslie Poles Hartley was a British writer, known for novels and short stories. His best-known work is The Go-Between , which was made into a 1970 film, directed by Joseph Losey with a star cast, in an adaptation by Harold Pinter...
- Facial JusticeFacial JusticeFacial Justice is a dystopian novel by L. P. Hartley, published in 1960. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic society that has sought to banish privilege and envy, to the extent that people will even have their faces surgically altered in order to appear neither too beautiful nor too ugly...
(1960) - 1960 - Olivia ManningOlivia ManningOlivia Mary Manning CBE was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. She often wrote from her personal experience, though her books also...
- The Balkan Trilogy (1960) - 1961 - Ivy Compton-BurnettIvy Compton-BurnettDame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.-Life:...
- The Mighty and Their Fall (1961) - 1961 - Joseph HellerJoseph HellerJoseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
- Catch-22Catch-22Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
(1961) - 1961 - Richard HughesRichard Hughes (writer)Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
- The Fox in the AtticThe Fox in the AtticThe Fox in the Attic is a 1961 novel by Richard Hughes, who is best known for A High Wind in Jamaica. It was the first novel in his unfinished "Human Predicament" trilogy.-Plot summary:The novel opens in 1923...
(1961) - 1961 - Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
- Riders in the ChariotRiders in the ChariotRiders in the Chariot is the sixth published novel by Australian Author Patrick White, Nobel Prize winner of 1973. It was published in 1961 and won the Miles Franklin Award in that year...
(1961) - 1961 - Angus WilsonAngus WilsonSir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, CBE was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.-Biography:Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to...
- The Old Men at the ZooThe Old Men at the ZooThe Old Men at the Zoo is a novel written by Angus Wilson, first published in 1961 by Secker and Warburg, and by Penguin books in 1964. It was adapted into a 1983 BBC Television serial by scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin.-Cast:...
(1961) - 1962 - James BaldwinJames Baldwin (writer)James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
- Another CountryAnother Country (novel)Another Country is a 1962 novel by James Baldwin. The novel tells of the bohemian lifestyle of musicians, writers and other artists living in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. It portrayed many taboo themes such as bisexuality, interracial couples and extramarital affairs.-Plot summary:The first...
(1962) - 1962 - Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- IslandIsland (novel)Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often...
(1962) - 1962 - Pamela Hansford JohnsonPamela Hansford JohnsonPamela Hansford Johnson, Baroness Snow was an English novelist, playwright, poet, literary and social critic.-Career:...
- An Error of Judgement (1962) - 1962 - Doris LessingDoris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
- The Golden NotebookThe Golden NotebookThe Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing. This book, as well as the couple that followed it, enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called Lessing's "inner space fiction", her work that explores mental and societal breakdown...
(1962) - 1962 - Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
- Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
(1962) - 1963 - Muriel SparkMuriel SparkDame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
- The Girls of Slender MeansThe Girls of Slender MeansThe Girls of Slender Means is a novella written in 1963 by Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was included in Anthony Burgess's 1984 book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice.-Plot introduction:...
(1963) - 1964 - William GoldingWilliam GoldingSir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
- The SpireThe SpireThe Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire of Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin...
(1964) - 1964 - Wilson HarrisWilson HarrisSir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
- Heartland (1964) - 1964 - Christopher IsherwoodChristopher IsherwoodChristopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
- A Single ManA Single Man (novel)A Single Man is a 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood.Set in Southern California during 1962, it depicts one day in the life of George, a middle-aged, gay Englishman who is a professor at a Los Angeles university....
(1964) - 1964 - Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
- The DefenseThe DefenseThe Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...
(1964) - 1964 - Angus WilsonAngus WilsonSir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, CBE was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.-Biography:Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to...
- Late Call (1964) - 1965 - John O'HaraJohn O'HaraJohn Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
- The Lockwood Concern (1965) - 1965 - Muriel SparkMuriel SparkDame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
- The Mandelbaum GateThe Mandelbaum GateThe Mandelbaum Gate is a novel written by Scottish author Muriel Spark published in 1965 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize that year. The title refers to the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem around which the novel is set...
(1965) - 1966 - Chinua AchebeChinua AchebeAlbert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
- A Man of the PeopleA Man of the PeopleA Man of the People is a 1966 satirical novel by Chinua Achebe. It is Achebe's fourth novel. The novel tells the story of the young and educated Odili, the narrator, and his conflict with Chief Nanga, his former teacher who enters a career in politics in an unnamed modern African country...
(1966) - 1966 - Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
- The Anti-Death League (1966) - 1966 - John BarthJohn BarthJohn Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
- Giles Goat-BoyGiles Goat-BoyGiles Goat-Boy is a 1966 novel by the American writer John Barth. It is a satire and allegory of the American campus culture of the time. In 2001, Barth told Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm that while he wrote the novel thinking the name 'Giles' was pronounced with "a hard 'G'.....
(1966) - 1966 - Nadine GordimerNadine GordimerNadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...
- The Late Bourgeois World (1966) - 1966 - Walker PercyWalker PercyWalker Percy was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962...
- The Last Gentleman (1966) - 1967 - R. K. NarayanR. K. NarayanR. K. Narayan , shortened from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami Tamil: ) , Madras Presidency, British India. His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school...
- The Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of Sweets is a 1967 English novel by R. K. Narayan.-Plot summary:R.K Narayan’s The Vendor of Sweets like his other books is composed in simple, lucid English that can be read and undestood without turning and returning the pages after a single read...
(1967) - 1968 - J. B. PriestleyJ. B. PriestleyJohn Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
- The Image Men (1968) - 1968 - Mordecai RichlerMordecai RichlerMordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...
- CocksureCocksureCocksure is a novel by Mordecai Richler. It was first published in 1968 by McClelland and Stewart.A satirical work, the novel centres on Mortimer Griffin, a middle-class Anglican from Caribou, Ontario who has built a successful career as a publisher and editor in 1960s London, England...
(1968) - 1968 - Keith RobertsKeith RobertsKeith John Kingston Roberts , was an English science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" and "Escapism.Several of his early stories were written using the pseudonym...
- PavanePavane (novel)Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alternate history science fiction fix-up novel first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd in 1968. Most of the original stories were published in Science Fantasy...
(1968) - 1969 - John FowlesJohn FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
- The French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant’s Woman , by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977...
(1969) - 1969 - Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
- Portnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's Complaint is the American novel that turned its author Philip Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver...
(1969)
1970s
- 1970 - Len DeightonLen DeightonLeonard Cyril Deighton is a British military historian, cookery writer, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine....
- BomberBomber (novel)Bomber is a novel written by Len Deighton and published in the UK in 1970. It is the fictionalised account of the events of 31 June [sic], 1943 in which an RAF bombing raid on the Ruhr area of western Germany goes wrong...
(1970) - 1973 - Michael FraynMichael FraynMichael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
- Sweet DreamsSweet Dreams (novel)Sweet Dreams is a 1973 novel by Michael Frayn.The plot addresses the question of what happens when a middle-class intellectual man dies. Why, he goes to a middle-class intellectual Heaven of course...
(1973) - 1973 - Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
- Gravity's RainbowGravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
(1973) - 1975 - Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
- Humboldt's GiftHumboldt's GiftHumboldt's Gift is a 1975 novel by Saul Bellow, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year....
(1975) - 1975 - Malcolm BradburyMalcolm BradburySir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
- The History ManThe History ManThe History Man is a campus novel by the British author Malcolm Bradbury set in 1972 in the fictional seaside town of Watermouth in the South of England. Watermouth bears some resemblance to Brighton. For example, there is a frequent and fast train service to London.-Plot introduction:Howard Kirk...
(1975) - 1976 - Robert NyeRobert NyeRobert Nye FRSL is an English poet who has also written novels and plays as well as stories for children. His bestselling novel Falstaff published in 1976 was described by Michael Ratcliffe as 'one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade,' and went on to win both The Hawthornden...
- FalstaffFalstaffSir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
(1976) - 1977 - Erica JongErica JongErica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
- How to Save Your Own Life (1977) - 1977 - James PlunkettJames PlunkettJames Plunkett Kelly, or James Plunkett , was an Irish writer. He was educated at Synge Street CBS.Plunkett grew up among the Dublin working class and they, along with the petty bourgeoisie and lower intelligentsia, make up the bulk of the dramatis personae of his oeuvre...
- Farewell Companions (1977) - 1977 - Paul Mark Scott - Staying OnStaying OnStaying On is a novel by Paul Scott, which was published in 1977 and won the Booker Prize.-Plot summary:Staying On focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who are briefly mentioned in the latter two books of the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, and are the last British...
(1977) - 1978 - John UpdikeJohn UpdikeJohn Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
- The Coup (1978) - 1979 - J. G. BallardJ. G. BallardJames Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
- The Unlimited Dream CompanyThe Unlimited Dream CompanyThe Unlimited Dream Company is a novel by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1979. It was nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1980.- Plot :...
(1979) - 1979 - Bernard MalamudBernard MalamudBernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...
- Dubin's LivesDubin's LivesDubin's Lives is a novel by the American writer Bernard Malamud . The title character is a biographer working on a life of D. H. Lawrence.-Epigraphs:The novel begins with two quotations.What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?...
(1979) - 1979 - Brian MooreBrian Moore (novelist)Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The...
- The Doctor's WifeThe Doctor's Wife (Brian Moore novel)The Doctor's Wife is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, published in 1976. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it tells the story of Sheila Redden, a doctor's wife from Belfast, who takes an American lover eleven years her junior while in Paris. She then separates from both her...
(1976) - 1979 - V. S. NaipaulV. S. NaipaulSir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
- A Bend in the RiverA Bend in the RiverA Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century...
(1979) - 1979 - William StyronWilliam StyronWilliam Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
- Sophie's ChoiceSophie's Choice (novel)Sophie's Choice is a novel by William Styron published in 1979. It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps...
(1979)
1980s
- 1980 - Brian AldissBrian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
- Life in the West (1980) - 1980 - Russell HobanRussell HobanRussell Conwell Hoban is an American writer, now living in England, of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books-Biography:...
- Riddley WalkerRiddley WalkerRiddley Walker is a science fiction novel by Russell Hoban, first published in 1980. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel in 1982, as well as an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983...
(1980) - 1980 - David LodgeDavid Lodge (author)David John Lodge CBE, is an English author.In his novels, Lodge often satirises academia in general and the humanities in particular. He was brought up Catholic and has described himself as an "agnostic Catholic". Many of his characters are Catholic and their Catholicism is a major theme...
- How Far Can You Go?How Far Can You Go?How Far Can You Go? is a novel by British writer and academic David Lodge. It was renamed Souls and Bodies when published in the United States...
(1980) - 1980 - John Kennedy TooleJohn Kennedy TooleJohn Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best-known for his posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected...
- A Confederacy of DuncesA Confederacy of DuncesA Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother Thelma Toole, quickly becoming a cult classic, and later a...
(1980) - 1981 - Alasdair GrayAlasdair GrayAlasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...
- LanarkLanark (book)Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow....
(1981) - 1981 - Alexander TherouxAlexander TherouxAlexander Theroux is an American novelist, poet, and essayist.He was born in Medford, Massachusetts. His brother is Paul Theroux. He studied at Harvard University and Yale University...
- Darconville's CatDarconville's CatDarconville's Cat is a novel by Alexander Theroux, first published in 1981. The main story is a love affair between Alaric Darconville, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, and one of his students, Isabel....
(1981) - 1981 - Paul TherouxPaul TherouxPaul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...
- The Mosquito CoastThe Mosquito CoastThe Mosquito Coast is a 1986 American film directed by Peter Weir, based on the novel by Paul Theroux. The film stars Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and River Phoenix. The film tells the story of a family that leaves the United States and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of...
(1981) - 1981 - Gore VidalGore VidalGore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
- CreationCreation (novel)Creation is an epic historical fiction novel by Gore Vidal which was published in 1981. In 2002, he published a restored version, adding four chapters that a previous editor had cut...
(1981) - 1982 - Robertson DaviesRobertson DaviesWilliam Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
- The Rebel AngelsThe Rebel AngelsThe Rebel Angels is Canadian author Robertson Davies's most noted novel, after those that form his Deptford Trilogy.First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1981, The Rebel Angels is the first of the three connected novels of Davies' Cornish Trilogy...
(1982) - 1983 - Norman MailerNorman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
- Ancient EveningsAncient EveningsAncient Evenings is a novel by American author Norman Mailer. It deals with the lives of two protagonists, one young, one old, in a very alien Ancient Egypt marked by journeys by the dead, reincarnation, and violent and hyper-sexual gods and mortals in a complex combination of historical fiction,...
(1983)