Must-read books that defined the 20th century
Two decades after the end of the 20th century, some books stand apart and continue to inspire readers and writers alike.
Here’s our lengthy but by no means exhaustive list of culture-shaping fiction.
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From Here to Eternity
Part of what’s so remarkable about this 900-page novel about army life in Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 is that it was published in 1951, just a few years after the author was discharged from the US Army. But the sensitive, carefully-crafted story of Private Robert “Prew” Prewitt and his fellow recruits shows no trace of the haste in which it was written.
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The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps—a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an "ordinary young man" who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.
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The Color Purple
Since its publication in 1982, Alice Walker’s novel has been celebrated by readers who’ve been moved by the voice of its protagonist Celie, and targeted by censors offended by its portrayal of domestic violence in the American South. The book won Walker the Pulitzer Prize, making her the first Black woman to do so.
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We
An early example of dystopian fiction, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We was first published in English in 1924. Taking the ideas of industrialized society and totalitarianism to extremes, the Russian author’s post-apocalyptic novel was a direct influence on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The Good Earth
Growing up in rural China, Pearl S. Buck had a perspective shared by no other American writers of her generation. The Good Earth is the story of a poor farmer, Wang Lung, who finds prosperity not through hard work but by happenstance. As a wealthy patriarch, he struggles to pass his values to his children. Shortly after completing the trilogy of which The Good Earth is the first volume, Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Sophie's Choice
The title has become a cliché for describing an agonizing choice, the nature of which we will not spoil for you here. Title aside, the novel stirred up controversy for focusing on suffering in Auschwitz endured by Christian Slavs and arguably downplaying anti-Semitism as a cause of the Holocaust.
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The Painted Bird
Of all the books about WWII in this list, and we realize there are many, this may be the most horrifying. It’s the story of a boy wandering the countryside and trying to evade the Nazis. He witnesses and is subjected to depravity and violence that will strain the reader’s imagination to conjure.
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Siddhartha
Inspired by the author’s visit to India before World War I, this novel by Hermann Hesse is based on the early life of Buddha, published in German in 1922. Siddhartha follows a man as he seeks the meaning of life and reaches enlightenment. As his journey progresses, we find certain themes such as unity with nature, avoidance of routine, and truth.
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
A classic of American Southern literature that demands to be read on hot summer days. As a novel, it’s less a linear story than a series of vignettes about a small, unforgettable cast of characters, with two friends, John and Spiros, at its centre. Somehow, despite being selected for Oprah’s Book Club in 2004, this novel still feels like a secret for serious readers to share with each other.
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Baise-Moi
We’ll never know if Stieg Larsson could have dreamed up Lisbeth Salander (aka. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) if Virginie Despentes, a former sex worker and punk, hadn’t written Baise-Moi. It’s a revenge fantasy about two young women acting out their rage in a spree of sexual violence. It created a genre in French literature of writing from female rage and spawned a highly controversial film.
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Last Exit to Brooklyn
Written in six parts in a colloquial prose style, Last Exit to Brooklyn paints a picture of life in a tiny slice of Brooklyn presently known as Sunset Park. Its characters struggle to make a living, they get into fights, raise children, and just try to get by. The book was deemed obscene in Britain, and sale was restricted for several years.
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One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
Moscarda grappled with this new knowledge: that he was not who he thought he was, nor who anyone else thought he was. And the people around him? They were not who he thought they were either. So he decided to “...find out who I was, at least to those closest to me, acquaintances so-called, and to amuse myself by maliciously decomposing the I that I was to them.” What follows is a series of experiments, meant to befuddle and confuse those around him and prove that he was not, in fact, who they believed him to be. Written by Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello over the course of 15 years, One, None, and One Hundred Thousand was a groundbreaking look at the nature of identity and the self.
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The Master and Margarita
One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing to literally go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth.
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The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Portuguese writer José Saramago took the premise that Jesus Christ was an actual human being to its modern conclusion in this realistic novel. If Jesus was raised to work as a carpenter, what did his family think about his preaching? And the downtrodden company he kept? Did he always know how his life would turn out, or were there choices to make and doubts nagging at him? Not surprisingly, the book divided readers, some of whom were moved by its humanity, while others bristled at its down-to-earth depiction of a sacred story.
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Not Without Laughter
A semi-autobiographical story about a boy and his family growing up in rural, 1910s Kansas, this novel is a window into the experiences of Black Americans in a racially divided society. It is incredibly moving, lyrically written, and while at times devastating, it's an uplifting and hopeful depiction of the era.
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Of Mice and Men
An ode to the power of true friendship, and what it means to choose your own family, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men follows the story of two misfits trying to carve out a spot for themselves in a world that doesn’t want them. George and Lennie are two migrant workers, making their way across California in search of a better life during the Great Depression.
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A Sport and a Pastime
In this short erotic novel, a narrator of questionable reliability tells the story of a young couple, an American man and a French woman. We can only be certain about the narrator in the moments when he(?) admits to complete fabrication. In this gem of a book we’re reminded how eager we are as readers to be told a tale, any tale, as long as it holds our attention.
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As I Lay Dying
Drawing inspiration for the title from Homer’s Odyssey, Faulkner presents fifteen different narrators—each filling in a part of the story—in his trademark stream-of-consciousness style. Considered one of the great American novels, Addie Bundren’s journey to her final resting place is in turns both darkly comedic and deeply tragic.
Under the Volcano
While the story is about an alcoholic British consul in Mexico, Lowry’s own alcohol addiction made the book’s path to publication especially trying as the project derailed several times. But what finally emerged is a masterpiece, with an innovative structure that still dazzles readers and inspires writers: told in 12 chapters, the first chapter takes place exactly one year after the other 11, which themselves all take place on November 2, 1938--the Mexican “Day of the Dead”.
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Collected Stories
O’Connor’s short stories are each marvels of compression and imagination, with whole worlds and characters with rich interior lives and backstories, taking shape in a few paragraphs. The impression his work still makes on writers is so profound that for the past 20 years a festival in his hometown of Cork has attracted talent from around the world as it celebrates the short story as a literary form.
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