Top 10 Best Literary Novels of the 21st Century

George Saunders's debut novel — narrated by the restless dead in a cemetery where Abraham Lincoln's son Willie has just been interred — is the most formally innovative American novel of the decade: assembled from over 160 distinct voices, including real historical sources and invented spirits, it uses the fantastical premise to explore grief, political leadership, and the nature of consciousness. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2017.

Sally Rooney's Normal People — the story of Connell and Marianne's intermittent, emotionally complex relationship from Irish secondary school to Trinity College Dublin — became the defining literary novel of the millennial generation: a book about class, communication, desire, and the modern difficulty of being known by another person. The Hulu/BBC adaptation with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal made it a global cultural moment.

Khaled Hosseini's debut novel about friendship, betrayal, and redemption in Afghanistan across four decades — from the final years of the monarchy through the Soviet invasion, the civil war, the Taliban, and the American intervention — is the most-read literary novel about Central Asia in the Western world and introduced millions of readers to Afghan life and culture beyond the headlines.

Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life — a 720-page novel following four friends from college through middle age, centred on the survivor of extraordinary childhood abuse — is the most controversial literary novel of the decade: praised for its emotional intensity and ambition, criticised for what some see as exploitation of trauma. It is the most talked-about American literary novel since Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and one of the most affecting.

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections follows the Lambert family's gathering for one last Christmas before the patriarch's Parkinson's disease overwhelms him — a domestic novel that also serves as a comprehensive critique of American consumer culture, pharmaceutical management of personality, and the collapse of collective values in the 1990s. Its publication was accompanied by the most remarkable literary controversy of the decade, including a falling-out with Oprah Winfrey.

Min Jin Lee's Pachinko — a multigenerational saga following a Korean family in Japan from 1910 to 1989 — is the finest novel written about the Korean-Japanese diaspora and one of the great multigenerational family novels of the 21st century. Its depiction of ethnic discrimination, class aspiration, and the persistence of family obligation across time is both historically meticulous and deeply human.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go uses its science-fictional conceit — a near-future England in which clones are raised to provide organs for "normal" humans — to explore memory, mortality, and the degree to which people comply with their own oppression when the alternative is hope. Among Ishiguro's finest novels (along with The Remains of the Day), it is one of the most emotionally devastating literary novels of the century.

Though published in 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning novel — narrated by a buttoned-up English butler whose retrospective road trip reveals a life of repression, misplaced loyalty, and missed romantic opportunity — has only grown in literary stature in the 21st century. Its portrait of a man who confuses professional dignity with human decency remains one of literature's most devastating dissections of self-deception.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is the most technically ambitious British novel of the century: six nested narratives spanning from the Pacific in 1849 to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii in the far future, each written in a completely different style, with each story interrupted at its midpoint before the second halves are told in reverse order. Its argument — that all human action ripples across time, that we are all simultaneously oppressors and liberators — is as daring as its structure.

George Saunders's debut novel — narrated by the restless dead in a cemetery where Abraham Lincoln's son Willie has just been interred — is the most formally innovative American novel of the decade: assembled from over 160 distinct voices, including real historical sources and invented spirits, it uses the fantastical premise to explore grief, political leadership, and the nature of consciousness. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2017.

Sally Rooney's Normal People — the story of Connell and Marianne's intermittent, emotionally complex relationship from Irish secondary school to Trinity College Dublin — became the defining literary novel of the millennial generation: a book about class, communication, desire, and the modern difficulty of being known by another person. The Hulu/BBC adaptation with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal made it a global cultural moment.

Khaled Hosseini's debut novel about friendship, betrayal, and redemption in Afghanistan across four decades — from the final years of the monarchy through the Soviet invasion, the civil war, the Taliban, and the American intervention — is the most-read literary novel about Central Asia in the Western world and introduced millions of readers to Afghan life and culture beyond the headlines.

Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life — a 720-page novel following four friends from college through middle age, centred on the survivor of extraordinary childhood abuse — is the most controversial literary novel of the decade: praised for its emotional intensity and ambition, criticised for what some see as exploitation of trauma. It is the most talked-about American literary novel since Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and one of the most affecting.

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections follows the Lambert family's gathering for one last Christmas before the patriarch's Parkinson's disease overwhelms him — a domestic novel that also serves as a comprehensive critique of American consumer culture, pharmaceutical management of personality, and the collapse of collective values in the 1990s. Its publication was accompanied by the most remarkable literary controversy of the decade, including a falling-out with Oprah Winfrey.

Min Jin Lee's Pachinko — a multigenerational saga following a Korean family in Japan from 1910 to 1989 — is the finest novel written about the Korean-Japanese diaspora and one of the great multigenerational family novels of the 21st century. Its depiction of ethnic discrimination, class aspiration, and the persistence of family obligation across time is both historically meticulous and deeply human.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go uses its science-fictional conceit — a near-future England in which clones are raised to provide organs for "normal" humans — to explore memory, mortality, and the degree to which people comply with their own oppression when the alternative is hope. Among Ishiguro's finest novels (along with The Remains of the Day), it is one of the most emotionally devastating literary novels of the century.

Though published in 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning novel — narrated by a buttoned-up English butler whose retrospective road trip reveals a life of repression, misplaced loyalty, and missed romantic opportunity — has only grown in literary stature in the 21st century. Its portrait of a man who confuses professional dignity with human decency remains one of literature's most devastating dissections of self-deception.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is the most technically ambitious British novel of the century: six nested narratives spanning from the Pacific in 1849 to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii in the far future, each written in a completely different style, with each story interrupted at its midpoint before the second halves are told in reverse order. Its argument — that all human action ripples across time, that we are all simultaneously oppressors and liberators — is as daring as its structure.