The 100 best books of the 21st century by The Guardian

Given by The Guardian

100 Works 834,788 Books 25,937 Reviews 4.0

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

Year Awarded:
2019
WorkOrder Label
Wolf Hall (2009) by Hilary Mantel
1
Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson
2
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (2013) by Svetlana Alexievich
3
Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
4
Austerlitz (2001) by W. G. Sebald
5
The Amber Spyglass (2000) by Philip Pullman
6
Between the World and Me (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates
7
Autumn (2016) by Ali Smith
8
Cloud Atlas: A Novel (2004) by David Mitchell
9
Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
10
My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One (2011) by Elena Ferrante
11
The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth
12
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich
13
Fingersmith (2002) by Sarah Waters
14
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) by Elizabeth Kolbert
15
The Corrections (2001) by Jonathan Franzen
16
The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
17
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) by Naomi Klein
18
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) by Mark Haddon
19
Life After Life (2013) by Kate Atkinson
20
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari
21
Tenth of December: Stories (2013) by George Saunders
22
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (2001) by Andrew Solomon
23
A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan
24
Normal People (2018) by Sally Rooney
25
Capital in the 21st Century (2013) by Thomas Piketty
26
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories (1986) by Alice Munro
27
Rapture (2005) by Carol Ann Duffy
28
My Struggle: Book 1 (2009) by Karl Ove Knausgård
29
The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead
30
The Argonauts (2015) by Maggie Nelson
31
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (2010) by Siddhartha Mukherjee
32
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) by Alison Bechdel
33
Outline (2014) by Rachel Cusk
34
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010) by Edmund De Waal
35
Experience (2000) by Martin Amis
36
The Green Road (2015) by Anne Enright
37
The Line of Beauty (2004) by Alan Hollinghurst
38
White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
39
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion
40
Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan
41
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) by Michael Lewis
42
Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) by Claudia Rankine
43
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2004) by Rebecca Solnit
44
Levels of Life (2013) by Julian Barnes
45
Human Chain (2010) by Seamus Heaney
46
The Complete Persepolis (2000) by Marjane Satrapi
47
Night Watch (2002) by Terry Pratchett
48
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) by Jeanette Winterson
49
Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood
50
Brooklyn (2009) by Colm Tóibín
51
Small Island (2004) by Andrea Levy
52
True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) by Peter Carey
53
Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017) by Mary Beard
54
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) by Michael Pollan
55
Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019) by Robert Macfarlane
56
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon
57
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005) by Tony Judt
58
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001) by Anne Carson
59
Dart (2002) by Alice Oswald
60
This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial (2015) by Helen Garner
61
Mother's Milk (2006) by Edward St. Aubyn
62
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) by Rebecca Skloot
63
On Writing (2000) by Stephen King
64
Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn
65
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2015) by Carlo Rovelli
66
The Silence of the Girls (2018) by Pat Barker
67
The Constant Gardener (2001) by John le Carré
68
The Infatuations (2011) by Javier Marías
69
Notes on a Scandal (2003) by Zoë Heller
70
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) by Chris Ware
71
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019) by Shoshana Zuboff
72
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009) by Barbara Demick
73
Days without End (2016) by Sebastian Barry
74
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) by Olga Tokarczuk
75
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Daniel Kahneman
76
Signs Preceding the End of the World (2009) by Yuri Herrera
77
The Fifth Season (2015) by N. K. Jemisin
78
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (2009) by Richard Wilkinson
79
Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) by Ted Chiang
80
Harvest (2013) by Jim Crace
81
Coraline (2002) by Neil Gaiman
82
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions (2017) by Valeria Luiselli
83
The Cost of Living (2018) by Deborah Levy
84
The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins
85
Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment (2017) by Yanis Varoufakis
86
Priestdaddy: A Memoir (2017) by Patricia Lockwood
87
Noughts and Crosses (2001) by Malorie Blackman
88
Bad Blood: A Memoir (2001) by Lorna Sage
89
Light (2002) by M. John Harrison
91
The Siege (2001) by Helen Dunmore
92
Darkmans (2007) by Nicola Barker
93
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) by Malcolm Gladwell
94
Chronicles: Volume One (2004) by Bob Dylan
95
A Little Life (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara
96
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) by J. K. Rowling
97
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005) by Stieg Larsson
98
Broken Glass (2005) by Alain Mabanckou
99
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006) by Nora Ephron
100
Visitation (2008) by Jenny Erpenbeck

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