Top 21st Century Books: Books 50 to 26
the penultimate instalment
Welcome to day three of our Top 21st Century Books project. I’ll be releasing 25 rankings a day. If you would like to read the first selection of books and an introduction, click here, and for yesterday’s post click here.
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke trans. by Andrea Bell
= Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Two entirely different translated novels take fiftieth place. Inkheart passed me by but I am very glad that there is some more young adult representation on our list. “One cruel night, Meggie's father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART-- and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room.”
Tokarczuk has been another of the big names in international literary fiction since the publication of Flights in English, so her exclusion from the original list was another surprise. This novel follows Janina, a reclusive older woman living in a remote Polish village. The neighbours start dying and Janina thinks she knows who did it. Part literary thriller, part fairytale.
The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb
Whilst I haven’t reached this stage in my Realm of the Elderlings journey yet, I’m very willing to believe this book deserves a place on this list. The trilogy from which this is the second follows Fitz and the Fool, two of Hobb’s best characters. This is rich, wonderfully realised fantasy.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Whitehead is a fascinating author, you never quite know what he’ll do next. The Nickel Boys is one of his most heart-wrenching novels, uncovering the reality of the reform schools of 1960s Florida and the boys who lived there.
Lanny by Max Porter
It’s better to go into this one knowing less rather than more, but it reads like a modern fable, moving between prose and poetry and words that dance all around the page.
The Employees by Olga Ravn trans. by Martin Aitkin
Oh, I’m so pleased to see this one here. We read it for book club earlier this year and I loved discussing it. Compiled of short statements from employees—human and humanoid—aboard a spaceship circling an alien planet. Wonderfully weird examination of workplace culture and what it means to be ‘human’.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
This doorstopper of a novel follows a selection of characters investigating a mystery during the Gold Rush of New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s an ambitious and grand novel, worthy of place on the list (sadly no Catton was on the original!)
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami trans. by Philip Gabriel
I was under the impression there was Murakami on the original list but I’ve just gone back to look and can’t find him even in the little reading suggestions! Criminal!
I haven’t read this one yet, though I know it’s a favourite amongst Murakami devotees. I love his style; surreal, dreamlike, strange. This one delineates the convergence of two stories, that of a young boy on the run and an old man drawn to Kafka.