The Best by Year

Although these Best Of lists varied in length through the years, I have gone back and ruthlessly clipped each one to display no more than twenty titles. This will both save room for subsequent years and also provide an element of conformity (as if conformity is a good thing).

Important: These lists only represent twenty fiction titles I read this last year that impressed me and in no way limit the total number of books I found well-worth reading (nor is the ordering anything other than showing a personal preference). All the books I read in past years are found under the Reading menu, (Some entries even include comments).

Note: I generally have not included non-fiction books since, no matter how well written, they tend to rely on content and are often of fleeting notoriety. I also skip over short story collections, which is sometimes a tragedy but let’s face it, any collection may be brilliant but still contain a few clunkers. However, there are always exceptions.

Following my new guidelines I have eliminated these titles from the Best of Lists as of 2020, not because they are not the best but rather because they can stand for themselves. So I’m making room for more contemporary or obscure titles to shine.

Books That Have Endured (2024 edition)

Arsene Lupin — Maurice Leblanc
History of the Peloponnesian War — Thucydides
The Robber Bridegroom — Eudora Welty

2024

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
Shogun — James Clavell
And Quiet Flows the Don — Mikhail Sholokhov
The War of the End of the World — Mario Vargas Llosa
The Dick Gibson Show — Stanley Elkin
Canada — Richard Ford
George Mills — Stanley Elkin
Just Kids — Patti Smith
City of Night — John Rechy
Dead-End Memories — Banana Yoshimoto
Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel — Celeste Ng
The Groves of Academe — Mary McCarthy
Cloud Cuckoo Land — Anthony Doerr
Shame — Salman Rushdie
Joe — Larry Brown
Flower Net — Lisa See
The Gordian Knot — Bernhard Schlink
Woman No. 17 — Edan Lepucki
We Are the Brennans: A Novel — Tracy Lange
A Son of the Circus — John Irving

2023

A Glastonbury Romance — John Cowper Powys
Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
Gormenghast Trilogy — Mervyn Peake
The Cremator — Ladislav Fuks
The Manchurian Candidate — Richard Condon
Time Shelter — Georgi Gospodinov
A Field Guide to Reality — Joanna Kavenna
Lemprière’s Dictionary – Lawrence Norfolk
Memoirs of an Invisible Man — H. F. Saint
Cain — Jean Toomer
Some Came Running — James Jones
The Executioner’s Song — Norman Mailer
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth — Manuel Puig
The New Life — Orhan Pamuk
Joshua Then and Now — Mordecai Richler
Alien Rice — Ichiro Kawasaki
The Midnight Library — Matt Haig
Scattered All Over the Earth — Yoko Tawada
The Joke — Milan Kundera
The People in the Trees — Hanya Yanagihara

2022

À la recherche du temps perdu — Marcel Proust
Your Face Tomorrow — Javier Marías
In the First Circle – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Big Green Tent — Ludmila Ulitskaya
Shantaram: A Novel — Gregory David Roberts
From the Terrace — John O’Hara
Prisoner’s Dilemma — Richard Powers
The Televangelist — Ibrahim Eissa
The Comedians — Graham Greene
Coming Up for Air — George Orwell
Cass Timberlane — Sinclair Lewis
Disclaimer — Renée Knight
Darwin’s Ghosts — Ariel Dorfman
Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell
The Empire Trilogy — J. G. Farrell
The Glass Palace — Amitav Ghosh
Manchild in the Promised Land — Claude Brown
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf — Victor Pelevin
The Circus of Dr. Lao — Charles G. Finney
Babel Tower — A. S. Byatt

2021

The Transylvania Trilogy — Miklós Bánffy [They Were Counted; They Were Found Wanting; They Were Divided]
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation — Aexandr Soltzheritsyn
Mercy of a Rude Stream/An American Type — Henry Roth
The Border Trilogy — Cormac McCarthy
Life and Fate — Vassily Grossman
The Sleepwalkers — Hermann Broch
The Kindly Ones: A Novel —Jonathan Littel
The Bridge On the Drina — Ivo Andríc
Group Portrait with Lady — Heinrich Böll
The Melancholy of Resistance — Lásló Krasznahorkai
Lanark: A Life In Four Books — Alisdair Gray
The Rosy Crucifixion — Henry Miller [Sexus, Plexus, Nexus]
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle — Vladimir Nabokov
A Rage To Live — John O’Hara
Sometimes a Great Notion — Ken Kesey
My Struggle — Karl Ove Knausgârd
The Lost Scrapbook – Evan Dara
The Old Capital — Yasunari Kawabata
Three Trapped Tigers — G. Cabrera Infante
Homeland Elegies — Ayad Akhtar

2020

The Man Without Qualities — Robert Musil
Independent People — Halldor Laxness
A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
Humbold’s Gift — Saul Bellow
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh — Franz Werfel
Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner
Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
The Once and Future King — T. H. White
Studs Lonigan Trilogy — James T. Farrell
The Story of Lucy Gault — William Trevor
Margery Kempe — Robert Glück
Seratonin — Michel Houellebecq
Frog — Stephen Dixon
The Monkey Link: A Pilgrimage Novel — Andrei Bitov
Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex — Oksana Zabuzhko
The Heart of the Matter — Graham Greene
Mac’s Problem — Enrique Vila-Matas
As a Man Grows Older — Italo Svevo
A Walk On the Wild Side — Nelson Algren
Black Rain — Masuji Ibuse

2019

Women In Love — D. H. Lawrence
The Years — Annie Ernaux
Nana — Émile Zola
The Recognitions — William Gaddis
The Big Money — John Dos Passos
Wolf Solent — John Cowper Powys
The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexander Dumas
Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
Nostromo — Joseph Conrad
The Famished Road — Ben Okri
The Swimming-Pool Library — Alan Hollinghurst
The Monk — Matthew Lewis
The Mysteries of Udolpho — Ann Radcliffe
The Aeneid — Virgil (Fagles)
The Charterhouse of Parma — Renate Stendhal
Sputnik Caledonia — Andrew Crumey
Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
Eyes — William H. Gass
The Dead Girls — Jorge Ibarguëngoitia
Bend Sinister — Vladimir Nabokov

2018

How German Is It — Walter Abish
The Golden Notebook — Doris Lessing
The Years, Months, Days — Yan Lianke
The Black Prince — Iris Murdoch
Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats — Allen Ginsberg
Such Fine Boys — Patrick Modiano
A General Theory of Oblivion — José Eduardo Agualusa
Riders of the Purple Sage — Zane Grey
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy — Laurence Sterne
Frankenstein In Baghdad — Ahmed Saadawi
Odysseus Abroad — Amit Chaudhuri
For Bread Alone — Mohamed Choukri
Black Moses — Alain Mabanckou
I Can Give You Anything But Love — Gary Indiana
Iphigenia In Tauris — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mars Room — Rachel Kushner
Lives of the Saints — Nino Ricci
Dunbar — Edward St. Aubyn
Belle de Jour — Joseph Kessel
The Picturegoers — David Lodge

2017

It Can’t Happen Here — Sinclair Lewis
The Western Lands — William S. Burroughs
New Grub Street — George Gissing
Naphtalene — Alia Mamdouh
Under Fire — Henri Barbusse
Fat City — Leonard Gardener
The Mis-en-scène — Claude Ollier
The Illogic of Kassel — Enrique Vila-Matas
Concrete — Thomas Bernhard
The Last Days — Raymond Queneau
Kintu – Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
La Curée — Émile Zola
Snakepit: A Novel — Moses Ishegawa
Black Spring — Henry Miller
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard
A Separate Peace — John Knowles
The Easter Parade — Richard Yates
The System of Dante’s Hell — Amiri Baraka
Dendera — Yuka Sato
The Way of Muri — Ilya Boyashov

2016

The Republic of Wine — Mo Yan
Wind, Sand and Stars — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Near To the Wild Heart — Clarice Lispector
Tropisms — Natalie Sarraute
A Simple Story — S. Y. Agnon
The Temple of Dawn — Yukio Mishima
Mascara: A Novel — Ariel Dorfman
Vaseline Buddha — Jung Young Moon
Night — Vedrana Rudan
King, Queen, Knave: A Novel — Vladimir Nabokov
Hell — Yasutaka Tsutsui
The Bathing Women — Tie Ning
Don’t Call It Night — Amos Oz
The Committee — Sun’Allah Ibrahim
Journey Into the Past — Stephan Zweig
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — Alan Sillitoe
Forty Rooms — Olga Grushin
Le Ventre de Paris — Emile Zola
Stealth — Sun’Allah Ibrahim
The Sleep of the Righteous — Wolfgang Hilbig

2015

The Obstacles — Eloy Urroz
Submission — Michel Houellebecq
The Dalkey Archive — Flann O’Brien
Mercier et Camier — Samuel Beckett
Despair – Vladimir Nabokov
Runaway Horses — Yukio Mishima
The Ambassadors — Henry James
Sapiens — Uval Noah Harari
Salamander — Thomas Wharton
The French Lieutenant’s Woman — John Fowles
The Man Who Was Thursday — C. K. Chesterton
Black Boy — Richard Wright
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter — Mario Vargas Llosa
Numero Zero — Umberto Eco
Venus On the Half-Shell — Kilgore Trout
A Clue To the Exit — Edward St. Aubyn
The Interrogation — J. M. G. Le Clézio
City of Night — John Rechy
The Great American Novel — Philip Roth
Why Darwin Matters — Michael Shermer

2014

The Forsyte Saga [A Man of Property, In Chancery, To Let] — John Galsworthy
The U. S. A. Trilogy [The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money] — John Dos Passos
Desert — J. M. G. Le Clézio
Giles Goat-Boy — John Barth
The Royal Family — William T. Vollmann
The Jungle — Upton Sinclair
Satantango — László Kransznahorkai
Return To Manure — Raymond Federman
Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchell
De Profundis — Oscar Wilde
Old Masters — Thomas Bernhard
The Stone Raft — José Saramago
Revolutionary Road — Richard Yates
Borstal Boy — Brendan Behan
Momo — Romain Gary
A Heart So White — Javier Marías
A Grain of Wheat — Ngugi wa Thiong’o
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold — John Le Carré
Trout Fishing In America — Richard Brautigan
The Man Who Loved Children — Christina Stead

2013

The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov
The Adventures of Augie March — Saul Bellow
The 42nd Parallel — John Dos Passos
Mercy of a Rude Stream: Diving Rock on the Hudson — Henry Roth
Herzog — Saul Bellow
Germinal — Émile Zola
The Death of Artemio Cruz — Carlos Fuentes
Native Son — Richard Wright
The Emigrants — W. G. Sebald
Spring Snow — Yukio Mishimi
V. — Thomas Pynchon
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth — Reza Aslan
Thérèse Desqueyroux – François Mauriac
Plus — Joseph McElroy
The Origin of the Brunists — Robert Coover
The Opposing Shore — Julien Gracq
The End of the Affair — Graham Greene
White Teeth — Zadie Smith
World’s End — T. C. Boyle
The Post-Office Girl — Stefan Zweig

2012

Absalom, Absalom! — William Faulkner
The Radetzky March — Joseph Roth
Wonderful Wonderful Times — Elfriede Jelinek
60 Stories — Donald Barthelme
Juan the Landless — Juan Goytisolo
The Possibility of an Island — Michel Houellebecq
Berg — Ann Quin
brütt, or The Sighing Garden — Friederike Mayröcker
The Great Fire of London [A Story with Interpolations and Bifurcations] — Jacques Roubaud
The Prospector — J. M. G. Le Clézio
Jacques the Fatalist — Denis Diderot
The Dog King — Christoph Ransmayr
Tropic of Capricorn — Henry Miller
Parabola — Lily Hoang
Ferdedurke — Witold Gombrowicz
The Berlin Stories — Christopher Isherwood
Knowledge of Hell — António Lobo Antunes
Vineland — Thomas Pynchon
The Nonexistent Knight — Italo Calvino
Three — Ann Quin

2011

Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry
The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
The Inquisitory — Robert Pinget
Parade’s End — Ford Madox Ford
Pussy, King of Pirates — Kathy Acker
The Obscene Bird of Night — José Donoso
Le Noeud de Vipères — François Mauriac
The City Builder — George Konrád
Butterfly Stories — William T. Vollmann
Fable For Another Time — Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Count Julian — Juan Goytisolo
Never Any End in Paris — Enrique Vila-Matas
A Minor Apocalypse — Tadeusz Konwicki
Sanctuary — William Faulkner
La Bête humaine – Émile Zola
Tropic of Orange — Karen Tei Yamashita
Scorch Atlas — Blake Butler
John-Juan — Douglas Woolf
The Mystery of the Sardine — Stephan Themerson
Jerusalem — Gonçalo M. Tavares

2010

La Vie mode d’emploi – Georges Perec
Waiting For Godot – Samuel Beckett
Mulligan Stew – Gilbert Sorrentino
The Libera Me Domine – Robert Pinget
Nights At the Circus – Angela Carter
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Bartleby & Co. – Enrique Vila-Matas
Kiss of the Spider Woman – Manuel Puig
The Letters of Mina Harker – Dodie Bellamy
Take It or Leave It – Raymond Federman
Montano’s Malady – Enrique Vila-Matas
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
Embers – Sandor Marai
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor – John Barth
The She-Devil in the Mirror – Horacio Castellanos Moya
Homo Zapiens – Victor Pelevin
Nazi Literature In the Americas – Roberto Bolaño
The Street of Crocodiles – Bruno Schulz
Marks of Identity – Juan Goytisolo

2009

Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
I’m Not Stiller — Max Frisch
Homo Faber — Max Frisch
AVA — Carole Maso
The Natural Order of Things — António Lobo Antunes
Manhattan Transfer — John Dos Passos
Exercises in Style — Raymond Queneau
Mobius Dick — Andrew Crumey
Cosmicomics — Italo Calvino
The Ravishing of Lol Stein — Marguerite Duras
La Nausée — Jean-Paul Sartre
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter — César Aira
In Memorium to Identity — Kathy Acker
How I Became a Nun — César Aira
Camera — Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Aureole: An Erotic Sequence — Carole Maso
The Abyss — Marguerite Yourcenar
Heartsnatcher — Boris Vian
The Jade Cabinet — Rikki Ducornet
Gazelle — Rikki Ducornet

2008

Le Voyeur — Alain Robbe-Grillet
The Flight of Icarus — Raymond Queneau
At Swim-Two-Birds — Flann O’Brien
Mumbo Jumbo — Ismael Reed
The Invention of Morel — Adolfo Bioy Casares
Vain Art of the Fugue — Dimitru Tsepeneag
Le Chiendent — Raymond Queneau
Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino
Pedro Páramo — Juan Rulfo
Moravagine — Blaise Cendrares
Entering Fire — Rikki Ducornet
Giovanni’s Room — James Baldwin
Blow-Up and Other Stories — Julio Cortázar
Le Grand Meaulnes — Alain-Fournier
This Blinding Absence of Light — Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Assistant — Robert Walser
L’Assommoir — Émile Zola
Gilgamesh — Stephen Mitchell
At the Wall of the Almighty — Farnoosh Moshiri
62: A Model Kit — Julio Cortázar

2007

Notre Dame des fleurs — Jean Genet
Life, A User’s Manual — Georges Perec
Middlemarch — George Eliot
The Dubliners — James Joyce
Les Mandarins — Simone de Beauvoir
The Wild Geese — Ogai Mori
The Age of Wire and String — Ben Marcus
Up — Ronald Sukenick
Bouvard et Pécuchet — Gustave Flaubert
La Pharisienne — François Mauriac
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
Chimera — John Barth
The Conversions — Harry Mathews
Mademoiselle de Maupin — Théophile Gautier
The Rings of Saturn — W. G. Sebald
Exercises in Style — Raymond Queneau
The Last World — Christoph Ransmayr
The Garden of Departed Cats — Bilge Karasu
Wittgenstein’s Nephew — Thomas Bernhard
Memoirs of Hadrian — Marguerite Yourcena

2006

A La Recherche du Temps Perdu — Marcel Proust
Our Lady of the Flowers — Jean Genet
Europe Central — William T. Vollmann
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion — Yukio Mishima
Doctor Faustus — Thomas Mann
The Waves — Virginia Woolf
Mr. Mee — Andrew Crumey
The Death of the Heart — Elizabeth Bowen
Les Enfants Terribles — Jean Cocteau
Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler — Italo Calvino
Pfitz — Andrew Crumey
Magister Ludi — Hermann Hesse
Fortress Besieged — Qian Zhongshu
Berlin Alexanderplatz — Alfred Döblin
The Plague — Albert Camus
Wittgenstein’s Mistress — David Markson
Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie
Second Skin — John Hawkes
Dear Mr. Capote — Gordon Lish

2005

Finnegans Wake — James Joyce
The Tale of Genji — Murasaki Shikibu
A Dance to the Music of Time — Anthony Powell
To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
Moby Dick — Herman Melville
You Bright & Risen Angels — William T. Vollmann
Omensetter’s Luck
The Good Apprentice — Iris Murdoch
The Heat of the Day — Elizabeth Bowen
Eva Trout — Elizabeth Bowen
The Cannibal — John Hawkes
The Plot Against America — Philip Roth
The Severed Head — Iris Murdoch
Under the Net — Iris Murdoch
The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov
The Beetle Leg — John Hawkes
A House For Mr. Biswas — V. S. Naipaul
The Dream of Scipio — Iain Pears
Don Quixote — Kathy Acker
Story of the Eye — George Bataille

2004

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy — Laurence Sterne
Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes
JR — William Gaddis
Le Voyeur — Alain Robbe-Grillet
Cry, the Beloved Country — Alan Paton
Moderato Cantabile — Marguerite Duras
The Sot Weed Factor — John Barth
Belle du Seigneur — Albert Cohen
Blood and Guts in High School — Kathy Acker
The Ticket That Exploded — William S. Burroughs
Roscoe — William Kennedy
Salammbo — Gustave Flaubert
A Rebours — J. K. Huysman
Sappho — Alphonse Daudet
La Maison de Rendez-vous — Alain Robbe-Grillet
The Atrocity Exhibition — J. G. Ballard
Les Gommes — Alain Robbe-Grillet
Jude the Obscure — Thomas Hardy
Invitation to a Beheading — Vladimir Nabokov
Pinocchio in Venice — Robert Coover

2003

Agape Agape — William Gaddis
Mrs. Dalloway — Virginia Woolf
The Forsyte Saga — John Galsworthy  [The Man of Property, In Chancery, To Let]
Waiting For Godot — Samuel Beckett
Junky — William S. Burroughs
A Room of One’s Own — Virginia Woolf
Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neil Hurston
Last Exit to Brooklyn — Hubert Selby, Jr.
A Bend In the River — V.S. Naipaul
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali — Gil Courtemanche
The Sea, the Sea — Iris Murdoch
The Female Quixote — Charlotte Lennox
A Gesture Life — Chang-rae Lee
Fight Club — Chuck Palahniuk
Five By Endo — Endo
The Bleeding of the Stone — Ibrahilm al-Koni
Springer’s Progress — David Markham
The Girl Who Played Go — Shan Sa
Wolf Dreams — Yasmina Chandra
The Crazed — Ha Jin

2002

The Snopes’ Trilogy — William Faulkner  [The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion]
The Trilogy — Samuel Beckett  [Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable]
ABC of Reading — Ezra Pound
Beowulf — Seamus Heaney
Carpenter’s Gothic — William Gaddis
The Abbruzo Trilogy — Ignazio Siloni  [Fontamara, Bread and Wine, The Seed eneath the Snow]
A Room of One’s Own — Virginia Woolf
The Moonstone — Wilkie Collins
Pricksongs & Descants — Robert Coover
The Vintner’s Luck — Elizabeth Knox
Tristram Shandy — Laurence Sterne
Adam Bede — George Eliot
The Mill On the Floss — George Eliot
The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
Kingsblood Royal — Sinclair Lewis
Depraved Indifference — Gary Indiana
A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
Gertrude and Claudius — John Updike
Briar Rose — Robert Coover

2001

A Dance to the Music of Time — Anthony Powell
The Tin Drum — Günter Grass
East of Eden — John Steinbeck
Sentimental Education — Gustave Flaubert
The Makioka Sisters — Junichiro Tanizaki
Tropic of Cancer — Henry Miller
McTeague — Frank Norris
The Idiot — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt
In the Pond — Ha Jin
1934: A Novel — Alberto Moravia
Claudius the God– Robert Graves
The Sheltering Sky — Paul Bowles
The Trees — Conrad Richter
The Song of the Lark — Willa Cather
Kim — Rudyard Kipling
The Journal of the Plague Year — Daniel Defoe
Cat and Mouse — Günter Grass
Appointment in Samarra — John O’Hara
The Watch — Carlo Levi

2000

War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
The Last Temptation of Christ — Nikos Kazantzakis
The Human Stain — Philip Roth
Droll Stories — Honoré de Balzac
The Sea of Grass — Conrad Richter
Beyond the Curve — Kobo Abe
Emma — Jane Austen
Miracle of the Rose — Jean Genet
Marguerite de Valois — Alexandre Dumas
The Old Curiosity Shop — Charles Dickens
Les Employés — Honoré de Balzac
Bech (Bech: A Book; Bech Is Back; Bech At Bay) — John Updike
New Year’s Eve — Edith Wharton
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner — Alan Sillitoe
The House of Mirth — Edith Wharton
Quicksand — Junichiro Tanizaki
Headbirths or The Germans Are Dying Out — Günter Grass
The Black Tulip — Alexandre Dumas
The Haunted Hotel — Wilkie Colins
Castle Eppstein — Alexandre Dumas

1999

Ulysses — James Joyce
I, Claudius — Robert Graves
David Copperfield — Charles Dickens
To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
Blindness — José Saramago
Auto da-Fé — Elias Canetti
A Book of Memories — Péter Nádas
The Yellow Wall-Paper — Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mountolive & Clea — Lawrence Durrell
Love In the Time of Cholera — Gabriel García Márquez
The End of a Family Story — Péter Nádas
Billiards at Half-Past Nine — Heinrich Böll
South of the Border, West of the Sun — Haruki Murakami
The Spire — William Golding
How Green Was My Valley — Richard Llewellyn
The Harafish — Naguib Mahfouz
The Blue Flower — Penelope Fitzgerald
Animal Dreams — Barbara Kingsolver
Kitchen — Banana Yoshimoto
The Box Man — Kobo Abé

1998

Mr. Sammler’s Planet — Saul Bellow
La Belle Captive — Alain Robbe-Grillet with René Magritte
Stones from the River — Ursula Hegi
A Widow For One Year — John Irving
Rabbit At Rest — John Updike
American Pastoral — Philip Roth
Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden
The Long Night of White Chickens — Francisco Goldman
The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon
Dead Souls — Nikolai Gogol
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler — Italo Calvino
Men Without Women — Ernest Hemingway
A Passage to India — E. M. Forster
The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata
Sultry Moon — Mempo Giardinelli
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe

1997

The Cairo Trilogy — Naguib Mahfouz  [Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street]
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austin
The Odyssey — Homer
The Snows of Kilimanjaro — Ernest Hemingway
War with the Newts — Karel Capek
The Shipping News — E. Annie Proulx
Chronicle of a Death Foretold — Gabriel García Márquez
Children of the Alley — Naguib Mahfouz
Jealousy — Alain Robbe-Grillet
Balthazar — Lawrence Durrell
A River Runs Through It — Norman Maclean
Journey To the End of Night –Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Corelli’s Mandolin — Louis De Bernières
The Dharma Bums — Jack Kerouac
Dracula — Bram Stoker
An Artist of the Floating World — Kazuo Ishiguro