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 (2023 edition)
- Petty Troubles of Married Life — Honoré de Balzac
- Cecilia — Fanny Burney
- The Origin of the Species — Charles Darwin
- Colonel Jack — Daniel Defoe
- The Corsican Brothers — Alexander Dumas
- Wives and Daughters — Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Princess Cassamassima — Henry James
- Gargantua & Pantagruel — François Rabelais
- The 120 Days of Sodom — Le Marquis de Sade
- The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle — Tobias Smollett
2023
- A Glastonbury Romance — John Cowper Powys
- Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
- 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
- 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
- A Widow’s Story: A Memoir — Joyce Carol Oates
- The Midnight Library — Matt Haig
- Scattered All Over the Earth — Yoko Tawada
- Girl with Curious Hair — David Foster Wallace
- City — Alessandro Baricco
- The Lacuna — Barbara Kingsolver
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