Genre :: Literary Fiction (94 books)

  • The Remains of the day

    #127

    The Remains of the day

    by Kazuo Ishiguro

    (7 Reviews)

    153 Points

    "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days."

  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    #139

    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    by Junot Diaz

    (4 Reviews)

    139 Points

    "They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn..."

  • A Thousand Acres

    #141

    A Thousand Acres

    by Jane Smiley

    (5 Reviews)

    137 Points

    "At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road."

  • JR

    #146

    JR

    by William Gaddis

    (2 Reviews)

    134 Points

  • Lucky Jim

    #149

    Lucky Jim

    by Kingsley Amis

    (4 Reviews)

    133 Points

    "They made a silly mistake, though," the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory.

  • Underworld

    #150

    Underworld

    by Don DeLillo

    (5 Reviews)

    132 Points

    "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza."

  • Ironweed

    #156

    Ironweed

    by William J. Kennedy

    (1 Review)

    130 Points

    "Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods."

  • A Dance to the Music of Time

    #159

    A Dance to the Music of Time

    by Anthony Powell

    (2 Reviews)

    127 Points

    "The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of a camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of..."

  • A Bend in the River

    #165

    A Bend in the River

    by V. S. Naipaul

    (2 Reviews)

    120 Points

    "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

  • Housekeeping

    #167

    Housekeeping

    by Marilynne Robinson

    (4 Reviews)

    118 Points

    "My name is Ruth."