qvetch commented on…

Time Magazine's "100 Best English-language Novels (1923-present)"

Mixed bag — 3 years ago

Some of these are not among the best, in my experience. For instance, missing is Harry Mulisch’s THEASSAULT, brilliant. Another is NIGHT by Wiesel, brilliant. ONEHUNDREDDAYS OF SOLITUDE, probably the best book written in the last half-century: missing: ridiculous. And yet books like the one by Kingsley Amis, about a drunk who is supposed to be funny, is questionable. As is Steinbeck’s dated book instead of his better EAST OF EDEN, or Hemingway’s FAREWELL TO ARMS (missing), or Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, or the brilliant book by Gunter Grass, or any one of a number of books by the wonderful Penelope Fitzgerald. What about Pym? Louis Auchincloss? James Cain? Molly Gloss’s THEJUMP-OFFCREEK? Kawabatta? Ivan Doig? Mishima? In their place? – many lesser works.


Comments

Best English lanuage novels.

Yes the novels you mentioned are very good but the reason they are missing is probably given in the title of the list.

Night is not quite a novel, since it is mostly non-fiction.

"English" language

Apart from that fact, perhaps the realization that no two people are likely to have the same top 100 list?

"English"?

All great books, but the majority of books you mention were not written in English originally:

The Assault-Dutch

Night – Yiddish

One Hundred Days of Solitude – Spanish

Gunther Grass wrote in German



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