The New Canon

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The new canon focuses on great works of fiction published after 1985. The post-modern novel is a slippery thing. It easily collapses into self-parody or even an attack on its own sustaining principles. After all, when everything is deconstructed, why should the deconstructor be exempted? When the pundit insists that “no standpoint is privileged and no discourse is objectively true,” the most appropriate response is: “Same to you, buddy.”

  1. 1.
    Love in the Time of Cholera

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  2. 2.
    Infinite Jest
    by David Foster Wallace

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  3. 3.
    The Handmaid's Tale
    by Margaret Eleanor Atwood

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  4. 4.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

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  5. 5.
    The Corrections: A Novel
    by Jonathan Franzen

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  6. 6.
    Underworld
    by Don DeLillo

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  7. 7.
    ?
    2666
    by Robert Bolano

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  8. 8.
    House of Leaves
    by Mark Z. Danielewski

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  9. 10.
    American Pastoral
    by Philip Roth

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  10. 11.
    The Fortress of Solitude
    by Jonathan Lethem

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  11. 12.
    Kafka on the Shore

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  12. 13.
    The Known World
    by Edward P. Jones

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  13. 14.
    Atonement
    by Ian McEwan

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  14. 15.
    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
    by Michael Chabon

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  15. 16.
    The Human Stain: A Novel
    by Philip Roth

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  16. 17.
    The Feast of the Goat: A Novel
    by Mario Vargas Llosa

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  17. 18.
    Gilead: A Novel
    by Marilynne Robinson

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  18. 19.
    Cloud Atlas: A Novel
    by David Mitchell

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  19. 20.
    Blindness
    by Jose Saramago

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  20. 21.
    Austerlitz (Modern Library Paperbacks)
    by Winfried Georg Sebald

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  21. 22.
    The Secret History
    by Donna Tartt

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  22. 23.
    The English Patient
    by Michael Ondaatje

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  23. 24.
    Possession: A Romance
    by A.S. Byatt

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  24. 25.
    The Road
    by McCarthy Cormac

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  25. 26.
    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
    by J.K. Rowling

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  26. 27.
    The God of Small Things
    by Arundhati Roy

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  27. 28.
    The Savage Detectives: A Novel
    by Roberto Bolano

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  28. 29.
    New York Trilogy (Green Integer)
    by Paul Auster

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  29. 30.
    Bel Canto (P.S.)
    by Ann Patchett

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  30. 31.
    The Famished Road
    by Ben Okri

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  31. 32.
    Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
    by Joseph O'Neill

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  32. 33.
    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
    by Haruki Murakami

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  33. 34.
    Special Topics in Calamity Physics
    by Marisha Pessl

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  34. 35.
    The Master: A Novel
    by Colm Toibin

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  35. 36.
    ?
    Tree of Smoke: A Novel
    by Denis Johnson

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  36. 37.
    Empire Falls
    by RICHARD RUSSO

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  37. 38.
    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
    by Mark Haddon

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  38. 39.
    the sea
    by John Banville

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  39. 40.
    The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
    by Junot Díaz

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Created by misssmichaela on Mar 05, 2009.
 

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