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The New Canon

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.
?
Love in the Time of Cholera  
2. Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
 
3. The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Eleanor Atwood
 
4. Beloved
by Toni Morrison
 
5. The Corrections: A Novel
by Jonathan Franzen
 
6.
?
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
 
7.
?
2666
by Robert Bolano
 
8.
?
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
 
9. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Modern Library)
by Cormac Mccarthy
 
10. American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
 
11. The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
 
12. Kafka on the Shore  
13. The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
 
14. Atonement
by Ian McEwan
 
15.
?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon
 
16. The Human Stain: A Novel
by Philip Roth
 
17. The Feast of the Goat: A Novel
by Mario Vargas Llosa
 
18. Gilead: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
 
19. Cloud Atlas: A Novel
by David Mitchell
 
20.
?
Blindness
by Jose Saramago
 
21. Austerlitz (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Winfried Georg Sebald
 
22. The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
 
23. The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje
 
24. Possession: A Romance
by A.S. Byatt
 
25. The Road
by McCarthy Cormac
 
26.
?
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
by J.K. Rowling
 
27.
?
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
 
28. The Savage Detectives: A Novel
by Roberto Bolano
 
29. New York Trilogy (Green Integer)
by Paul Auster
 
30. Bel Canto (P.S.)
by Ann Patchett
 
31. The Famished Road
by Ben Okri
 
32. Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Joseph O'Neill
 
33. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
by Haruki Murakami
 
34. Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
 
35. The Master: A Novel
by Colm Toibin
 
36.
?
Tree of Smoke: A Novel
by Denis Johnson
 
37. Empire Falls
by RICHARD RUSSO
 
38. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
 
39.
?
the sea
by John Banville
 
40.
?
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
 
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Created by misssmichaela on Mar 05, 2009.