The greatest writers of our time

Talking of waiting in anticipation for an author's next book – there were sixteen years between McCarthy’s 2006 bestseller The Road, and his final, linked novels The Passenger and Stella Maris. The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver called Bobby, whose father helped Oppenheimer create the atom bomb, and his involvement in the mystery surrounding a sunken jet in 1980s Mississippi. Bobby is haunted by thoughts of his sister, Alicia, the subject of Stella Maris, which is told purely through dialogue. Distinctly different from his previous books, and every bit as good, these novels show McCarthy’s range and why he’s regarded as one of America’s greatest writers.

Often cited as one of the best American novels, White Noise follows Jack Gladney, the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. When a chemical spill from a train carriage occurs, Jack has to confront the thing he fears most: his mortality. A social satire that looks at American consumerism and over-stimulation, and at a lack of connection, White Noise is uncomfortable reading at times, but all the richer for it.

At only 160 pages, the Antiguan-American’s debut novel is probably the shortest bildungsroman you’ll come across – but this is no literary lightweight. Haunting, but not without humour, this tale of the end of childhood is full of Kincaid’s candour and complexity, the coming-of-age narrative a way of exploring and challenging ideas of colonialism, power and control.

Published in 1961, A House for Mr Biswas was Naipaul’s first novel to achieve worldwide acclaim. It follows the fate of the title character, continually striving for success and mostly failing, whose ultimate goal is to own his own house. Often included in lists of the best novels written in English, and one of the seventy books on the Big Jubilee Read to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of the late Queen Elizabeth II, A House for Mr Biswas is a smart and funny novel that evokes life on the Caribbean island of Trinidad.

Although considered by many to be the queen of science fiction, Butler wrote books that often defied easy categorisation, thanks to her effortless melding of genres and subjects. Kindred is her best known novel, and is about Dana, who finds herself time travelling between her home in 1976 California and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. Exploring the legacy of slavery as well as class, gender and race, Kindred is a perfect illustration of just how powerful genre fiction can be.

Brilliant novels and novelists can capture a moment in history, and make us feel like we’re at the centre of that time. The Line of Beauty is one of those books, taking readers to 1980s England, where 20-year-old Nick Guest moves into the home of an ambitious Tory MP and his family. Swept up in their world, and pursuing his own desires, The Line of Beauty – which won the Booker Prize in 2004 – is a novel that encapsulates the struggles of class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, and is a modern classic.

Best-of author lists can sometimes forget that great literature can also be funny literature. Such is the case with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a hilarious and poignant novel about life (and the universe). Its hero is Arthur Dent, who is having a regular Thursday until his house gets demolished, Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace express route, and his best friend announces he’s an alien. Adams’ novel is a pop culture classic, and a feat of the imagination.

Just about any novel by Morrison deserves a place on a list of best books, but Beloved is arguably the writer’s best known work. Following Sethe, who is now miles away from the place where she was kept as a slave for many years, Beloved is named for the violent spectre of Sethe’s dead child: a nameless daughter whose tomb stone simply carries the word ‘Beloved’. A masterpiece of craft and story, Beloved is a story that once read can’t be forgotten.

Although he won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, it’s Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go that makes this list, for the emotional notes it strikes. The novel is the story of three friends – Kathy, Ruth and Tommy – who were all pupils at an idyllic school in the countryside. Now grown, they are forced to look back on the past and confront the secrets that have been kept hidden from them. Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, creates a stunning novel with a devastating twist.

Set in the fictional Republic of Gilead – formerly America – Atwood’s novel is about Offred, a woman who is placed in the house of The Commander to fulfil her one function: to breed. Non-compliance in the totalitarian state means death, but even in the awful world she lives in, Offred never loses hope and desire. First published in 1985, Atwood’s tale is not only compelling, but also as relevant today as it was almost forty years ago; that’s both scary, and one of the reasons why it should be on any greatest books list.