By era
Best Modern Classic Novels
The postwar decades produced a run of novels that feel, already, like classics — books taught alongside the nineteenth-century giants because they answer them. They inherit the realist and modernist traditions and press them toward new subjects and new voices.
We've ranked the strongest of them and annotated each with what it contributed: a widened canon, a reinvented form, a history finally told from the inside. Each title links to a full study guide.
- 42 books
- 32 authors
- 1948–2013 span
- 1
To Kill a Mockingbird
OCR set textHarper Lee · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 2
Beloved
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 3
A Lesson Before Dying
AP Lit set textErnest J. Gaines · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 4
Disgrace
AP Lit set textJ. M. Coetzee · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 5
Nineteen Eighty-Four
OCR set textGeorge Orwell · 1949 · Novel · novel
- 6
Never Let Me Go
OCR set textKazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · Novel · novel
- 7
Cry, the Beloved Country
AP Lit set textAlan Paton · 1948 · Novel · novel
- 8
The Tin Drum
IB set textGünter Grass · 1959 · Novel · novel
- 9
Bless Me, Ultima
AP Lit set textRudolfo Anaya · 1972 · Novel · novel
- 10
The God of Small Things
AP Lit set textArundhati Roy · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 11
Invisible Man
AP Lit set textRalph Ellison · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 12
Half of a Yellow Sun
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 13
No Longer at Ease
AP Lit set textChinua Achebe · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 14
Song of Solomon
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 15
Blood Meridian
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 16
Cold Mountain
AP Lit set textCharles Frazier · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 17
East of Eden
Common CoreJohn Steinbeck · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 18
The Bluest Eye
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1970 · Novel · novel
- 19
In the Time of the Butterflies
IB set textJulia Alvarez · 1994 · Novel · novel
- 20
House Made of Dawn
AP Lit set textN. Scott Momaday · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 21
The House of the Spirits
IB set textIsabel Allende · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 22
Wide Sargasso Sea
AP Lit set textJean Rhys · 1966 · Novel · novel
- 23
Ceremony
AP Lit set textLeslie Marmon Silko · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 24
The Woman in Black
OCR set textSusan Hill · 1983 · Novella · novel
- 25
Purple Hibiscus
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2003 · Novel · novel
- 26
Things Fall Apart
IB set textChinua Achebe · 1958 · Novel · novel
- 27
The Color Purple
AP Lit set textAlice Walker · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 28
Norwegian Wood
IB set textHaruki Murakami · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 29
Lord of the Flies
Eduqas set textWilliam Golding · 1954 · Novel · novel
- 30
One Hundred Years of Solitude
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1967 · Novel · novel
- 31
Sula
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1973 · Novel · novel
- 32
Like Water for Chocolate
IB set textLaura Esquivel · 1989 · Novel · novel
- 33
Anita and Me
Eduqas set textMeera Syal · 1996 · Novel · novel
- 34
Americanah
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · Novel · novel
- 35
Go Tell It on the Mountain
AP Lit set textJames Baldwin · 1953 · Novel · novel
- 36
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1981 · Novella · novella
- 37
Love in the Time of Cholera
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 38
The Road
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 39
How Many Miles to Babylon?
Leaving CertJennifer Johnston · 1974 · Novella · novel
- 40
The House on Mango Street
AP Lit set textSandra Cisneros · 1984 · Novella · novella
- 41
All the Pretty Horses
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1992 · Novel · novel
- 42
Kitchen
IB set textBanana Yoshimoto · 1988 · Novella · novel
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