Anthony Burgess |
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS 1939-1983 |
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Anthony Burgess |
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS 1939-1983 |
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In 1984 Anthony Burgess produced Ninety-Nine Novels, his list of the best novels published in English since 1939. He wrote in the Introduction that "all the novelists listed... have added something to our knowledge of the human condition (sleeping or waking), have managed language well, have clarified the motivations of action, and have sometimes expanded the bounds of imagination." His choices follow:
| 1939 | Henry Green | Party Going |
| Aldous Huxley | After Many a Summer Dies the Swan | |
| James Joyce | Finnegan's Wake | |
| Flann O'Brien | At Swim Two Birds | |
| 1940 | Graham Greene | The Power and the Glory |
| Ernest Hemingway | For Whom the Bell Tolls | |
| C. P. Snow | Strangers and Brothers (to 1970) | |
| 1941 | Rex Warner | The Aerodrome |
| 1944 | Joyce Cary | The Horse's Mouth |
| W. Somerset Maugham | The Razor's Edge | |
| 1943 | Evelyn Waugh | Brideshead Revisited |
| 1946 | Mervyn Peake | Titus Groan |
| 1947 | Saul Bellow | The Victim |
| Malcolm Lowry | Under the Volcano | |
| 1948 | Graham Greene | The Heart of the Matter |
| Aldous Huxley | Ape and Essence | |
| Norman Mailer | The Naked and the Dead | |
| Nevil Shute | No Highway | |
| 1949 | Elizabeth Bowen | The Heat of the Day |
| George Orwell | 1984 | |
| William Sansom | The Body | |
| 1950 | William Cooper | Scenes from Provincial Life |
| Bud Schulberg | The Disenchanted | |
| 1951 | Anthony Powell | A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975) |
| J.D. Salinger | Catcher in the Rye | |
| Henry Williamson | A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969) | |
| Herman Wouk | The Caine Mutiny | |
| 1952 | Ralph Ellison | Invisible Man |
| Ernest Hemingway | The Old Man and the Sea | |
| Mary McCarthy | The Groves of Academe | |
| Flannery O'Connor | Wise Blood | |
| Evelyn Waugh | Sword of Honor (to 1961) | |
| 1953 | Raymond Chandler | The Long Goodbye |
| 1954 | Kingsley Amis | Lucky Jim |
| 1957 | John Braine | Room at the Top |
| Lawrence Durrell | The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960) | |
| Colin MacInnes | The London Novels (to 1960) | |
| Bernard Malamud | The Assistant | |
| 1958 | Iris Murdoch | The Bell |
| Alan Silitoe | Saturday Night and Sunday Morning | |
| T. H. White | The Once and Future King | |
| 1959 | William Faulkner | The Mansion |
| Ian Fleming | Goldfinger | |
| 1960 | L. P. Hartley | Facial Justice |
| Olivia Manning | The Balkan Trilogy (to 1965) | |
| 1961 | Ivy Compton-Burnett | The Mighty and Their Fall |
| Joseph Heller | Catch-22 | |
| Richard Hughes | The Fox in the Attic | |
| Patrick White | Riders in the Chariot | |
| Angus Wilson | The Old Men at the Zoo | |
| 1962 | James Baldwin | Another Country |
| Pamela Hansford Johnson | An Error of Judgement | |
| Aldous Huxley | Island | |
| Doris Lessing | The Golden Notebook | |
| Vladimir Nabokov | Pale Fire | |
| 1963 | Muriel Spark | The Girls of Slender Means |
| 1964 | William Golding | The Spire |
| Wilson Harris | Heartland | |
| Christopher Isherwood | A Single Man | |
| Vladimir Nabokov | The Defence | |
| Angus Wilson | Late Call | |
| 1965 | John O'Hara | The Lockwood Concern |
| Muriel Spark | The Mandelbaum Gate | |
| 1966 | Chinua Achebe | A Man of the People |
| Kingsley Amis | The Anti-Death League | |
| John Barth | Giles Goat-Boy | |
| Nadine Gordimer | The Late Bourgeois World | |
| Walker Percy | The Last Gentleman | |
| 1967 | R. K. Narayan | The Vendor of Sweets |
| 1968 | J. B. Priestley | The Image Men |
| Mordecai Richler | Cocksure | |
| Keith Roberts | Pavane | |
| 1969 | John Fowles | The French Lieutenant's Woman |
| Philip Roth | Portnoy's Complaint | |
| 1970 | Len Deighton | Bomber |
| 1973 | Michael Frayn | Sweet Dreams |
| Thomas Pynchon | Gravity's Rainbow | |
| 1975 | Saul Bellow | Humboldt's Gift |
| Malcolm Bradbury | The History Man | |
| 1976 | Brian Moore | The Doctor's Wife |
| Robert Nye | Falstaff | |
| 1977 | Erica Jong | How to Save Your Own Life |
| James Plunkett | Farewell Companions | |
| Paul Scott | Staying On | |
| 1978 | John Updike | The Coup |
| 1979 | J. G. Ballard | The Unlimited Dream Company |
| Bernard Malamud | Dubin's Lives | |
| V. S. Naipaul | A Bend in the River | |
| William Styron | Sophie's Choice | |
| 1980 | Brian Aldiss | Life in the West |
| Russell Hoban | Riddley Walker | |
| David Lodge | How Far Can You Go? | |
| John Kennedy Toole | A Confederacy of Dunces | |
| 1981 | Alasdair Gray | Lanark |
| Alexander Theroux | Darconville's Cat | |
| Paul Theroux | The Mosquito Coast | |
| 1982 | Robertson Davies | The Rebel Angels |
| 1983 | Norman Mailer | Ancient Evenings |
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