How are you liking the decade we are currently in the midst of, literature wise?-Notable/favorite works

15 hours ago 15

I think we've had a handful of pretty great novels released in these past few years. Maybe not as many as I would have liked but I don't find that particularly worrying, considering that:

1) Naturally, I have not read every book released in the last five years or so. I happen to have read some that I consider amazing. Consequently I have no doubt there are more of them out there and I have every intention to discover as many of them as I can.

2) Maybe that's purely my perception of things, but I consider the second half of the 2010s to be significantly stronger regarding literary releases in comparison to the first one. Maybe that could be a repeated pattern. Maybe not (considering that the first half of the 2000s was uncomparably better than the second one)

Overall I would say it has been decently satisfactory so far. Some of my own personal highlights would be (in chronological order):

Cleanness-Garth Greenwell

The Mirror & the Light-Hilary Mantel

Death in Her Hands-Ottessa Moshfegh

Shuggie Bain-Douglas Stuart

Second Place-Rachel Cusk

Klara and The Sun-Kazuo Ishiguro

To Paradise-Hanya Yanagihara

Lapvona-Ottessa Moshfegh

The Young Man-Annie Ernaux

Stella Maris-Cormac McCarthy (controversially enough, I prefer it over The Passenger. By quite a mile, in fact)

The Fraud-Zadie Smith

Yellowface-R.F. Kuang (I don't consider it to be quite on par with the rest of the novels on my list quality-wise but since it was that much of an enjoyable read, and a decently written one at that, it would be unfair not to give it a mention. Consider it an honorable one)

Martyr!-Kaveh Akbar

The Empusium-Olga Tokarczuk

Creation Lake-Rachel Kushner

Many of the authors on my list debuted on the 2010s, some of the even earlier. I would say the best (at least my favorite) writer to debut on the 2020s so far is Douglas Stuart. As much as I enjoyed Martyr! I think I need at least one more to be entirely sure about Akbar.

Feel free to share your own thoughts and lists in the comment section below. In fact, my curiosity about them is the very reason I post this in the very first place. And of course, what you think of the books on my list. Which ones do you love and think deserve their place there (if there are any)? Which ones do you loathe? General tendencies you have noticed in this decade's fiction? Likes and dislikes?

In short, all about the 2020s.

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