Best Modern Books Of All Time | 10 Best Modern Books Of All Time

Here is a List of 10 Modern Books Of All Time. Modern classics books that include books from as far back as the nineteenth century and from as recently as five years ago.

1. White Teeth

White Teeth By Zadie Smith

Author : Zadie Smith

A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection 'Believe the hype' The Times 'The almost preposterous talent was clear from the first pages' Julian Barnes, Guardian The international bestseller and modern classic of multicultural Britain - an unforgettable portrait of London One of the most talked about debut novels of all time, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.

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2. Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing By Jesmyn Ward

Author : Jesmyn Ward

Shortlisted For The Women'S Prize For Fiction 2018 Winner Of The National Book Award 2017 One Of Barack Obama'S Best Books Of 2017 Selected As A Book Of The Year By The New York Times, The New Statesman, The Financial Times, The New York Times Book Review, Time And The Bbc Finalist For The Pen/Faulkner Award For Fiction Finalist For The Kirkus Prize Finalist For The Andrew Carnegie Medal Finalist For The National Book Critics Circle Award 'This Wrenching New Novel By Jesmyn Ward Digs Deep Into The Not-Buried Heart Of The American Nightmare. 

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3. My Brilliant Friend

My Brilliant Friend By Elena Ferrante

Author : Elena Ferrante

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship.

The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.

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4. Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood By Haruki Murakami

Author : Haruki Murakami

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

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5. God of Small Things

God of Small Things By Arundhati Roy

Author : Arundhati Roy

Booker Prize winner ‘God of Small Things’ is a story about two children, Esthappen and Rahel. This was Arundhati Roy's debut novel, in which she throws light on certain facets of life in Kerala, highlighting issues of caste system, Keralite Syrian Christian lifestyle and communism. Esthappen and Rahel at a very young age come to learn about horrifying truth of life, as they are being tortured and blamed for every misfortune. Their less than perfect life gets infected by unexpected events. Though the novel begins with Esthappen and Rahel, most of its part holds wider stories of the political events shaping the state, their parents and relatives. The darker undertones in the life of twins get more evident, as secrets, bitterness and lies destroy their world. The heat-aching story of two innocent young children will surely keep you hooked till the end and leave you searching for more.

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6. We Need To Talk About Kevin

We Need To Talk About Kevin By Lionel Kate Shriver Mosse

Author : Lionel Kate Shriver Mosse

MILLION COPIES SOLD never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.

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7. The Shipping News

The Shipping News By Annie Proulx

Author : Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx’s highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland.

With ‘the aunt’ and his delinquent daughters – Bunny and Sunshine – in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. ‘The Shipping News’ is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

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8. Beloved

Beloved By Toni Morrison

Author : Toni Morrison

It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentuckhy, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.

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9. The Sympathizer: Hachette Essentials

The Sympathizer By Viet Thanh Nguyen

Author : Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Hachette Essentials series comprises a collection of titles that are regarded as modern classics. A carefully and lovingly curated selection of distinctive, ground-breaking fiction and non-fiction titles published since 1950. Timeless. Relevant. Passionate. Unified as a series - distinctive as books. A good book is great. A great book is essential.

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10. The Odyssey

The Odyssey By Homer

Author : Homer

Ten years after the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy, Odysseus, one of the war heroes, has still not returned to his kingdom, Ithaca. Assumed to be dead, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors who have overrun Odysseus’ palace and ransacked his land, competing for Penelope’s hand in marriage.
But Odysseus is still alive; imprisoned on the island of Ogygia by Calypso, who is possessed by love for him and desires to make him her immortal husband.

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