What To Read

What makes a book a classic? It lingers in the culture, shapes conversations, and still feels urgent years after it’s published. The 25 books on this list—fiction and nonfiction—do just that. From a mystical realist meditation by Jon Fosse to a Chinese sci-fi blockbuster to an undercover investigation of poverty, these books have left a lasting imprint on the world and changed the way we think. 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

A contemporary reimagining of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead follows a young boy growing up in rural Appalachia amidst poverty, addiction, and systemic neglect. Kingsolver’s sharp prose and empathy breathe life into a marginalized world often overlooked. While winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023, the novel has also found widespread adoration from its selection by Oprah to its buzz among Booktok enthusiasts. The Washington Post wrote, “Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.”

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a multigenerational epic that traces the complex trajectories of a Korean family in Japan across the 20th century. Interweaving intimate familial dynamics with the broader structural exclusions faced by ethnic Koreans in Japan. A National Book Award finalist, Lee’s novel is a masterclass in storytelling, praised for its dignified portrayal of resilience in the face of discrimination. It was adapted to critical acclaim by Apple TV.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The first of the Neapolitan Novels, My Brilliant Friend tracks the intense and complicated friendship between Elena and Lila in a working-class Naples neighborhood. Ferrante’s nuanced portrayal of friendship, ambition, and class stratification challenges conventional literary representations of women’s interior lives and has catalyzed a reevaluation of feminist narrative structures within contemporary European literature. The book, and the series, are lauded as modern classics, bolstered by an acclaimed HBO adaptation and being ranked by the New York Times as the best book of the century.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is arguably the most influential novel of dystopian speculative fiction of the past 20 years. Set at a seemingly placid boarding school in England, the narrative revolves around a group of students as they begin to unravel the truth about their mysterious purpose there. A Booker Prize finalist, the novel is an exquisite example of Ishiguro’s minimalist style deployed toward maximal ethical inquiry.

The Overstory by Richard Powers

An interlocking narrative of nine characters connected by trees, The Overstory is an urgent call to recognize the intelligence and interconnectedness of the natural world. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker, Powers’s eco-epic reframes human history within the larger drama of environmental crisis.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This Booker Prize-winning historical novel reimagines the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. Mantel reinvents the genre with razor-sharp prose and a psychologically rich portrait of power and survival. It won the Booker in 2009 and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, also earned the prize, a rare literary feat.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Smith’s dazzling debut novel examines immigration, race, and generational identity in late-20th-century London. A multiracial, multigenerational comedy of manners, White Teeth marked the arrival of a major literary talent at only 24. It won numerous accolades including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Whitbread First Novel Award.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Published posthumously, 2666 is the Chilean author Bolaño’s magnum opus: a labyrinthine narrative encompassing a missing author, murdered women in Mexico, and the ghosts of European fascism. Vast, enigmatic, and genre-defying, the novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award and is regarded as a towering achievement of 21st-century literature.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s Atonement is a novel about the consequences of a false accusation made by a young girl and how storytelling can affect truth and memory. This suspenseful page-turner was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Its 2007 film adaptation with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy is acclaimed as an exquisite (and faithful) treatment, but we stand by the book as a must-read first. 

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This post-apocalyptic odyssey follows a father and son’s journey through a devastated, dystopian landscape. McCarthy’s stark, poetic prose and moral intensity earned The Road the Pulitzer Prize and a lasting place in American literature. 

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Set in the days before Hurricane Katrina, Ward’s novel centers on the experiences of an impoverished Black family in rural Mississippi. Salvage the Bones won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction, praised for its lyrical intensity and raw portrayal of poverty, resilience, and familial bonds.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A transatlantic love story and a sharp dissection of race and identity, Americanah follows a Nigerian woman navigating life in the U.S. and the U.K. With humor and nuance, Adichie explores what it means to be Black in different contexts. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

There There by Tommy Orange

A groundbreaking debut, There There intertwines the lives of twelve Native characters converging at a powwow in Oakland. The novel confronts the complexities of urban Native identity and the legacy of colonial violence. A Pulitzer finalist and a New York Times bestseller, it heralded Orange as a vital new voice. His follow up, Wandering Stars, explores the lives of the ancestors of the family we first met in There There and examines the experience of generational trauma in Native communities. 

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A harrowing epic of trauma, friendship, and endurance, A Little Life follows four men in New York over decades, centering on the enigmatic and traumatized Jude. The novel became a cultural phenomenon, sparking intense debates over its emotional toll. It won the Kirkus Prize and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. 

Erasure by Percival Everett

A scathing satire of race, identity, and the publishing industry, Erasure follows a disillusioned Black academic who writes a pseudonymous “street” novel that becomes wildly successful against its own author’s wishes. Everett’s biting humor and metafictional playfulness critique stereotypes and literary commodification. The novel inspired the 2023 Oscar-winning film American Fiction which stars Jeffrey Wright. It was a toss-up between this one and the prolific author's recent wildly popular retelling of Huck Finn, James. Ultimately, we felt that Erasure’s extremely prescient story about the complicated dynamics of race and culture in 21st century America gave it the edge over James. 

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Structured as a letter to his teenage son, Coates’s powerful memoir blends personal narrative with historical analysis to confront the realities of Black life in America. Winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction, it’s a seminal text of 21st-century antiracist literature.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

This landmark book in behavioral economics and psychology by the late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman radically changed the way millions of people thought about how we think. Combining decades of research with lucid prose, Thinking, Fast and Slow describes our two modes of thought, one which is fast and instinctive and one which is slow, logical and deliberative. This one is essential reading in economics, public policy, and beyond for both casual readers and academics.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

The first Chinese novel to win the Hugo Award, The Three-Body Problem is a mind-bending tale of alien contact and scientific and political intrigue beginning during China’s Cultural Revolution and developing across the present. Translated by Ken Liu, the novel brought Chinese science fiction to a global audience and spawned a major Netflix adaptation.

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

A Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of the American housing crisis, Evicted follows eight families in Milwaukee as they face eviction and homelessness. Desmond’s immersive reporting and moral clarity transformed public discourse on poverty and housing policy. For us, listing this one was another toss-up with his more recent “Poverty, by America,” which is a provocative argument about how financially secure Americans are to blame for persistent poverty. 

Septology by Jon Fosse

A seven-part novel written in a single flowing sentence, Septology is a meditative masterpiece on faith, art, and the self. The Norwegian author, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, uses repetition and rhythm to probe existential questions with hypnotic beauty. The New Yorker’s Merve Emre wrote, “Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the reality of the divine” and author Lauren Groff described it as “a desperate prayer made radiant by sudden spikes of ecstatic beauty.”

My Struggle (series) by Karl Ove Knausgård

This six-volume autobiographical epic redefined the possibilities of memoir and fiction. With unsparing honesty and filled with mundane detail, Knausgård chronicles his inner life, family, and artistic ambitions. A global literary sensation, My Struggle polarized readers and critics while influencing a new wave of autofiction. Succession star Jeremy Strong called it, "the most honest expression of life that I’ve ever read anywhere" in GQ. 

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

An undercover investigation into low-wage America, Nickel and Dimed follows Ehrenreich as she works minimum-wage jobs to test the myth of upward mobility. A landmark of journalistic nonfiction, it remains a blistering critique of economic inequality – one of the defining social issues of the century.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

This sweeping narrative history tells the story of the Great Migration through the lives of three Black Americans. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, blends personal stories with exhaustive research. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was hailed by the New York Times as “a landmark piece of nonfiction.”

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Didion’s elegiac memoir of grief and loss—following the sudden death of her husband and the illness of her daughter—offers a powerful meditation on mourning, memory, and resilience. Winner of the National Book Award, it remains one of the most resonant and revered memoirs of the 21st century.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

George Saunders’ Booker Prize–winning debut novel is a bold, strange, and surprisingly moving take on grief, history, and the afterlife. Set in a Washington cemetery over the course of a single night in 1862, the book centers on Abraham Lincoln’s real-life visit to the crypt of his young son, Willie. The story is told through a chorus of ghostly voices—some heartbreaking, some hilarious—who are stuck in limbo. Mixing historical fact with surreal fiction, Lincoln in the Bardo is inventive, tender, and unforgettable. It is one of the most original novels of the 21st century and cemented Saunders as one of the most important voices in contemporary American fiction.

Bonus Pick — Reader’s Choice

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

After unveiling our list of 25 Modern Classics of the 21st Century, we asked Tertulia readers what we missed. From Olive Kitteridge to The Underground Railroad, the suggestions came pouring in. But one title earned an especially passionate defense: Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.

Described by one reader as “a thoughtfully curated masterpiece… one of the century’s most beautiful and thought-provoking explorations of adolescence and race,” this Pulitzer Prize–winning blend of memoir, poetry, history, and cultural criticism is a luminous meditation on basketball, belonging, and the shape of a life. It now takes its rightful place on our Modern Classics shelf.

These 25 towering literary achievements give readers new ways to understand history, culture, and society. They grapple with the urgent issues of our time from climate change to racial inequality to the fate of democracy, as well as the ever evolving nature of the human experience.  We believe these modern classic books will remain relevant for many years to come.