Hi literature community! I used to believe that no good novels had been written since George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948. Then over the last year I read a host of fantastic novels that had been written since then and came to realize that I was simply wrong. If anything, there are a lot of fantastic writers these days and though they are knew and not so well known, they write well. It's like searching for rubies in a chest full of fool's gold.
Here's the list of works I read that proved me wrong: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Graham Swift's Ever After, A. S. Byatt's Possession, John Fowles' French Lieutenant's Woman, Margaret Laurence's Stone Angel, Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, Chaim Potok's The Chosen and Orhan Pamuk's My Life is Red.
They're not classics, but they're wonderfully crafted and beautiful, at least in my mind. I thought about them, and then I realized that there must be more. There must be so much more!
So, I'm wondering if you can give me suggestions for what you think are the best novels written since, say, 1960? I'd love to see us come to a consensus via a list that says which books since then deserve to be read.
Thanks!