LitNet's Best Books of 2011

[the facade]

If a similar thread already exists, please refer me to it and feel free to delete this one.

It recently struck me that I don't nearly read enough contemporary literature. As I honestly have no clue where to begin (and am a bit mistrusting of generated lists by sources I don't trust), I would like to ask you dear LitNetters what books released in 2011 (or in the past few years) you deem worthy (and hopefully even necessary) of reading?
Fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry, science related - anything goes. Only necessary criteria is that the work was originally written in English or translated to it (Swedish, Polish and Hebrew also works).

Thanks!

[TheFifthElement]

Nothing as recent as 2011 (though I can do 2010) but some suggestions:
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (or anything by David Mitchell - particularly Cloud Atlas which is stunning).
C by Tom McCarthy (or Remainder which is also very good)
Room by Emma Donoghue
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Pretty much anything by J M Coetzee but particularly Disgrace which is excellent if a difficult read
Like by Ali Smith

Enough for starters?

[the facade]

That is fantastic. Thank you!

[Charles Darnay]

The Night Circus:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Circus-Erin-Morgenstern/dp/0385534639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329691460&sr=8-1

[My2cents]

I second John Maxwell Coetzee. What a writer! (His name by the way, which I've been pronouncing it as Cut-say should be pronounced Coot-see.)