What are the best novels writen after 1960?

[Chilly]

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!

[jlb4tlb]

Mario Puzo "The Godfather" comes to mind.

[SilvanDitties]

Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, White Noise by Don DeLillo, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, John Updike's Rabbit series, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez are a few obvious ones.

[ladderandbucket]

John Crowley - Little, Big
Cormac Mccarthy - Blood Meridian
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose
Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping

[JBI]

American Pastoral, The Human Stain.

[TheFifthElement]

There are many. Ones which stand out to me include:
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson. Also Gilead. Both excellent.
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- The Collector by John Fowles
- The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
- Mao II by Don DeLillo
- If On a Winter's Night, a Traveller - by Italo Calvino
- The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
- The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson
- Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
- Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom
- The Cave by Jose Saramago
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Disgrace by J M Coetzee
- The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

actually I could go on and on, though I would like to see a list with less cultural bias. It is largely white 'western'. Sadly not a great deal comes through in translation or if it does it gets hidden on a dusty shelf in Waterstones.

[islandclimber]

The Tunnel ~ William H. Gass
Parallel Stories ~ Peter Nádas
The Melancholy of Resistance ~ László Krasznahorkai
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffmann ~ Angela Carter
Gravity's Rainbow ~ Thomas Pynchon
The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura ~ Irmtraud Morgner
Vain Art of The Fugue ~ Dumitru Tsepeneag
Women And Men ~ Joseph McElroy
Blinding ~ Mircea Cartarescu
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie ~ Agota Kristof
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets ~ Oksana Zabuzhko
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age ~ Bohumil Hrabal
Primeval and Other Times ~ Olga Tokarczuk
Infinite Jest ~ DFW

[mortalterror]

2004 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2004 2666 by Roberto Bolano
2004 Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2004 Wolf Totem by Lu Jiamin
2003 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2002 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2002 The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth
2000 Ravelstein by Saul Bellow
2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
1998 My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
1996 Infinite Jest by William Foster Wallace (USA)
1992 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
1991 Angels in America by Tony Kushner (USA)
1990 Omeros by Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
1987 Beloved by Toni Morrison (USA)
1987 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
1985 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (USA)
1985 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
1981 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (India)
1980 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Italy)
1979 If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Italy)
1974 The Envoy of Mr. Cogito by Zbigniew Herbert (Poland)
1973 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
1973 The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia)
1970 The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima (Japan)
1969 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (USA)
1969 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
1967 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)
1966 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (USA)
1965 Closely Watched Trains Bohumil Hrabal (Czechoslovakia)
1964 The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (Britain)
1963 Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (USA)
1962 The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
1961 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (USA)
1961 A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (India)

[sandy14]

A few more to add to the pot

JG Ballard - Cocaine Nights, Supercannes and Empire of the Sun.

Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting

Hunter S Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Lanark - Alasdair Gray

Iain Banks - The Bridge

[PeterL]

G. C. Edmondson, especially The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream , To Sail the Century Sea, ad The Aluminum Man.

[Seasider]

A question of Upbringing
The Acceptance World
Cassnova's Chinese Restaursnt
Books Do Furnish a Room ....and any other from the series Dance to the Music of Time by the British novelist Anthony Powell

[Chilly]

Well, here's the list so far. It looks decently sized:

David Mitchell-- Cloud Atlas,
Graham Swift-- Ever After,
A. S. Byatt--Possession,
John Fowles--French Lieutenant's Woman
Margaret Laurence-- Stone Angel
Alice Munro--Lives of Girls and Women
Chaim Potok-- The Chosen
Orhan Pamuk--My Life is Red.
Mario Puzo--the Godfather
Cormac McCarthy--Blood Meridian
Toni Morisson--Beloved
Thomas Pynchon--Gravity's Rainbow
Don Delillo--White Noise
Philip Roth--American Pastoral
John Updite---Rabbit Series
Gabriel Garcia Marquez--One Hundred Years of Solitude
John Crowley--Little Big
Umberto Eco--The Name of the Rose
Marilynne Robinson---Housekeeping
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- The Collector by John Fowles
- The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
- Mao II by Don DeLillo
- If On a Winter's Night, a Traveller - by Italo Calvino
- The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
- The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson
- Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
- Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom
- The Cave by Jose Saramago
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Disgrace by J M Coetzee
- The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
The Tunnel ~ William H. Gass
Parallel Stories ~ Peter Nádas
The Melancholy of Resistance ~ László Krasznahorkai
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffmann ~ Angela Carter
The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura ~ Irmtraud Morgner
Vain Art of The Fugue ~ Dumitru Tsepeneag
Women And Men ~ Joseph McElroy
Blinding ~ Mircea Cartarescu
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie ~ Agota Kristof
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets ~ Oksana Zabuzhko
Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age ~ Bohumil Hrabal
Primeval and Other Times ~ Olga Tokarczuk
Infinite Jest ~ DFW
2004 2666 by Roberto Bolano
2004 Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2004 Wolf Totem by Lu Jiamin
2003 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2002 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
2002 The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth
2000 Ravelstein by Saul Bellow
2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
1996 Infinite Jest by William Foster Wallace (USA)
1992 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago (Portugal)
1991 Angels in America by Tony Kushner (USA)
1990 Omeros by Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
1987 Beloved by Toni Morrison (USA)
1987 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
1985 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (USA)
1985 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Canada)
1981 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (India)
1979 If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Italy)
1974 The Envoy of Mr. Cogito by Zbigniew Herbert (Poland)
1973 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
1973 The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russia)
1970 The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima (Japan)
1969 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (USA)
1969 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
1966 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (USA)
1965 Closely Watched Trains Bohumil Hrabal (Czechoslovakia)
1964 The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (Britain)
1963 Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (Argentina)
1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (USA)
1962 The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
1961 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (USA)
1961 A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (India)
JG Ballard - Cocaine Nights, Supercannes and Empire of the Sun.
Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting
Hunter S Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Lanark - Alasdair Gray
Iain Banks - The Bridge
G. C. Edmondson--The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream

[kev67]

Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry. It is a prequel to Lonesome Dove and I liked it even more.
Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser, who I think is very underrated.
Mr American, also by George MacDonald Fraser.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Berniers. Great except for the ending.
All About the Boy by Nick Hornby. I started it at bedtime and didn't stop until I had finished it.

Out of the six that I have read which have already been listed, I particularly liked
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

[tonywalt]

The life and times of Michael K - JM Coetzee
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Adichie
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami

[HAN]

ı think under the doom from stephen king is very verry good. I suggest this book to evryone