[*short list **very short list]

Martin Amis, Time’s Arrow
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina*
António Lobo Antunes, The Natural Order of Thing
Diana Athill, Instead of a Letter [memoir]
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Russell Banks, The Darling
Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love
Samuel Beckett, The Trilogy (Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)*
Saul Bellow, Herzog*
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Bonnie Burnard, The Good House
A. S. Byatt, Possession
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler*
Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories*
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899
J. M. Coetzee, The Age of Iron
Jim Crace, Being Dead
Michael Cunningham, The Hours*
Edward Dahlberg, Because I Was Flesh [memoir]
Claire Davis, Winter Range
Lydia Davis, The End of the Story
Don DeLillo, Underworld*
Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted
E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Marguerite Duras, Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night
Stuart Dybek, I Sailed with Magellan*
Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying**
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby**
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary*
Paula Fox, Desperate Characters
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
William Gaddis, J R**

Ernest J. Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude**
William Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Nadine Gordimer, July’s People
Spalding Gray, Gray’s Anatomy [monolog]
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Niall Griffiths, Stump*
Jane Hamilton, The Short History of a Prince
Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy
Kent Haruf, Plain Song
Joseph Heller, Something Happened**
Mark Helprin, Ellis Island and Other Stories**
Ernest Hemingway, The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway*
Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love
Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains
John Irving, The World According to Garp*
Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day*
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son*
James Joyce, Ulysses*
James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
William Kennedy, Ironweed*
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
William Kittredge, The Willlow Field
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
John Lancaster, Mr Phillips
Ella Leffland, Rumors of Peace
John LeCarré, A Perfect Spy
Margot Livesey, Eva Moves the Furniture
António Lobo Antunes, The Natural Order of Things
Michael Lowenthal, Charity Girl, 2007
Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Bernard MacLaverty, Cal
Norman Mailer, Executioner’s Song
David Markson, This Is Not a Novel
William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow**
Cormac McCarthy, Suttree**

Alice McDermott, At Weddings and Wakes*
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Jon McGregor, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Thomas McGuane, Ninety-Two in the Shade
Larry McMurtry, Leaving Cheyenne
Deirdre McNamer, One Sweet Quarrel
Herman Melville, Moby Dick*
Magnus Mills, The Restraint of Beasts
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance*
Lorrie Moore, Birds of America
Wright Morris, Ceremony in Lone Tree
Toni Morrison, Beloved*
Alice Munro, Selected Stories**
Haruki Murakami, Kafka at the Shore
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War
Josip Novakovich, April Fool’s Day*
Joyce Carol Oates, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart**
Edna O’Brien, Night
John O’Brien, Leaving Las Vegas
John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra, 1934
Stewart O’Nan, A Prayer for the Dying*
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient**
George Orwell, 1984**
Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Reynolds Price, Good Hearts
E. Annie Proulx, Accordion Crimes
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping**
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America*
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
J. D. Salinger, Frannie and Zooey
James Salter, Dusk
José Saramago, Blindness**

Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
Nevil Shute, On the Beach*
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Zadie Smith, White Teeth*
Alexander Solzhenizen, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy**
William Styron, Sophie’s Choice*
Patrick Süskind, Perfume
Andrzej Szczypiorski, The Beautiful Mrs. Siedenman*
William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons*
Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant*
Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party
John Updike, The Rabbit Novels*
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five*
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, 2006
James Welch, Fools Crow**
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier*
Connie Willis, Doomsday Book
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone, 2006*
James Wood, The Book Against God
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse*
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road*
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind