Literary Masterworks of the 21st century

I propose nominating and discussing literary works of this century that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of The Lord of the Rings and 1984.

There is just too much to read in a lifetime, so hopefully this thread will help focus minds.

I propose the Expanse series and American Gods

growleaves

I don't think even the very best Neil Gaiman works can stand up to Tolkien in terms of overall greatness.

This is a good thread idea but then we are only 22 years into the 21st century which is quite early on.

I'll be interested to see the recommendations that this thread produces.

I mostly read older books myself and I think the influence of modernism has allowed a lot of ugliness to seep into contemporary lit.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118441963#Comment_118441963

The ugliness is in the LOTR too though, the author just uses allegory and metaphor skillfully. I suspect 21st century literature(in English anyway) will have little use for the Dead Marshes as allegory to the industrial slaughter of WW1

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118443346#Comment_118443346

FWIW he always denied that the work was allegorical in any way.

'Austerlitz' is unquestionably the best 21st century book I've read and it'd go toe-to-toe with many of the classics, for me.

Thargor

The Second Apocalypse series by R Scott Bakker is for me a fantasy masterpiece equivalent or superior to the Lord of the Rings and certainly beats the Wheel of Time and all the other famous fantasy series.

For conventional literature though I'm struggling to think of anything in the 21st century that I would rank alongside The Grapes of Wrath or For Whom the Bell Tolls and others, maybe a couple of Jonathan Franzens like Freedom and one or two others but I think it would be a bit too much of a stretch.

I'm sure there are many millennial readers who would never have read any book if it wasn't for JK Rowling and Harry Potter, that would be their generations LOTR, probably not what the OP is going for though.

Black Sheep

It's probably too early to say what books from the past twenty years will truly endure.

Chimamanda Adichie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Haruki Murakami are three that spring to mind as being possible candidates.

All are still publishing and will be for a considerable amount of time.

Adichie.... it's insane how good she is as a writer, she's shockingly good. I could see her being read for decades to come, and she's still very young.

Ishiguro released NEVER LET ME GO in 2005 and it's already being listed as one of the best books of the past 100 years. He got the nobel prize in literature in 2018. Probably the most likely of the three to last I would think.

Murakami seems like a safe bet also. It's hard to know whether in the long run his most famous books won't be pre 2000 however. He's still releasing stuff, but to mixed reviews.

I like genre fantasy and science fiction but of what has been released after 2000 I would struggle to identify anything even remotely comparable to the likes of LORD OF THE RINGS in terms of lasting cultural impact.

If I were going to guess I think Stephen King likely to have enough of a footprint and effect on writing in various genres that he will last.

Neal Stephenson and people like that I could see having key works which are still written about and read for up to 75 years but I don't know if the likes of him could endure the way Asimov, Heinlein, Howard and others have, we'll have to wait and see.

GLaDOS

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118605006#Comment_118605006

What would you recommend as a good starting point for Adichie?

Black Sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118605065#Comment_118605065

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN is still what she is best known for, it's set before and after the civil war in what is now Nigeria.

I haven't read NOTES ON GRIEF but it sounds interesting, she wrote it during 2020, during COVID, her father died of a medical complication and she was separated from him at the end.

I wouldn't consider myself an avid fan of all her work, some of the subject matter of some of the books I'm not that interested in. But I mentioned her because of the power of her prose, I genuinely think she's one of the best.

Hermy

Banville's The Sea and McGahern's That They May Face The Rising Sun would be two on my list.