The Atlantic simply launched their checklist of the The Great American Novels. The checklist is the end result of a venture that appears on the most influential novels in America for the previous 100 years (roughly from 1924-2023). The 136 novels on the checklist have been chosen by The Atlantic’s editors, who have been in dialog with students, critics, and novelists outdoors of the publication. Of the 136 on the checklist, 45 are debut novels, three are kids’s books, 9 received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and round 60 have been banned in libraries or colleges.
In setting up the checklist, Atlantic editors framed the definition of the Great American novel across the one which author John William DeForest established in 1868 — which described a brand new variety of literature that painted “the American soul” — but expanded on it, saying “In 2024, our definition of literary greatness is wider, deeper, and weirder than DeForest seemingly may have imagined.”
They continued, “At the identical time, the novel can be beneath risk, because the forces of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism search to ban books and curtail freedom of expression. The American canon is extra capacious, extra fluid, and extra fragile than maybe ever earlier than.”
Below are a number of of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels:
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Street by Ann Petry
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Oreo by Fran Ross
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
There There by Tommy Orange
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Erasure by Percival Everett
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
For a the complete checklist and extra data on the endeavor, go to The Atlantic.
Find extra information and tales of curiosity from the e-book world in Breaking in Books.
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