99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939:
A Personal Choice by Anthony Burgess

1939

• Party Going, Henry Green
• After Many a Summer, Aldous Huxley
• Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
• At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien

  1940

• The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Strangers and Brothers (to 1970), C. P. Snow

  1941

• The Aerodrome, Rex Warner

  1944

• The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary
• The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham

  1945

• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

  1946

• Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake

  1947

• The Victim, Saul Bellow
• Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

  1948

• The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
• Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• No Highway, Nevil Shute

  1949

• The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
• The Body, William Sansom

  1950

• Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper
• The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg

  1951

• A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975), Anthony Powell
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969), Henry Williamson
• The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk

  1952

• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy
• Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
• Sword of Honour (to 1961), Evelyn Waugh

  1953

• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

  1954

• Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

  1957

• Room at the Top, John Braine
• The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960), Lawrence Durrell
• The London Novels (to 1960), Colin MacInnes
• The Assistant, Bernard Malamud

  1958

• The Bell, Iris Murdoch
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
• The Once and Future King, T. H. White

  1959

• The Mansion, William Faulkner
• Goldfinger, Ian Fleming

  1960

• Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley
• The Balkans Trilogy (to 1965), Olivia Manning

  1961

• The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes
• Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White
• The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson

  1962

• Another Country, James Baldwin
• An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson
• Island, Aldous Huxley
• The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
• Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

  1963

• The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

  1964

• The Spire, William Golding
• Heartland, Wilson Harris
• A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
• The Defence, Vladimir Nabokov
• Late Call, Angus Wilson

  1965

• The Lockwood Concern, John O'Hara
• The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark

  1966

• A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe
• The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis
• Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
• The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer
• The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy

  1967

• The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan

  1968

• The Image Men, J. B. Priestley
• Cocksure, Mordecai Richler
• Pavane, Keith Roberts

  1969

• The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
• Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

  1970

• Bomber, Len Deighton

  1973

• Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn
• Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

  1975

• Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow
• The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury

  1976

• The Doctor's Wife, Brian Moore
• Falstaff, Robert Nye

  1977

• How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
• Farewell Companions, James Plunkett
• Staying On, Paul Scott

  1978

• The Coup, John Updike

  1979

• The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard
• Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud
• A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
• Sophie's Choice, William Stryon

  1980

• Life in the West, Brian Aldiss
• Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
• How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

  1981

• Lanark, Alasdair Gray
• Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux
• The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux
• Creation, Gore Vidal

  1982

• The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies

  1983

• Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

Source: Burgess, Anthony. 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939. New York: Summit Books, 1984. © 1984 by Anthony Burgess

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