25 acclaimed international writers choose 25 of the best books from the last 25 years by Wasafiri Magazine
The 25 books were chosen by 25 respected names in international writing, many of whom have contributed over the years to Wasafiri magazine, including Indra Sinha, Blake Morrison and Fred D’Aguiar. Note: I don't think the voters understood "the last 25 years" bit. There are many books that are much much older.
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1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning car...
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The Famished Road by Ben Okri
The Famished Road is the Booker Prize-winning novel written by Nigerian author Ben Okri. The novel, published in 1991, follows Azaro, an abiku or spirit child, living in an unnamed most likely Nige...
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Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
This is the definitive edition of one of America's greatest poets, increasingly recognised as one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century, loved by readers and poets alike. This ...
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Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer
Staying Power is recognised as the definitive history of black people in Britain, an epic story that begins with the Roman conquest and continues to this day. In a comprehensive account, Peter Frye...
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The story of one African-American family fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s.
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The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanis...
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The Stories of Raymond Carver by Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver was a notable writer of the late 20th century and a contributor to the revitalization ...
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North by Seamus Heaney
With this collection, first published in 1975, Heaney located a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland--its people, history, and landscape--and which gave his poems direction, coh...
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A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
It is the story of Mr Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally...
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Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Birthday Letters, published in 1998 (ISBN 0-374-52581-1), is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won ...
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Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris
Palace of the Peacock, the first of Wilson Harris's many novels, was published in 1960, just one year after his arrival in Britain from Guyana. In a richly metaphorical style, the book sets out the...
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River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder
A novel of India through the eyes of four protagonists, reincarnated several times over 2,000 years. They retain the same names and are always involved with each other. A tale of love, war, possess...
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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed and se...
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Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the two most influential works by the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In it, Wittgenstein discus...
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Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India, which took place at midnight on 15 August 1947. The protagonis...
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Disgrace by J M Coetzee
Disgrace is a 1999 novel by South African-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature; the book itself won the Booker Prize in 1999, the year in which it was published. ...
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The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English man, his Canadian nurse, a...
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Collected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow. He vi...
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Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Anil’s Ghost is the critically acclaimed fourth novel by Michael Ondaatje. It was first published in 2000 by McClelland and Stewart. Anil’s Ghost follows the life of Anil Tissera, a native Sri L...
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Sula by Toni Morrison
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet ...
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The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhi-Sui
From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death 22 years later. Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician. For most of these years, Mao was in excellent health; thus he and the doctor had time to...
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Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The character of the chief protagonist of The Satanic Verses is based on Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan and a bit of Rama Rao. The title refers to what are known as the satanic verses, a group o...
