Famous People's Book Pick: New York Magazine: The Best Novels You’ve Never Read

The Best Novels You’ve Never Read , Sixty-one critics reveal their favorite underrated book of the past ten years.

Talk to any critic and you’ll hear about a book you must read—often one you were begged to read by some reviewer when it came out, but which quickly slipped off your radar. Such is the plight of critics. Which is why we decided, with the help of the National Book Critics Circle, to ask professional critics (and some other writers) to pick the best under-the-radar book of the past ten years or so. We sought out novels, but a few memoirs popped up. And though we’d never have presumed to forecast the results, we did expect some consensus and certainly one clear winner—a buried genius everyone agreed was primed for a Roberto Bolaño–style resurrection. We were delightfully foiled. These picks were idiosyncratic, contentious (that writer’s underrated? Really?), with no two alike. Until one novelist surged ahead to victory—garnering a whopping two votes.

DOMINION by Calvin Baker

(literature and fiction)

"Less jaded than Colson Whitehead, less kitschy than Toni Morrison, Calvin Baker is my favorite contemporary African-American novelist, and Dominion is his best book yet. "

THE LAST SAMURAI by Helen De Witt

(literature and fiction)

"For its playful, steady, angst-attuned intelligence and its utter conceptual exceptionality."

SUZY ZEUS GETS ORGANIZED by Maggie Robbins

(literature and fiction)

"A sweet-and-sour novel in verse that very flatteringly assumes the reader is as witty as the writer. "

KALIMANTAAN by C. S. Godshalk

(literature and fiction)

"A novel about a self-appointed British raja on the island of Borneo, this book changed the way I thought about imperialism, just as Pat Barker’s trilogy changed the way I thought about the First World War. "

SEPHARAD by Antonio Munoz Molina

(literature and fiction)

"A true masterpiece of late-twentieth-century fiction, wrestling with the five centuries of Continental trauma from the Inquisition to the Holocaust in a way that is truly novel (in every sense of that word). "

TEXACO by Patrick Chamoiseau

(literature and fiction)

"An epic story that takes in everything from New World slavery to the aftermath of industrialization, fusing the oral traditions of his native Martinique with experimental writing."

THE DEBT TO PLEASURE by John Lanchester

(literature and fiction)

"Pure wicked literary pleasure. Well received when published, but not nearly as well read as deserved. Ghostly progenitor: Nabokov’s Pale Fire. "

THE LAKE by John Mcgahern

(literature and fiction)

"A beautiful, hymnlike epilogue to the life’s work of this Irish master; it should be beloved by everyone who cares about life and literature. "

DARK BACK OF TIME by Javier Marias

(literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)

"A fascinating sample of his unique mixture of myth, autobiography, and satire. "

METEOR IN THE MADHOUSE by Merle Drown

(literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)

"The posthumous volume of the most overlooked author of the last 30 years. He comments on what must be repressed to conceive history (and genealogy) along racial lines. "

OUT OF SHEER RAGE by Geoff Dyer

(literature and fiction)

"The best book about writer’s block someone actually managed to finish writing. "

BORN TWICE by Giuseppe Pontiggia

(literature and fiction)

"This great [Italian] novel of fatherhood has been woefully underread in the U.S., perhaps because Pontiggia died soon after its publication here. "

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD by Jincy Willett

(literature and fiction)

"Beautifully written, seriously intended, very funny books with believable characters are extremely rare, and this is one of those rarities. "

ACHILLES by Elizabeth Cook

(literature and fiction)

"This is a meditative, intense retelling of the life of Homer’s hero, remarkable for its lush artfulness and the subtle intelligence of its prose. "

OH PURE AND RADIANT HEART by Lydia Millet

(literature and fiction, fantasy, sci-fi)

"Largely unsung. Not only did I love reading it (until the very end), but I also found the title resoundingly beautiful. "

VARIETIES OF EXILE by Mavis Gallant

(literature and fiction)

"Canadian expats look lovingly home in this collection by Mavis Gallant, a kind of Alice Munro for those who got out."

MORTALS by Norman Rush

(literature and fiction)

"Rush’s second best book (after Mating) is better than almost anyone else’s best book. "

EXPERIENCE by Martin Amis

(literature and fiction)

"The cleverest and funniest and most moving memoir I’ve ever read, and each time I reread it I’m simply drunk with pleasure."

GRIEF by Andrew Holleran

(literature and fiction)

"This slim but singularly affecting novel put in an appearance to conditional praise last June and, to my knowledge, sank thereafter without a trace. A meditation on personal loss and the loss of erotic/romantic possibilities for aging homosexual men (and by implication aging everyones) it’s bone-spare but plangent with meaning—the kind of novel that would be immediately hailed if it were written by a laconic European writer. "

THE MUNCH MANCINI MYSTERY SERIES by Barbara Seranella

(literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)

"Although her books are gritty and tough, Seranella wrote with a humanity and dry wit that transcended the genre."

TRANSMISSION by Hari Kunzru

(literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)

"Sleek and jangly, cerebral and humane—a novel about a young Indian software geek and the computer virus that swamps both Bollywood and Silicon Valley. "