Modern Library - Softcover

T�ib�n, Colm; Callil, Carmen

3.54

149 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330376578 ISBN 13: 9780330376570

Publisher: Picador, 2000

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The indispensable guide for every readerAlarmed by the ignorance often displayed towards our literary past, Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin have chosen the 194 books since 1950 that they consider to be the best. Some familiar names - Naipaul, Updike, Bellow and Nabokov - rub shoulders with some real surprises like Mario Puzo and Thomas Harris. Witty, controversial and written to encourage reading, no household should be without The Modern Library

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Review:

Bringing together one of the best editors of post-war fiction, Virago founder Carmen Callil, with one of the most exciting Irish novelists of his generation, Colm Toibin, to produce The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950, threatens passionate controversy. Thankfully, that is precisely what both Callil and Toibin want, as they make clear in this refreshingly upbeat and enthusiastic book. Crisply dismissing the cultural pessimists, Callil and Toibin's stimulating introduction argues that the novel has never been in better shape, experiencing a remarkable commercial and artistic renaissance.

Picking through the minefield of choosing the 194 best novels published in English since 1950, both authors are honest about their debates and disagreements, offering readers the chance to complete the list by nominating a further six novels which will appear in subsequent editions. What follows are one-page summaries of the novels chosen, ranging from Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced (1950), to V.S. Pritchett's The Lady From Guatemala (1998). Some of the entries fail to live up to the quality of writing contained in the book's introduction and, of course, there will be controversy over the choices and omissions. Where is Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces? Where is Neil Bartlett? Is James Baldwin's Go Tell it to the Mountain really better than Another Country? Does Will Self really deserve to be in the same company as Saul Bellow, Doris Lessing and Salman Rushdie? But this is precisely the sort of debate that The Modern Library encourages and what's wrong with controversy if it gets people reading novels? --Jerry Brotton

About the Author:

Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of several novels, including Brooklyn, the 2009 Costa Novel of the Year, The Master, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and winner of the LA Times Book Prize and the IMPAC Book Award, and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize and the 2001 IMPAC Award. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time. He is also the author of two short-story collections, Mothers and Sons, which was awarded the inaugural Edge Hill Prize, and The Empty Family, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Dublin.

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