This strand of Egan’s polyphonic, funny, and often poignant book encapsulates some of her satire’s recurring ideas. Months later, it turns out, The General’s government becomes a democracy, Kitty is freed, and Dolly opens a sandwich shop. Kitty’s job is to stand next to The General in a photo, but she ends up asking too many questions about a genocide and gets thrown into prison. In one chapter, a former PR hotshot named Dolly is tasked with reviving the public image of an African dictator known as “The General” with the help of a B-list actress named Kitty Jackson. There are some moments from A Visit From the Goon Squad that I won’t forget. *** The Top Twenty Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad(2010) (My beloved Sweet Days of Discipline, certainly in the top ten novels I personally read this decade, is doubly ineligible, but luckily I also write these introductions.)
We also, for this list, discounted novels in translation, as they got their very own list last week, and including them would have necessitated a list twice as long. We did not allow reissues, otherwise you had better believe this list would include The Last Samurai, Speedboat, and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, among a robust host of others. So, being captains of our own destiny, we decided we were allowed to pick 20. You may be shocked to learn that we had a hard time deciding on 10. We have now reached the eighth and most difficult list in our series: the very best novels written and published in English between 20. We began with the best debut novels, the best short story collections, the best poetry collections, the best memoirs, the best essay collections, the best (other) nonfiction, and the best translated novels of the decade.
We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists.
Top 10 famous books and authors full#
So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website-though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task-in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We’ll take our silver linings where we can. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches.
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