These are great calls, I wish you would write this kind of piece!
'The Hunt for Red October' was in our initial list, which, in its early conception, had more of a mix of commercial stuff. It is the ultimate Cold War book product, blurbed by Reagan himself.
nice article on Kafka’s leading anglophone ambassadors of the 20th century, Edwin & Willa Muir.
(as late as 2001, i read numerous works of Kafka in the Muirs’ translations; those translations were hardly obsolete or superceded then…)
Great to see Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives on the shortlist of the @orwellprize.bsky.social for political fiction.
The great Hamid Ismailov wrote about the heyday of Uzbek football for @goldengoalmag.bsky.social! goldengoal.world/2026/06/17/u...
I worked on a very fun semiquincentennial feature for this weekend's WSJ. The editors asked me to select 26 novels that tell a story about America's 250 year history. It's not a best-of list, but one that suggests a (necessarily branching) national narrative. Gift link! www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
'Ragtime' is a great call, I would have loved to include that. 'The Group' was a very late cut.
I also like Versailles, but that's because I went during Covid and the place was so empty they let my 2-year-old slip the rope and sprint around the Hall of Mirrors.
That's a good call--that kind of postwar suburban novel deserves a candidate. We have it only in the most perverse form with 'Lolita'. 'The Group' was a late scratch.
I received 'Portrait of a Gentleman', by the way, congrats and many thanks! Hope it finds a US home.
I like the Abbey Bookshop just around the corner if you're still looking to book browse
This is the sort of feature one hopes will generate a response, so please feel encouraged to tell me what I cloddishly omitted, or shouldn't have included, here or in the comments. It's been a really worthwhile exercise, interpreting the country through its fiction. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
