Friends, it's true: the end of the decade is approaching. It's been a difficult, agonizing, and morally compromised decade, but at least it's been filled with some pretty damn good literature. We will take our silver liners where we can.

The Guardian’s The 100 greatest novels of all time.
The BBC’s Big Read Top 100.
Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
Harvard’s Book store top 100.
Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.
Time’s All-Time 100 Novels.
The Telegraph’s 100 Novels Everyone Should Read.
The Art of Manliness’ (hey, why not) 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library.

illinois university best novel books of all time

So, just like our sacred duty as a literary and cultural website - albeit fully aware of the potentially fruitless and infinitely questionable nature of the task - in the weeks to come, we will be looking at the best and most important (these n ' being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of various lists. We started with the best novels, the best short stories, the best poetry books, the best memoirs, the best essay books, the best (other) non-fiction and the best translated novels of the decade. We have now reached the eighth and most difficult list in our series: the best novels written and published in English between 2010 and 2019.

You might be shocked to learn that we had a hard time choosing 10. So, being the captains of our own destiny, we decided that we were allowed to choose 20.. . more almost as many dissensions. We didn't allow re-releases, otherwise you'd better believe this list would include The Last Samurai, Speedboat, and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, among a host of others. We also, for this list, reduced the novels in translation, as they got their own list last week, and their inclusion would have required a list twice as long. (My beloved Sweet Days of Discipline, certainly in the top ten novels I've personally read this decade, are doubly ineligible, but luckily I'm writing these introductions as well.)

Now for the last time: The following books were chosen after much debate (and several ballots) by the staff of the Literary Center. Tears flowed, feelings were hurt, books were reread. As always, free to add any of your own favorites that we missed in the comments below.