The Sunday Times picks the 25 best novels of the 21st century - featuring four Picador authors
The Sunday Times' literary team has picked the top British and Irish fiction of the past 25 years - featuring four Picador authors on their list.
The Sunday Times' literary team has picked the top British and Irish fiction of the past 25 years - featuring four Picador authors on their list.
As we hit the quarter mark of the 21st century, The Sunday Times' book desk felt it was a good time to reflect: "How has the literary world changed since fireworks went off at midnight on January 1, 2000? What new writers have burst into our national consciousness and which old dogs have continued to learn new tricks?
They set themselves the challenge of choosing the best novels of the past 25 years, hoping they might give us "a glimpse of the literary spirit of our age".
The final list features four Picador authors: Alan Hollinghurst, Edward St. Aubyn, Douglas Stuart and Colum Tóibín, with Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty runner up behind Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies:
"This is one of the most brilliant novels ever written about the British class system. It has comedy, tragedy, political scandal and drug-fuelled hedonism...Every sentence is a work of beauty. This is a novel with a powerful political charge."
