With the 20th century (1901-2000) well and truly finished now, for twenty years, here's a little guide for the works that I think likely will be the cream that floats to the top of a media-burdened century. Or at least the works that should make it to the top. Some originated in the 20th century and continued into the 21st (looking at you, graphic novels). How familiar are you with them?
Novels
Beloved
– Toni Morrison, USA
Children
of Gebelawi – Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt
Grande
Sertao: Veredas (Devil to Pay in the Backlands) – Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil
Memoirs
of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar, France
Mrs.
Dalloway – Virginia Woolf, UK
Midnight’s
Children – Salman Rushdie, UK/India
One
Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia
Pedro
Paramo – Juan Rulfo, Mexico
A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce, Ireland
Season
of Migration to the North – Tayeb Salih, Sudan
Honorable
Mentions
All
the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren, USA
Brideshead
Revisited – Evelyn Waugh, UK
Darkness
at Noon – Arthur Koestler, UK/Hungary
Death
Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather, USA
El
Senor Presidente – Miguel Asturias, Guatemala
Slaughterhouse-Five
– Kurt Vonnegut, USA
Short
Fiction
American
Indian Stories – Zitkala-Sa, USA
The
Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa, Portugal
Buying
a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather – Gao Xingjian, China/France
Dear
Life – Alice Munro, Canada
Go
Down, Moses – William Faulkner, USA
A Good
Man Is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor, USA
Collected
Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina
Invisible
Cities – Italo Calvino, Italy
Selected
Short Stories – Franz Kafka, Czechia
Welcome
to the Monkey House – Kurt Vonnegut, USA
Honorable Mentions
Dubliners
– James Joyce
Plays
Angels
in America – Tony Kushner, USA
Antigone
– Jean Anouilh, France
Betrayal
– Harold Pinter, UK
Death
and the King’s Horseman – Wole Soyinka, Nigeria
Evam
Indrajit – Badal Sarkar, India
Fences –
August Wilson, USA
No Exit
– Jean Paul Sartre, France
Tea
Shop – Lao She, China
Thunderstorm
– Cao Yu, China
Waiting
for Godot – Samuel Beckett, Ireland/France
Honorable
Mentions
The
China Tree – Issam Mahfouz, Lebanon
Death
of a Salesman – Arthur Miller, USA
Hayavadana
– Girish Karnad, India
Inherit
the Wind – Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, USA
Long
Day’s Journey into Night – Eugene O’Neill, USA
Our
Town – Thornton Wilder, USA
Rhinoceros
– Eugene Ionesco, Romania
The
Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe – Jane Wagner, USA
Six
Characters in Search of an Author – Luigi Pirandello, Italy
Spring
Awakening – Frank Wedekind, Germany
Poetry
Collections / Longform Poems
Collected
Poems – Paul Celan, Germany
Eagle
or Sun? – Octavio Paz, Mexico
The
Great Enigma – Tomas Transtromer, Sweden
Kaddish
for a Child Not Born – Emre Kertesz, Hungary
My
Sister, Life – Boris Pasternak, Russia
North –
Seamus Heaney, Ireland
The
Occasions – Eugenio Montale, Italy
Poet in
New York – Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain
Twenty
Love Poems and a Song of Despair – Pablo Neruda, Chile
The
Wasteland and Other Poems – T.S. Eliot, UK/USA
Honorable
Mentions
The
Axion Esti – Odysseas Elytis, Greece
Chickweed
Wintergreen – Harry Martinson, Sweden
Howl
– Allen Ginsberg, USA
Madwomen
– Gabriela Mistral, Chile
Omeros
– Derek Walcott, St. Lucia
Platero
Y Yo – Juan Ramon Jimenez, Spain/USA
The
Tower – WB Yeats, Ireland
Graphic
Novels
Akira –
Katsuhiro Otomo, Japan
Batman:
The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller, USA
A
Contract with God – Will Eisner, USA
Jimmy
Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth – Chris Ware, USA
Maus –
Art Spiegelman, USA
Nausicaa
of the Valley of the Wind – Hiyao Miyazaki, Japan
Persepolis
– Marjane Satrapi, Iran/France
Sandman
– Neil Gaiman et al., UK, etc.
Transmetropolitan
– Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, UK and USA
Watchmen
– Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons/John Higgins, UK
Honorable
Mentions
Arzach
– Moebius, France
Bone
– Jeff Smith, USA
Black
Hole – Charles Burns, USA
Blankets
– Craig Thompson, USA
Ed
the Happy Clown – Chester Brown, Canada
Movies
Apocalypse
Now – Francis Ford Coppola, US
The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Luis Buñuel, France
8 ½ –
Federico Fellini, Italy
Farewell
My Concubine – Chen Kaige, China
Hiroshima
Mon Amour – Alain Resnais, France
A Man
with a Movie Camera – Dziga Vertov, Russia
Once
Upon a Time in the West – Sergio Leone, Italy/USA
Pather
Panchali – Satyajit Ray, India
Seven
Samurai – Akira Kurosawa, Japan
The
Third Man – Carol Reed, UK
Honorable
Mentions
Chungking
Express – Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong
Fantasia
– Walt Disney, USA
Koyaanisqatsi
– Godfrey Regio, USA
Lawrence
of Arabia – David Lean, UK
Modern
Times – Charlie Chaplin, USA
Persona
– Ingmar Bergman, Sweden
Sherlock
Jr – Buster Keaton, USA
2001:
A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick, USA
Ugetsu
– Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan
Vertigo
– Alfred Hitchcock, USA
Wings
of Desire – Wim Wenders, Germany
Music
Club Da
Esquina – Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges, Brazil
Confusion
/ Gentleman – Fela Kuti, Nigeria
Fahnestock
Collection – Various, Indonesia
A Love
Supreme – John Coltrane, USA
Memories
of Cuba – Orquesta Casino de la Playa, Cuba
N’ssi N’ssi
– Khaled, Algeria
The Rites
of Spring – Igor Stravinsky, Russia
Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles, UK
Stimmung
– Karlheinz Stockhausen, Germany
Traditional
Music of India – Ali Akbar Khan, India
Honorable
Mentions
Anthology
of American Folk Music – Various, USA
Astral
Weeks – Van Morrison, Ireland
Codona
3 – Codona, USA and Brazil
I
Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You – Aretha Franklin, USA
Einstein on the Beach – Philip Glass, USA
Emperor
Tomato Ketchup – Stereolab, UK/France
Far
East Suite – Duke Ellington, USA
Immigres
– Youssou N’Dour, Senegal
Indestructible
Beat of Soweto – Various, South Africa
Julietta
– Bohuslav Martinu, Czechia
Kind
of Blue – Miles Davis, USA
King
of the Delta Blues Singers – Robert Johnson, USA
Legend
– Bob Marley, Jamaica
Legend
of Arab Music – Umm Kulthum, Egypt
Livro
– Caetano Veloso, Brazil
The
Low-End Theory – A Tribe Called Quest, USA
A Meeting by the River – Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt, USA and India
Le Mystere
des Voix Bulgares – The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Choir,
Bulgaria
New
Ancient Strings – Toumani Diabate and Ballake Sissoko, Mali
The
Orphan’s Lament – Huun Huur Tu, Mongolia
Rembetica:
Historic Urban Folk Songs from Greece – Various, Greece
Ronroco
– Gustavo Santaolalla, Argentina
Stormy
Weather Soundtrack – Various, USA
Tabula
Rasa – Arvo Part, Estonia
Tango:
Zero Hour – Astor Piazzolla, Argentina
Three
Ragas – Ravi Shankar, India
Tranceport
– Paul Oakenfold, UK
Trout
Mask Replica – Captain Beefheart, USA
We
Are Three – Joi, Bangladesh
Yemenite Songs – Ofra Haza, Israel
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