What is the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years?

TONI MORRISON’s Beloved (1987) was voted the best American work of fiction of the last 25 years (1980-2005), beating out such competition as Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and Philip Roth. The New York Times Book Review asked hundreds of prominent writers, literary critics and editors from leading publishing houses in the U.S. to name the single best work of American fiction published in the last quarter-century, since 1980, and these are the results of their findings. There is somehow a proliferation of novels by the usual suspects comprising Roth (6), Updike (4), DeLillo (4) and McCarthy (4).

The winner
Beloved / Toni Morrison (1987)

The runners-up
Underworld / Don DeLillo (1997)
Blood Meridian or, The Evening Redness in the West / Cormac McCarthy (1985)
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels: [Rabbit at Rest (1990); Rabbit Is Rich (1981); Rabbit Redux (1971); Rabbit, Run (1960)] / John Updike (1995)
American Pastoral / Philip Roth (1997)

And the rest
A Confederacy of Dunces / John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson (1980)
Winter’s Tale / Mark Helprin (1983)
White Noise / Don DeLillo (1985)
The Counterlife / Philip Roth (1986)
Libra / Don DeLillo (1988)
Where I’m Calling From / Raymond Carver (1988)
The Things They Carried / Tim O'Brien (1990)
Mating / Norman Rush (1991)
Jesus’ Son / Denis Johnson (1992)
Operation Shylock / Philip Roth (1993)
Independence Day / Richard Ford (1995)
Sabbath’s Theater / Philip Roth (1995)
Border Trilogy [Cities of the Plain (1998); The Crossing (1994); All the Pretty Horses (1992)] / Cormac McCarthy (1999)
The Human Stain / Philip Roth (2000)
The Known World / Edward P. Jones (2003)
The Plot Against America / Philip Roth (2004)