THE 100 BEST READS OF 2008

Novels
1. Lima Nights (The Dial Press, 2008) / Marie Arana
2. The Wasted Vigil (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Nadeem Aslam
3. Chicago (trans. from the Arabic by Farouk Abdel Wahab) (Fourth Estate, 2008) / Alaa Al Aswany
4. The Elegance of the Hedgehog (trans. from the French by Alison Anderson) (Gallic Books/Europa Editions, 2008) / Muriel Barbery
5. Exit Lines (Knopf Canada/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) / Joan Barfoot
6. The Secret Scripture (Faber & Faber/Viking Penguin, 2008) / Sebastian Barry
7. Through Black Spruce (Viking Canada, 2008) / Joseph Boyden
8. The Glass of Time (John Murray, 2008) / Michael Cox
9. The Blue Star (Little, Brown, 2008) / Tony Earley
10. The Plague of Doves (Harper Perennial, 2008) / Louise Erdrich
11. Towards Another Summer (Virago, 2008) / Janet Frame
12. The Graveyard Book (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Neil Gaiman

13. The Spare Room (Text Publishing/Canongate, 2008) / Helen Garner
14. The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago/Simon & Schuster, 2008) / Linda Grant
15. The Lazarus Project (Riverhead, 2008) / Aleksandar Hemon
16. Human Love (trans. from the Russian by Geoffrey Strachan) (Sceptre, June 2008) / Andreï Makine
17. Beijing Coma (trans. from the Chinese by Flora Drew) (Chatto & Windus, 2008) / Ma Jian
18. Trauma (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Patrick McGrath
19. Songs for the Missing (Viking, 2008) / Stewart O’Nan
20. Netherland (Fourth Estate, 2008) / Joseph O’Neill
21. The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury, 2008) / David Park
22. Lush Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Bloomsbury, 2008) / Richard Price
23. Goldengrove (HarperCollins, 2008) / Francine Prose
24. The Origin of Species (Doubleday Canada, 2008) / Nino Ricci
25. Home (Virago/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / Marilynne Robinson
26. Cost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) / Roxana Robinson
27. The Age of Shiva (W.W. Norton, 2008) / Manil Suri
28. The Boys in the Trees (Holt, 2008) / Mary Swan
29. A Blessed Child [trans. from the Norwegian, Et Velsignet Barn (2005), by Sarah Death] (Picador, 2008) / Linn Ullmann
30. Breath (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Picador, 2008) / Tim Winton

First Novels
1. The Sister (published in the U.K. as The Behaviour of Moths) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Poppy Adams
2. The Outlander (Ecco, 2008) / Gil Adamson
3. The White Tiger (Atlantic Books/Free Press, 2008) / Aravind Adiga
4. Blackmoor (Simon & Schuster, 2008) / Edward Hogan
5. Telex from Cuba (Simon and Schuster, 2008) / Rachel Kushner
6. The Well and the Mine (Hawthorne Books, 2008) / Gin Phillips
7. God’s Own Country (published as Out Backward in the U.S.) (Viking/HarperCollins, 2008) / Ross Raisin
8. Evening Is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin/Fourth Estate, 2008) / Preeta Samarasan
9. The End (Graywolf Press, 2008) / Salvatore Scibona
10. A Fraction of the Whole (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) / Steve Toltz

Stories
1. A Better Angel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / Chris Adrian
2. Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) / Uwem Akpan
3. Country of the Grand (Faber & Faber) / Gerard Donovan
4. Yesterday’s Weather (Grove Press, 2008) / Anne Enright
5. Unaccustomed Earth (Alfred A. Knopf/Bloomsbury, 2008) / Jhumpa Lahiri
6. The Boat (Canongate, 2008) / Nam Le
7. Stories (Everyman’s Library, 2008) / Doris Lessing
8. The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Shena Mackay
9. The Complete Stories (Vintage, 2008) / David Malouf
10. The Collected Stories (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Lorrie Moore
11. Dictation: A Quartet (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) / Cynthia Ozick
12. Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008) / Elizabeth Strout
13. Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love (Pantheon, 2008) / Lara Vapnyar
14. Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Tobias Wolff
15. The Other Garden and Collected Stories (Picador, 2008) / Francis Wyndham

Poetry
1. Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2008) / Mary Jo Bang
2. Pure Lizard (Carcanet, 2008) / Sujata Bhatt
3. Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / Frank Bidart
4. Yellowrocket (W.W. Norton, 2008) / Todd Boss

5. For All We Know (Gallery Books, March 2008) / Ciaran Carson
6. Full Volume (Jonathan Cape, March 2008) / Robert Crawford
7. Life Under Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) / Maura Dooley
8. Theories and Apparitions (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Mark Doty
9. The Broken Word (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Adam Foulds
10. Special Orders (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Edward Hirsch
11. Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe, 2008) / Jen Hadfield
12. Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press, 2008) / Juan Felipe Herrera
13. Sources (Turtle Point Press, 2008) / Devin Johnston
14. The Lost Leader (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Mick Imlah
15. Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008 (W.W. Norton, 2008) / Clive James
16. Sleeping It Off in Rapid City: Poems New and Selected (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / August Kleinzahler
17. Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton, 2008) / Li-Young Lee
18. Crocodiles and Obelisks (Faber & Faber, 2007) / Jamie McKendrick
19. Fidelity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / Grace Paley
20. Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) / Brenda Shaughnessy

Nonfiction
1. Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River (John Murray, 2008) / Alice Albinia
2. Somewhere Towards the End (Granta, 2008) / Diana Athill
3. Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography (Fourth Estate, 2008) / J.G. Ballard
4. Nothing to Be Frightened Of (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Julian Barnes
5. The Dream: A Memoir (Ballantine Books, 2008) / Harry Bernstein
6. The Life of a Long-Distance Writer: A Biography of Alan Sillitoe (Peter Owen, 2008) / Richard Bradford
7. Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future of Development (Granta Books, 2008) / Andrew Brown
8. Semi Invisible Man: The Life of Norman Lewis (Jonathan Cape, 2008) / Julian Evans
9. Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (Allen Lane, 2008) / Robin Lane Fox
10. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (Picador, 2008) / Patrick French
11. Shakespeare and Modern Culture (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Marjorie Garber
12. The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/John Murray, 2008) / Henry Hitchings
13. Austerity Britain: 1945-51 (Walker & Company, 2008) / David Kynaston
14. God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (W.W. Norton, 2008) / David Levering Lewis
15. The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History (Da Capo, 2008) / Justin Marozzi
16. Gabriel Garcia Márquez: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Gerald Martin
17. How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken (Harper, 2008) / Daniel Mendelsohn
18. Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Ferdinand Mount
19. Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories (Random House, 2008) / Afar Nafisi
20. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Dennis O’Driscoll
21. All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays (compiled and with an introduction by George Packer) (Harcourt, 2008) / George Orwell
22. Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (compiled and with an introduction by George Packer) (Harcourt, 2008) / George Orwell
23. The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (Harmony, 2008) / Andrew X. Pham
24. Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness (Penguin Ireland, 2008) / Tim Robinson
25. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Kate Summerscale
26. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Railway Bazaar (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) / Paul Theroux
27. How Fiction Works (Jonathan Cape/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / James Wood