My 20 Favourite Books of 2008

1. The White Tiger (Atlantic Books/Free Press, 2008) / Aravind Adiga
2. The Wasted Vigil (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Nadeem Aslam
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 Secret Scripture (Faber & Faber/Viking Penguin, 2008) / Sebastian Barry
6. The Life of a Long-Distance Writer: A Biography of Alan Sillitoe (Peter Owen, 2008) / Richard Bradford
7. Yesterday’s Weather (Grove Press, 2008) / Anne Enright
8. The Plague of Doves (Harper Perennial, 2008) / Louise Erdrich
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 (Alfred A. Knopf/Picador, 2008) / Patrick French

11. The Lost Leader (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Mick Imlah
12. Austerity Britain: 1945-51 (Walker & Company, 2008) / David Kynaston
13. The Boat (Random House/Canongate, 2008) / Nam Le
14. The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury, 2008) / David Park
15. Home (Virago/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) / Marilynne Robinson
16. Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008) / Elizabeth Strout
17. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury, 2008) / Kate Summerscale
18. A Blessed Child [trans. from the Norwegian, Et Velsignet Barn (2005), by Sarah Death] (Picador, 2008) / Linn Ullmann
19. Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) / Tobias Wolff