Contemporary American Authors rate the Best Books of the Past 25 years

[Not Afraid]

As reported on NPR.

Toni Morrison's 1987 work Beloved is the best American novel of the past quarter-century. That's according to a vote of writers and critics who were invited to weigh in with their choices by The New York Times Book Review. The 124 literary lights who responded to the Times invitation gave multiple mentions to five Philip Roth novels -- especially American Pastoral. Cormac McCarthy has four books on the list: Blood Meridian plus his Border Trilogy. John Updike also has four: each of the novels in his Rabbit Angstrom series, which began with 1960's Rabbit, Run, but stretches into the 1990s.

The 'New York Times' List

The New York Times asks authors to weigh in on the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years.

WINNER

Beloved
Toni Morrison

RUNNERS-UP:

Underworld
Don DeLillo

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
John Updike
Rabbit at Rest
Rabbit Is Rich
Rabbit Redux
Rabbit, Run

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

ALSO RECEIVING MULTIPLE VOTES

A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin

White Noise
Don DeLillo

The Counterlife
Philip Roth

Libra
Don DeLillo

Where I'm Calling From
Raymond Carver

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien

Mating
Norman Rush

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson

Operation Shylock
Philip Roth

Independence Day
Richard Ford

Sabbath's Theater
Philip Roth

Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy
'Cities of the Plain'
'The Crossing'
'All the Pretty Horses'

The Human Stain
Philip Roth

The Known World
Edward P. Jones

The Plot Against America
Philip Roth