Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME.
A House for Mr. Biswas
By Lev Grossman Jan. 07, 2010
Author: V.S. Naipaul
When Mohun Biswas married his wife, Shama, he effectively married her entire family, the daunting, smothering Tulsis. Set in the Hindu community in postcolonial Trinidad — where Naipaul was born — A House for Mr. Biswas is the life story of a man who wanted only a home, but who was a magnet for misfortune, oppression and humiliation, "a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis." Mohun's survival is a triumph of resilience and persistence and humor, an epic of dignity and self-respect doggedly clung to.
Next I, Claudius
Making the List
How We Picked the List
The Adventures of Augie March
All the King's Men
An American Tragedy
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
At Swim-Two-Birds
The Berlin Stories
The Blind Assassin
Blood Meridian
Call It Sleep
The Catcher in the Rye
The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
The Crying of Lot 49
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Death of the Heart
Dog Soldiers
The French Lieutenant's Woman
The Golden Notebook
Gravity's Rainbow
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
The Moviegoer
Lucky Jim
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight's Children
Mrs. Dalloway
Never Let Me Go
Play It As It Lays
Portnoy's Complaint
Rabbit, Run
The Recognitions
Slaughterhouse Five
Snow Crash
The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sportswriter
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Tropic of Cancer
U - W
Under the Net
White Teeth
Wide Sargasso Sea
About the List
TIME'S List of the 100 Best Novels
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