The best books of modern writers

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The best books are relative. A good printed edition at the moment is a work that brings comfort, advice, knowledge, wisdom, vivid impressions to a person. Thus, the determining factor is the book's satisfaction with the demand of a particular reader.

For some people, exclusively specialized literature is valuable: documentary, scientific, technical, medical, industry. But it's more of food for thought. However, most readers are still interested in fiction books. They contribute to the formation of the spiritual image. They will be discussed in this article.

The art book is a unique invention. Pleiades of thinkers of different times and epochs trusted paper with their hopes, observations, understanding of truth, life, humanity. It is wonderful when the vivid images created by these authors, along with deep and unique quotes (sometimes decades ago, and sometimes centuries ago)illuminate the lives of our contemporaries!

Role of the Russian Book of the Year contest

The current literary process in Russia is extraordinarily fruitful and has the characteristics of decadence:

• creativity has gone beyond: authors often write anything, as long as the reader likes it;
• mutation of language expressive styles;
• the principle of impromptu when the author combines innovation and tradition;
• texts acquire signs of multi-layered, interactivity;
• human environment is depicted as chaotic, unknown, pointless.

To direct the literary process in a constructive direction, to avoid the erosion of the national and to stimulate really talented beginnings in it is a paramount task of modern Russian culture. An indicator of the success of books written by our contemporaries is the annual national competitions of the "Book of the Year" type. They are organized to stimulate both writers and publishers.

For example, in the Russian competition of 2014, traditionally held in mid-September, 150 publishing houses participated, submitting more than half a thousand books to the competition. Winners were announced in 8 categories:

• prose works - the novel "The Abode" (Zakhar Prilepin);
• poetic work - translation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" (Gigory Kruzhkov);
• fiction for children - the story "Where does the cock horse ride?" (Svetlana Lavova);
• art book - "Kargopol Journey"(prepared by local architecture and art museum);
• Humanitas nomination - Lermontov's feature documentary album (State Archive of Arts and Literature);
• electronic book - media project "Yasnaya Polyana" and "Yaroslavl Temples" (project bureau "Sputnik");
• nomination “Printed in Russia” – album “Vetka. Book culture”;
• The main prize of the "Book of the Year 2014" competition is the three-volume book "Russia in World War I" (a team of 190 researchers from universities, museums, archives).

Summarizing: the objectives of the aforementioned competition are to raise the status of the book in current public life; stimulation of the best authors and publishers. Over the sixteen years of its existence, this event has proven in practice its motivating role in the development of Russian literature.

At least, they nominated Russian writers who can rightfully be called classics:

• 2004, nomination "Prose" - "Sincerely yours, Shurik" (Lyudmila Ulitskaya); nomination "Bestseller" - "Night Watch" (Sergey Lukyanenko);
• 2005, nomination "Prose" - "Voltairians and Voltairians" (Vasily Aksenov);
• 2011, nomination "Prose" - "My Lieutenant" (Daniil Ganin).

International book ratings

As we have already mentioned, the best, most demanded books, thanks to the thought crystallized in them, become real friends, advisers, joy for their readers. And the authors who wrote them are called classics.

Created by talent, the best books are studied in schools and universitieseducational institutions, they are widely quoted in everyday life.

The modern fashion trend to rank everything that surrounds us has not bypassed literature.

At least navigating the web reveals dozens of variants of the 100 Best Books.

These lists have a certain value. Thanks to them, it becomes much easier for a novice reader to find the really best books to read among tens and hundreds of thousands of works. If a person feels his gaps in the knowledge of world culture (an integral part of which is domestic and foreign literature), then such a rating can become a route map.

What direction to choose for such a landmark? If you are really interested in world literature, then we would recommend using one of the ratings by version:

• English Broadcasting Company (BBC);
• English newspaper The Observer;
• Union of Writers of Russia;
• French newspaper Le Monde;
• American publishing house Modern Library;
• Norwegian Book Club.

Of course, the news agency of each country, listing the best books, tries to give leading places in the lists to authors-fellow countrymen. And it's justified. After all, the talents of recognized classics, who created their masterpieces from the time of the ancient world to the present day, are in fact incomparable. Each of them, in their own way, finds a path to the hearts of readers.

A phenomenon that came down to us laterMillennium: Literature of the Ancient World

The list of books that have come down to us through the millennia and inherited from other eras is quite limited. However, they also appear in modern ratings. That is why we write about them. Unfortunately, history has not preserved the ancient libraries: Gentiles fought with books in the same way as with enemies. So, for example, the richest library of Alexandria, numbering up to 700,000 papyrus scrolls, was destroyed.

Which books of our classical ancestors should be mentioned first of all when speaking about the ancient world? Of course, Publius Virgil Maron, the author of the Aeneid, deserves fame in Latin, and Homer, the author of the Odyssey and the Iliad, deserves fame in ancient Greek. Guided by the theory of Virgil, the Russian scientist and poet Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov developed a syllabo-tonic system of versification, which served as a launching pad for the further development of Russian poetry.

However, not only Virgil and Homer are considered ancient classics. Horace, Cicero, Caesar also worked in Latin, and Aristotle, Plato, Aristophanes in ancient Greek. However, it is the two names mentioned earlier that present the literature of the ancient world to the greatest extent.

Books of Europe in the era of the formation of capitalism

Foreign literature, of course, is represented by a much richer list of authors than Greece and Ancient Rome. This was facilitated by the rapid development of European states.

France, with its Great Revolution, awakened to life romantic human aspirations for freedom, equality, fraternity. In German literature,started to create its own statehood, in unison with the French, romanticism also prevailed.

In contrast, industrialized, urbanized and politically stable Britain - the mistress of the seas - showed the most powerful and mature literary process, leaning towards realism.

It is generally accepted that the most famous writers writing in French at the time are Victor Hugo (Les Misérables, Notre Dame Cathedral) and George Sand (Consuelo).

However, speaking of the French contribution to world literature, we should mention the names of Alexander Dumas père ("The Iron Mask", "The Three Musketeers", "The Count of Monte Cristo"), Voltaire (the poem "Agaphocles"), Charles Baudelaire (collections of poems "Parisian Spleen", "Flowers of Evil"), Molière ("Tartuffe", "The Tradesman in the Nobility", "The Miser"), Stendhal ("Perm Convent", "Red and Black"), Balzac ("Gobsek”, “Eugene Gandet”, “Godis-sar”), Prosper Merimee (“Chronicles of the times of Charles IX”, “Tamango”).

The list of romantic books typical of early bourgeois Europe will be continued by mentioning the works of the Spaniards and Germans. A brilliant representative of Spanish classical literature is Cervantes ("The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha"). Of the German classics, Johann Wolfgang Goethe became famous ("Faust", "Wild Rose"), Heinrich Heine ("Journey through the Harz"), Friedrich Schiller ("The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa", "Robbers"), Franz Kafka ("Missing”, “Process”).

Romance adventure books eschewed real-life settings, their plot was based onactions of exceptional heroes in unusual conditions.

The Rise of British Literature

In the 19th century, British writers were rightfully considered to be the legislators of the "book fashion" on the European continent. French authors, initiated by the Great Revolution, were paid less after the collapse of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The English had their own literary tradition. Back in the 14th century, the whole world recognized the genius of William Shakespeare and the innovative social ideas of Thomas More. Developing their literature in a stable industrial society, British authors already in the 18th century began an evolutionary transition from the classic chivalric romance (romanticism) to social, psychological works.

They more pragmatically than the French tried to answer the philosophical question: "What is Man, and what is Society?" These new thinkers were Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) and Jonathan Swift (Gulliver). However, at the same time, Britain marked a new direction of romanticism, as demonstrated by George Gordon Byron, author of Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

The literary tradition of realism in the first half of the 19th century was powerfully developed by the following famous writers:

- the brilliantly talented Charles Dickens (whom F. M. Dostoevsky later called his teacher);

- intellectual to the point of uniqueness, stoically enduring hunger and poverty, Charlotte Bronte, famous for the novel "Jane Eyre";

- the creator of the world famous Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle;

- Thomas Hardy, on his knees and persecuted by the corrupt press ("Tess of the Dabervilles").

Russian golden literature of the 19th century. Biggest Names

Classics of Russian literature is associated in the world primarily with the names of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Although in general in the 19th century (which is generally recognized) Russian literature turned into the most striking cultural phenomenon on a global level.

Let's illustrate the above. Tolstoy's style of writing novels has become an indisputable classic. Thus, the American writer Margaret Mitchell wrote her famous epic "Gone with the Wind", imitating the style of Lev Nikolayevich.

The piercing psychologism of the highest standard inherent in Dostoevsky's work was also generally recognized in the world. In particular, the famous scientist Freud claimed that no one in the world could tell him anything new about the inner world of a person, no one except Fyodor Mikhailovich.

And Chekhov's innovation inspired the authors to start writing works based on the world of human feelings. In particular, the venerable British playwright Bernard Shaw recognized himself as his student. Thus, foreign literature in the 19th century received both powerful ideological nourishment and a new vector of development from Russian literature.

Therefore, friends, read "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Crime and Punishment", "Demons", "The Cherry Orchard", "The Seagull" is your sacred duty.

A note on literary ratings

The fact remains: among the hundreds of best works, a significant part is occupied bybooks written in the 19th century. It is these writers that are usually studied in schools, for which inertial and unreasonably stable curricula have been developed.

Is it fair? Not at all. It is more expedient to change the curriculum, taking into account the tastes of a real advanced readership. In our opinion, the works of writers of the 20th and 21st centuries should occupy no less a share than the works of the 19th century in the curriculum.

The classics of Russian literature today are not only the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, but also the books of Mikhail Bulgakov, Viktor Pelevin. We deliberately express the thought figuratively, mentioning only individual names of famous poets and writers.

Raising the topic: “What books are the best?”, it is reasonable to tell in more detail about the works of the classics of the current and past centuries.

Best Book by BBC. Critical eye

First place in the ranking of the best books, according to the BBC, takes John Ronald Tolkien's novel-trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". We will pay special attention in this article to this fantasy work. Books with this depth of plot, based on ancient legends, are very rare.

What motivated the rating experts for such a high rating? Indeed, a professor at Oxford University has done Britain a great service with his most fascinating work. He, having deeply and comprehensively studied the folklore of Foggy Albion (hitherto scattered and fragmentary), figuratively speaking, untwisted it by a thread and wove it into a single concept.struggle between Good and Evil. It is not enough to say that he did it with talent. A curious fact testifies to the uniqueness of the trilogy. One day, an angry scientist colleague came to the author of The Lord of the Rings after his lecture and accused the writer of plagiarism.

Modern fiction, perhaps, hitherto did not have such associations. The writer's opponent turned out to be conclusive, he brought to the bewildered author of "The Ring" unknown copies of drawings from ancient British chronicles, which seemed to illustrate Tolkien's work.

It happens! One person managed the impossible - to unite, systematize and, what is important, present the ancient folklore of his homeland in a presentable way. No wonder Queen Elizabeth II awarded the writer the honorary title of Chevalier of Britain.

Some other BBC rated books

Traditionally, the English information rating presents classic books of the 20th century, for example, Anglo-American literature for reading (novels):

• The Dark Materials children's fantasy trilogy (Philip Pullman).
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).
• "1984" (George Orwell).
• "Rebecca" (Daphne Du Maurier).
• The Catcher in the Rye (Jerome Salinger).
• The Great Gatsby (Francis Fitzgerald).

Opinion of Russian readers

What is the assessment given to the fairness of the British rating on the Russian forums of book lovers? Short answer: ambiguous.

Quite a high rating is given to the work of the writer George Orwell. For many readershis favorite book was an exciting novel with an unpredictable plot - "Rebecca". For reading, children can recommend the story of the journey of the girl Lyra Belacqua from Oxford through the fantastic worlds from Philip Pullman.

However, there are quite motivated remarks. For example, for a domestic sophisticated reader who has fallen in love with such novels as Bulgakov's realistic-mystical novel The Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, as well as Picnic by the Road and Doomed City by the Strugatsky brothers, to put it mildly, the priority criterion for the BBC rating is not entirely clear.

Understand correctly: we are by no means trying to reduce the artistic value of a number of talented novels like Catch 22, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, when we state the fact: their genre is an ideological novel. Can they, speaking objectively, compete with the voluminous and multi-problem work The Master and Margarita?

Such novels, consistently revealing only one thought of the author, should be ranked lower! After all, their depth of meaning is initially limited by design, devoid of volume, multidimensionality. Therefore, according to our readers, the dubious positioning of novels-ideas in the list of books at positions higher than War and Peace or Master and Margarita is completely absurd.

Modern postmodern books

Postmodernist books today are perhaps at the peak of popularity, as they represent the ideological antithesis of a stagnating society of massconsumption. Modern postmodern writers dissect the consumerist lifestyle that surrounds them, filled with soulless advertising and primitive glossy glamour.

Such ideological authors exist even in well-fed America. Recognized in his homeland as a true connoisseur of the problems of the consumer society, the writer of Italian origin Don DeLillo (underworld novels, "White Noise"). Another Italian scientist, professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, Umberto Eco, immerses the reader in such an intellectually rich outline of the work ("Foucault's Pendulum", "The Name of the Rose") that his creations are in demand by an intellectual audience.

A softer postmodern is demonstrated by another author. One of the representatives of Russian modern literature of this trend is Boris Akunin. The books of this modern classic (“The Adventures of Erast Fandorin”, “Azazel”, “The Adventures of Sister Pelageya”) are in demand by the mass reader and even filmed. Many people note the power of the author's talent, his masterful style, the ability to create fascinating stories. In his reasoning, he demonstrates a special personal philosophy of an oriental character.

The latter is especially noticeable in his "Jade Rosary" and "Diamond Chariot".

It is noteworthy that, captivating the reader with detective stories taking place in the general outline of the historical events of Russia, the modern classic Akunin does not bypass the problems of poverty, corruption and theft. His books, however, are not sustained within the strict framework of the historical plot. In the West, this genre of prose is called folk-history.

Chronological point that determines the startthe concept of "modern Russian literature" is 1991. Since that time, the hitherto closed works of authors of the sixties have become the property of the broad masses of readers:

• "Sandro from Chegem" by Fazil Iskander.
• "Crimea Island" by Vasily Aksenov.
• "Live and Remember" by Valentin Rasputin.

After them, modern writers came to literature, whose worldview was initiated by perestroika. In addition to the above-mentioned Boris Akunin, other Russian literary stars of the first magnitude also brightly lit up: Viktor Pelevin (“Numbers”, “The Life of Insects”, “Chapaev and Emptiness”, “T”, “Empire V”) and Lyudmila Ulitskaya (“The Case of Kukotsky”,“Sincerely yours, Shurik”,“Medea and her children).

Modern fantasy books

Perhaps a sign of an era of decadence was the remake of the romantic genre, resurrected in the form of fantasy. What is worth only the phenomenon of the popularity of the cycle of Harry Potter novels from JK Rowling! This is true: everything is returning to normal, romanticism is regaining its lost ground from realism!

No matter how much they say that realism once (in the 30s of the XX century) crushed romanticism to death, no matter how much they hide its crisis, but it is back on horseback! It's hard not to notice. Let us recall just one of the classic definitions of this literary style: "Exceptional heroes act in unusual situations." Isn't the last statement in the spirit of fantasy?! What else to add…

It is noteworthy that the current Russian authors writing fantasy books are widely popularand demonstrate a high literary level. The following works of this genre can be recommended for readers to read:

• "Night Watch", "Day Watch" (Sergey Lukyanenko).
• Forbidden Reality, Gospel of the Beast, Catharsis (Vasily Golovachev).
• The cycle of novels "The Secret City", the cycle "Enclaves" (Vadim Panov).

Let's also recall the popularity of the fantasy cycle The Witcher by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski in Russia. In a word, adventure books are now again in favor with readers.

Recommended books by writers from other continents

Browsing the forums of domestic readers, we found that among the outstanding writers of the 20th century, non-European and non-American books are mentioned much less frequently. However, among them there are very bright and talented works:

• "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez).
• "Woman in the Sands" (Japanese Abe Kobo).
• Waiting for the Barbarians (South African John Coetzee).

Conclusion

Bottomless fiction! The books of its authors (meaning the best) the average person, unfortunately, a priori will not be able to read throughout his life. Therefore, navigation in the boundless "sea" of books is extremely important. “Why is it necessary to purposefully read?” an uninitiated person will ask…

We will answer: “Yes, to decorate your life, to make real friends! After all, books are both advisers, and inspirers, and comforters.

In conclusion, we note that if you laterif you are lucky enough to find at least a dozen books, each of which, like a tuning fork, is ideal for you, your soul in a certain life situation, then we will assume that we have not worked on this article in vain. Happy reading!