| Best Novels Year by Year |
| 2005 | Cormac McCarthy | No Country for Old Men | 
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| 2004 | David Mitchell | Cloud Atlas | 
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| 2003 | Jonathan Lethem | The Fortress of Solitude | 
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| 2002 | Mario Vargas Llosa | The Feast of the Goat | 
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| 2001 | Tim Winton | Dirt Music | 
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| 2000 | William T Vollmann | The Royal Family | 
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| 1999 | Neal Stephenson | Cryptonomicon | 
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| 1998 | Martha Cooley | The Archivist | 
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| 1997 | Don DeLillo | Underworld | 
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| 1996 | David Foster Wallace | Infinite Jest | 
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| 1995 | Jose Saramago | Blindness | 
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| 1994 | Iain Sinclair | Radon Daughters | 
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| 1993 | Vikram Seth | A Suitable Boy | 
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| 1992 | William T Vollmann | Fathers and Crows | 
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| 1991 | Iain Sinclair | Downriver | 
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| 1990 | William T Vollmann | The Ice Shirt | 
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| 1989 | Katherine Dunn | Geek Love | 
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| 1988 | Peter Carey | Oscar and Lucinda | 
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| 1987 | William T Vollmann | You Bright and Risen Angels | 
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| 1986 | Richard Ford | The Sportswriter | 
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| 1985 | Cormac McCarthy | Blood Meridian | 
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| 1984 | William Gibson | Neuromancer | 
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| 1983 | John Calvin Batchelor | The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica | 
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| 1982 | T Coraghessan Boyle | Water Music | 
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| 1981 | Peter Carey | Bliss | 
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| 1980 | John Kennedy Toole | A Confederacy of Dunces | 
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| 1979 | Charles Portis | The Dog of the South | 
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| 1978 | Georges Perec | Life: A User's Manual | 
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| 1977 | Richard Brautigan | Dreaming of Babylon | 
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| 1976 | Kurt Vonnegut | Slapstick, or Lonesome No More | 
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| 1975 | William Gaddis | JR | 
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| 1974 | Thomas Pynchon | Gravity's Rainbow | 
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| 1973 | Kurt Vonnegut | Breakfast of Champions | 
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| 1972 | John Brunner | The Sheep Look Up | 
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| 1971 | R D Pharr | S.R.O. | 
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| 1970 | Larry Niven | Ringworld | 
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| 1969 | Kurt Vonnegut | Slaughterhouse 5 | 
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| 1968 | John Le Carre | A Small Town in Germany | 
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| 1967 | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | One Hundred Years of Solitude | 
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| 1966 | Thomas Pynchon | The Crying of Lot 49 | 
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| 1965 | Kurt Vonnegut | God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater | 
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| 1964 | Flann O'Brien | The Dalkey Archive | 
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| 1963 | Thomas Pynchon | V | 
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| 1962 | Vladimir Nabokov | Pale Fire | 
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| 1961 | Joseph Heller | Catch-22 | 
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| 1960 | Harper Lee | To Kill a Mockingbird | 
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| 1959 | William S Burroughs | Naked Lunch | 
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| 1958 | Vladimir Nabokov | Lolita | 
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| 1957 | Anthony Powell | At Lady Molly's | 
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| 1956 | Nelson Algren | A Walk on the Wild Side | 
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| 1955 | William Gaddis | The Recognitions | 
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| 1954 | Kingsley Amis | Lucky Jim | 
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| 1953 | Samuel Beckett | Watt | 
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| 1952 | Flannery O'Connor | Wise Blood | 
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| 1951 | Samuel Beckett | Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnameable | 
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| 1950 | Mervyn Peake | Gormenghast | 
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| 1949 | George Orwell | 1984 | 
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| 1948 | Graham Greene | The Heart of the Matter | 
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| 1947 | Malcolm Lowry | Under the Volcano | 
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| 1946 | Mervyn Peake | Titus Groan | 
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| 1943 | Louis-Ferdinand Celine | Guignol's Band | 
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| 1941 | Arthur Koestler | Darkness at Noon | 
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| 1940 | Carson McCullers | The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter | 
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| 1939 | Flann O'Brien | At Swim Two-Birds | 
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| 1938 | Samuel Beckett | Murphy | 
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| 1937 | John Dos Passos | USA | 
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| 1936 | Karel Capek | War with the Newts | 
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| 1935 | Elias Canetti | Auto Da Fe | 
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| 1934 | Robert Graves | I, Claudius | 
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| 1933 | Erskine Caldwell | God's Little Acre | 
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| 1932 | Louis-Ferdinand Celine | Journey to the End of the Night | 
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| 1930 | Dashiell Hammett | The Maltese Falcon | 
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| 1929 | William Faulkner | The Sound and the Fury | 
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| 1928 | Radclyffe Hall | The Well of Loneliness | 
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| 1927 | C H B Kitchin | Mr. Balcony | 
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| 1926 | F.Scott Fitzgerald | The Great Gatsby | 
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| 1925 | Andre Gide | The Counterfeiters | 
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| 1924 | Evgeny Zamyatin | We | 
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| 1923 | Jaroslav Hasek | The Good Soldier Svejk | 
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| 1922 | James Joyce | Ulysses | 
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| 1919 | W Somerset Maugham | The Moon and Sixpence | 
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| 1918 | Willa Cather | My Antonia | 
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| 1916 | James Joyce | Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | 
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| 1915 | Franz Kafka | Metamorphosis | 
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| 1913 | Edith Wharton | The Custom of the Country | 
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| 1911 | Arnold Bennett | Hilda Lessways | 
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| 1910 | Arnold Bennett | Clayhanger | 
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| 1908 | G K Chesterton | The Man Who Was Thursday | 
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| 1907 | Joseph Conrad | The Secret Agent | 
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| 1904 | Frederick William Rolfe | Hadrian the Seventh | 
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| 1903 | Jack London | The Call of the Wild | 
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| 1902 | Joseph Conrad | Heart of Darkness | 
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