Top 99 Modern Novels ~  Part I The Secret

"If you disagree violently with some of my choices, I shall be pleased. We arrive at values only through dialectic." ~ Anthony Burgess

In an article for The New York Times Book Review, Burgess listed his choices for the 99 best modern novels from the years 1934-1983.

1934
Party Going, by Henry Green
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, by Aldous Huxley
Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien

1940
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
Strangers and Brothers (to 1970), by C. P. Snow

1941
The Aerodrome, by Rex Warner

1944
The Horse's Mouth, by Joyce Cary
The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham

1945
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

1946
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake

1947
The Victim, by Saul Bellow
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry

1948
The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
No Highway, by Nevil Shute

1949
The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen
Ape and Essence, by Aldous Huxley
1984, by George Orwell
The Body, by William Sansom

1950
Scenes from Provincial Life, by William Cooper
The Disenchanted, by Budd Schulberg

1951
A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975), by Anthony Powell
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969), by Henry Williamson
The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk

1952
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood, by, by Flannery O'Connor
Sword of Honor (to 1961) Evelyn Waugh

1953
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
The Groves of Academe, by Mary McCarthy

1954
Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis

1957
Room at the Top, by John Braine
The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960), by Lawrence Durrell
The London Novels (to 1960), by Colin MacInnes
The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud

1958
The Bell, by Iris Murdoch
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, by Alan Sillitoe
The Once and Future King, by T. H. White

1959
The Mansion, by William Faulkner
Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming

1960-1983