Twenty Classic Authors of the Last Thirty Years
(This—my 800th list—was inspired by the Twitter thread above and by the various responses to it. Time erases almost everybody, but these are all authors whose books deserve to be remembered as classics in my opinion. I restricted myself to authors who have at least arguably written their most significant work between 1996 and 2026, and I’ve arranged their names in alphabetical order.)
César Aira (a representative book: The Literary Conference)
Solvej Balle (a representative book: On the Calculation of Volume)
Susanna Clarke (a representative book: Piranesi)
Liliana Colanzi (a representative book: You Glow in the Dark: Stories)
Michel Faber (a representative book: Under the Skin)
Yan Ge (a representative book: Strange Beasts of China)
Thomas Glave (a representative book: The Torturer’s Wife)
Lauren Groff (a representative book: Matrix)
Nick Harkaway (a representative book: The Gone-Away World)
Kelly Link (a representative book: White Cat, Black Dog: Stories)
Peter Orner (a representative book: Maggie Brown & Others: Stories)
Philip Pullman (a representative book: The Golden Compass)
Olga Ravn (a representative book: The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century)
Mary Ruefle (a representative book: Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures)
Karen Russell (a representative book: Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories)
Adam Ehrlich Sachs (a representative book: Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems)
Luis Sagasti (a representative book: Fireflies)
Gonçalo M. Tavares (a representative book: The Neighborhood)
Attila Veres (a representative book: The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales)
Alejandro Zambra (a representative book: Bonsai)
— April 14, 2026