The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

History of modern literature
By decade
List of years in literature
Early modern by century
16th 17th
Mid-modern by century
18th 19th
20th–21st century
Modernism Structuralism Deconstruction Poststructuralism Postmodern Postcolonial Electronic Ergodic
By region
Africa Moroccan Nigerian South African Americas American Argentine Brazilian Canadian Colombian Cuban Jamaican Mexican Peruvian Asia Afghan Bengali Bangladeshi English Chinese Gujarati Hindi Indian Indian English Japanese Kannada Kashmiri Korean Malayalam Marathi Pakistani Pakistani English Pashto Punjabi Sindhi Tamil Telugu Urdu Vietnamese Australasia Australian New Zealand Europe
Related topics
History of science fiction Literature by country History of theater History of ideas Intellectual history
Literature portal
v t e

Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century (1901 to 2000).

The main periods in question are often grouped by scholars as Modernist literature, Postmodern literature, flowering from roughly 1900 to 1940 and 1960 to 1990^[1] respectively, roughly using World War II as a transition point. After 1960, the somewhat malleable term "contemporary literature" widely appears.

Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are generally applicable to and stem from Western literary history, scholars often use them in reference to Asian, Latin American and African literatures. Non-western writers, in particular in Postcolonial literature, have been at the forefront of literary evolution during the twentieth century.

Technological advances facilitated lower production cost for books, coupled with rising populations and literacy rates, which resulted in a significant rise in production of popular literature and trivial literature, comparable to the similar developments in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the 20th century is overlapped by genres such as detectives or science fiction, despite being largely ignored by mainstream literary criticism for the most of the century. These genres developed their own establishments and critical awards; these include the Nebula Award (since 1965), the British Fantasy Award (since 1971) or the Mythopoeic Awards (since 1971).

Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic literature grew in importance in light of the development of hypertext and later the World Wide Web.

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded annually throughout the century (with the exception of 1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940–1943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme. The New York Times Best Seller list has been published since 1942.

The best-selling literary works of the 20th century are estimated to be The Lord of the Rings (1954/55, 150 million copies), Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, 1943, 140 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, 120 million copies) and And Then There Were None (1939, 115 million copies). The Lord of the Rings was also voted "book of the century" in various surveys.^[2][3][4][5] Perry Rhodan (1961 to present) proclaimed as the best-selling book series, with an estimated total of 1 billion copies sold.

1901–1918

The Fin de siècle movement of the Belle Époque persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, published 1924). The Dada movement of 1916–1920 was at least in part a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war; the movement heralded the Surrealism movement of the 1920s.

1900

• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (Poland, England)
• The Knights of the Cross by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)

Genre fiction

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (US)

1901

• Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (Germany)
• The Inheritors by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (England)
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling (India, England)

Genre fiction

• The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel (Montserrat, England)
• The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells (England)

1902

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• The Immoralist by André Gide (France)
• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (US, England)
• The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett (England)

Genre fiction

• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (Scotland)
• Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Plays

• Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)
• The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky

1903

• Romance by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• The Pit by Frank Norris (US)
• In Wonderland by Knut Hamsun (Norway)

Genre fiction

• The Call of the Wild by Jack London (US)
• The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (England, Ireland)

1904

• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
• The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (England)
• The Peasants by Władysław Reymont (Poland)

Genre fiction

• The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells
• The Sea-Wolf by Jack London
• Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson (Argentina, England)

Plays

• John Bull's Other Island by George Bernard Shaw
• The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

1905

• Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo (England, Italy)
• Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (England)
• Kipps by H. G. Wells
• Songs of Life and Hope by Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (US)
• The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton

1906

• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (US)
• The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil (Austria)
• Mother by Maxim Gorky

Genre fiction

• Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
• Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie (Scotland)
• Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany (Ireland, England)
• White Fang by Jack London

Plays

• The Aran Islands by John Millington Synge (Ireland)
• The Morality of Mrs. Dulska by Gabriela Zapolska (Poland)

1907

• Bardidi by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (India)
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster

Genre fiction

• The Listener and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood (England) – contains The Willows, one of the first 'cosmic horror' stories
• The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen (England)

Plays

• The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge

Poetry

• Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc (France, England)

1908

• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• The Iron Heel by Jack London
• Hell by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)
• The Magician by Somerset Maugham (England, France) – based on the author's meeting with Aleister Crowley

Genre fiction

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (England)

Poetry

• Personae by Ezra Pound (US, England, Italy) – one of the first examples of 'modernist' poetry

1909

• Martin Eden by Jack London
• Sparrows: the story of an unprotected girl by Horace W C Newte
• Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells
• Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (US, France)

Poetry

• Exultations by Ezra Pound
• Poems by William Carlos Williams (US)

Plays

• The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1910

• Howards End by E. M. Forster
• The Card by Arnold Bennett
• The History of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells

1911

• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (England)
• In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield (England) – short stories
• Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
• The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence (England)
• Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser (US)
• In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)

Genre fiction

• Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie (Scotland)

1912

• The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (Germany)

Genre fiction

• Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (US)
• The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (US)

Plays

• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

1913

• Petersburg by Andrei Bely (Russia)
• Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (France)
• Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier (France)
• Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
• Chance by Joseph Conrad

Genre fiction

• A Prisoner in Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood – adapted into a play, it later became the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Starlight Express
• The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by 'Sax Rohmer' (England)

Poetry

• Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire (Poland, France) – dada poems
• Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

1914

• Dubliners by James Joyce (Ireland, France, Italy) – short stories
• The Prussian Officer and Other Stories by D. H. Lawrence – short stories
• Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann
• The Vatican Cellars by André Gide
• Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
• The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (Austria)
• Mist by Miguel de Unamuno (Spain)
• Maurice by E. M. Forster – unpublished
• Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (Scotland, Greece)
• The Flying Inn by G. K. Chesterton
• The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Noonan (UK)

Poetry

• North of Boston by Robert Frost (US)

1915

• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
• The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela (Mexico)
• Victory by Joseph Conrad
• Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (England)
• Vainglory by Ronald Firbank (England)
• Rashōmon by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Genre fiction

• The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (Scotland, Canada)

1916

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence – initially banned, published in 1920

Genre fiction

• Greenmantle by John Buchan

Poetry

• Salt-Water Poems and Ballads by John Masefield (England)
• Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

1917

• Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)
• Walpurgis Night by Gustav Meyrink
• Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
• The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
• Caprice by Ronald Firbank
• Devdas by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

Poetry

• Dulce et Decorum est and Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen (England) – published posthumously
• Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot (US, England)

Non-fiction

• The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin

1918

• Tarr by Wyndham Lewis (Canada, England)
• Man of Straw by Heinrich Mann (Germany)

Poetry

• Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire – dada poetry

Non-fiction

• Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (England)
• Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man by Thomas Mann (Germany)

Interwar period

The 1920s were a period of literary creativity, and works of several notable authors appeared during the period. D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was a scandal at the time because of its explicit descriptions of sex. James Joyce's novel, Ulysses, published in 1922 in Paris, was one of the most important achievements of literary modernism.

1919

• Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
• Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (US) – the first 'lost generation' novel
• Valmouth by Ronald Firbank
• Bazaar-e-Husn by Premchand (publ. in Hindi as Seva-sadan)

Genre fiction

• Dope by Sax Rohmer – inspired by the true story of Limehouse dope-dealer Brilliant Chang
• Dope Darling by Leda Burke (David Garnett) (England)

1920

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russia)
• Limbo by Aldous Huxley (England) – short stories
• The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (US)
• The London Venture by Michael Arlen (Armenia, England)
• Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (Germany)
• A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (Scotland)
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (US)
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (US)

Plays

• Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
• Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill – Pulitzer prize winner

1921

• The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
• Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
• England, My England and Other Stories by D. H. Lawrence – short stories
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (England) – pentalogy, first volume published in 1906
• My Life and Loves by Frank Harris (England, US) – four volumes of quasi-factual sex gossip, the fifth completed by Alex Trocchi

Plays

• Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw
• R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek – from which the term 'robot' was coined

1922

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
• Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust
• Croatian God Mars by Miroslav Krleža
• The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings (US)
• Futility by William Gerhardie (Russia, England)
• The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley – short stories
• Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence Kim
• The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield – short stories
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Germany, Switzerland)
• Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten (US)
• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
• Lady into Fox by David Garnett
• The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun (China)

Poetry

• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

1923

• Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (Italy)
• The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (Czechoslovakia)
• The Captive by Marcel Proust
• Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence
• Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
• Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (US)
• The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams
• The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet (France)
• Aelita by Alexey Tolstoy (Russia)

Plays

• The Shadow of a Gunman by Seán O'Casey (Ireland)

Poetry

• New Hampshire by Robert Frost
• The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke

1924

• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Germany)
• In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (US) – short stories
• A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
• The Vortex by José Eustasio Rivera (Colombia)
• Little Mexican and Other Stories by Aldous Huxley – short stories
• Bohemian Lights by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (Spain)
• The Fox and The Captain's Doll by D. H. Lawrence – short stories
• Miranda by Antoni Lange (Poland)
• Riddles and Conundrums for All Occasions

Genre fiction

• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (England)

Plays

• Juno and the Paycock by Seán O'Casey
• The Vortex by Noël Coward (England)

1925

• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Trial by Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia) – posthumous, first English translation in 1930
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – often described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature
• The Green Hat by Michael Arlen – perhaps the epitome of the jazz age in British literature
• Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon (France)
• Albertine disparue by Marcel Proust
• Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
• In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
• The Desert of Love by François Mauriac (France)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (US)
• Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley
• St Mawr by D. H. Lawrence – short stories
• The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
• Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)

Genre fiction

• Beau Geste by P. C. Wren (England)

Poetry

• The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot

Non-fiction

• The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins (England) – introducing ley lines

1926

• The Castle by Franz Kafka – posthumous, first English translation in 1932
• The Counterfeiters by André Gide
• The Sun Also Rises aka Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
• Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars (France)
• Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Güiraldes (Argentina)
• Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten
• Two or Three Graces and Other Stories by Aldous Huxley – short stories
• The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence
• The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

Genre fiction

• Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (England)

Poetry

• A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by 'Hugh MacDiarmid' (Scotland)

Plays

• The Plough and the Stars by Seán O'Casey
• Raktakarabi by Rabindranath Tagore

Non-fiction

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (England, Arabia)

1927

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Time Regained by Marcel Proust
• Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
• Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway – short stories
• Vestal Fire by Compton Mackenzie
• Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann (England)
• Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
• The Rocking-Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence – short stories

Poetry

• Jhôra Palok by Jibanananda Das (India)

Plays

• The Silver Tassie by Seán O'Casey (Ireland)

1928

• Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (Germany)
• Nadja by André Breton (France)
• Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille (France)
• Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford – war tetralogy, first volume in 1926
• Gypsy Ballads by Federico García Lorca
• Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence – banned until 1963
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (England)
• Amerika by Franz Kafka – posthumous, first English translation in 1938
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (Germany) – recounts the horrors of World War I and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front
• Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Soviet Russia, excerpts)
• The City by Valerian Pidmohylny (Soviet Ukraine)

Plays

• Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill (US) – Pulitzer prize winner
• Messrs. Glembay by Miroslav Krleža

1929

• Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau (France)
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (US)
• Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
• Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington (England)
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (US)
• Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos (Venezuela)
• Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann (Germany)
• The Escaped Cock by D. H. Lawrence (England)
• The Defence by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia, France)
• Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys (England)
• The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley (England)

Non-fiction

• Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves (England)
• A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (England)

Genre fiction

• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (US) – the first hard-boiled American detective novel
• Yogayog by Rabindranath Tagore (India) – original fiction in Bengali

1930

• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis
• Brief Candles by Aldous Huxley – short stories
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
• Angel Pavement by J. B. Priestley
• The Virgin and the Gypsy and Love Among the Haystacks by D. H. Lawrence – short stories

Genre fiction

• Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (England)
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (US)

Poetry

• Whoroscope by Samuel Beckett (Ireland, France)

Plays

• Private Lives by Noël Coward

Non-fiction

• Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (England) – 2 volumes, 1st in 1929

1931

• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Waves by Virginia Woolf
• Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France)

Genre fiction

• The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
• At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft

Plays

• Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
• Cavalcade by Noël Coward

Non-fiction

• Axel's Castle by Edmund Wilson (US)
• Music at Night by Aldous Huxley

1932

• The Return of Philip Latinowicz by Miroslav Krleža
• Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (France)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (England)
• The Memorial by Christopher Isherwood (England)
• Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia, France)
• Light in August by William Faulkner
• A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
• Stamboul Train by Graham Greene (England)
• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
• Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (Austria)
• Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld (England)

Poetry

• The Orators by W. H. Auden (England)

1933

• Man's Fate by André Malraux (France)
• Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood (England)
• Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (US)
• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
• Cat Country by Lao She (China)

Genre fiction

• Lost Horizon by James Hilton (England)
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (England)
• The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

Non-fiction

• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (England)
• Texts and Pretexts by Aldous Huxley
• In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

1934

• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (US) – a groundbreaking obscenity case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961 allowed its publication there
• Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (Austria, US)
• Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
• Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
• It's a Battlefield by Graham Greene
• A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
• 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton (England)
• Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys (Dominica, France, England)
• Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara (US)
• A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Scotland) – trilogy, first volume published in 1932
• Novel with Cocaine aka Cocain Romance by M. Ageyev (France)

Genre fiction

• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (US)

Poetry

• 18 Poems by Dylan Thomas (Wales)

Non-fiction

• Burmese Days by George Orwell
• Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway

1935

• Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
• Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley
• Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti (Bulgaria, Germany)
• A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell
• England Made Me by Graham Greene
• A House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (Ireland)
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (US)
• Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell (US) – trilogy, first volume published in 1932

Genre fiction

• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (US)

Poetry

• Collected Poems by Cecil Day-Lewis (Northern Ireland)

Plays

• Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets (US)

1936

• Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
• Black Spring by Henry Miller
• U.S.A. by John Dos Passos
• Mephisto by Klaus Mann (Germany, US)
• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
• Confession of a Murderer by Joseph Roth
• Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Wessex Novels by John Cowper Powys (England) – tetralogy, 1st vol published in 1927
• Godaan by Premchand

Poetry

• Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh by Miroslav Krleža
• Dhushor Pandulipi by Jibanananda Das (India)

Genre fiction

• Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier (England)
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (US)
• A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene

1937

• To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
• The Years by Virginia Woolf
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood
• The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell (UK, Egypt)
• Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz (Poland)
• Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis
• White Mule by William Carlos Williams
• Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby (England, US)
• Rickshaw Boy by Lao She (China)
• The Life of Klim Samgin by Maxim Gorky – posthumous, tetralogy, first three volumes published in 1927–1931

Genre fiction

• Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
• Night and the City by Gerald Kersh (England, US)
• The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor by Cameron McCabe (Ernest Bornemann) (Germany, England)
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (England)

Non-fiction

• The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
• How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (Wales)

1938

• Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
• Murphy by Samuel Beckett
• Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
• Man's Hope by André Malraux
• The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
• Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov

Genre fiction

• Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Non-fiction

• Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
• Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly (England)

1939

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• The Banquet in Blitva by Miroslav Krleža
• At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (Ireland)
• Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
• After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley
• Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
• On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Jünger
• Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
• The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
• The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth
• Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
• The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
• Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary (Ireland)
• Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Pal Joey by John O'Hara

Genre fiction

• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (US)
• Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (England)
• The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Poetry

• Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice (N Ireland)
• The Map of Love by Dylan Thomas

Plays

• This Happy Breed by Noël Coward

World War II

1940

• Native Son by Richard Wright (US, France)
• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (Hungary, England)
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – published in English 1966
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (US)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
• Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys
• You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
• And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (Russia) – two volumes, first published in 1934
• The feeling of the world by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil)

Genre fiction

• Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler (England)
Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=20th_century_in_literature
Text je dostupný za podmienok Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 Unported; prípadne za ďalších podmienok. Podrobnejšie informácie nájdete na stránke Podmienky použitia.

---