Year-End Lists

Literary Hub: Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021

[see also 38 Favorite Books of 2024 • Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 • Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s • Favorite Books of 2018]

• The Copenhagen Trilogy

  Childhood; Youth; Dependency
  Tove Ditlevsen
• Animal
  Lisa Taddeo
• The Dawn of Everything

  A New History of Humanity
  David Graeber and David Wengrow
• The Life of the Mind
  Christine Smallwood
• A Ghost in the Throat
  Doireann Ní Ghríofa
• When We Cease to Understand the World
  Benjamin Labatut
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• Milk Blood Heat
  Dantiel W. Moniz
• Blow Your House Down

  A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason
  Gina Frangello
• The Water Statues
  Fleur Jaeggy
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
  Mariana Enriquez
• Fight Night
  Miriam Toews
• The Vixen
  Francine Prose
• Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

  The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside
  Nick Offerman
• Light Perpetual
  Francis Spufford
• Black Girl, Call Home
  Jasmine Mans
• Empire of Pain

  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• Heaven
  Mieko Kawakami
• Great Circle
  Maggie Shipstead
• In Memory of Memory
  Maria Stepanova
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood
• The Scapegoat
  Sara Davis
• Dear Senthuran

  A Black Spirit Memoir
  Akwaeke Emezi
• The Wrong End of the Telescope
  Rabih Alameddine
• In the Eye of the Wild
  Nastassja Martin
• Burnt Sugar
  Avni Doshi
• Crossroads
  Jonathan Franzen
• The Trees
  Percival Everett
• Slipping
  Mohamed Kheir
• Something New Under the Sun
  Alexandra Kleeman
• The Anomaly
  Hervé Le Tellier
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline
  Andreas Malm
• Last Best Hope

  America in Crisis and Renewal
  George Packer
• Fake Accounts
  Lauren Oyler
• The Great Mistake
  Jonathan Lee
• Wings in Time
  Callie Garnett
• Hao
  Ye Chun
• There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
  Kikuko Tsumura
• Mona
  Pola Oloixarac
• I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
  Claire Vaye Watkins
• Winter Recipes from the Collective
  Louise Glück
• White Magic
  Elissa Washuta
• The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway
  Virginia Woolf and Merve Emre (notes)
• Festival Days
  Jo Ann Beard
• Galloway

  Life In a Vanishing Landscape
  Patrick Laurie
• Returning the Sword to the Stone
  Mark Leidner
• Mutiny
  Phillip B. Williams