Read about the other entries on the list.Beloved by Toni Morrison
Some historians tell us that the American civil war ended in 1865. But just because they say the war was over then (it wasn’t even officially so until the following August), it doesn’t mean that it was over in the minds of the people who suffered it. Beloved, by the Pulitzer and Nobel-winning fixture of the modern books pantheon, is set in the years after President Andrew Johnson signed the Proclamation – Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquillity, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America in 1866. Sethe, an escaped slave, tries to build a life as a free woman. As the possibility of love emerges, the past comes back to haunt her. Morrison suggests that for some people the war is never done, and examines whether, in such cases, love even has a chance.
Beloved also appears on Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.
--Marshal Zeringue