The New York Times Book Review has released their highly anticipated list of the 10 Best Books of 2023.
The list includes five fiction and five nonfiction titles, listed in no particular order.
The nonfiction selections were: The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley, Fire Weather by John Vaillant, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo, and Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista.
Interestingly, all but one of these selections were geographically focussed on North America, with Evangelista’s memoir of Rodrigo Duterte’s regime in the Philippines as the only exception.
One notable exclusion from the nonfiction list was The Wager by David Grann, an exploration of shipwreck and mutiny in 1741. Grann is the author of the widely-acclaimed and recently-adapted Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Wager has already been commissioned for a film adaptation of its own.
The fiction selections were: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, The Fraud by Zadie Smith, and North Woods by Daniel Mason.
The Bee Sting has been one of the most lauded novels of 2023, having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Irish Book Award for Novel of the Year for its rich description of a dysfunctional Irish family.
Zadie Smith, too, maintains a perennial presence among critics’ lists. The Fraud is historical fiction set in the Victorian era which spans Jamaica and Britain, exploring themes of justice, truth, and the human experience.
North Woods depicts a small piece of western Massachusetts over hundreds of years by combining letters, poems and illustrations with traditional prose. It includes meditations on the area’s animals, residents, and ghosts, among others.
Eastbound represents the only novel in translation represented on the list. Originally published in French, it follows a young Russian conscript and his journey across Siberia.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the only debut author on the fiction list. Chain-Gang All-Stars is a dystopian fiction and critique of the American criminal justice system, in which prisoners fight in gladiatorial matches, with the ultimate prize being freedom.
Notably absent from the list were Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, which was awarded this year’s Booker Prize. Also excluded was The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, which received acclaimed reviews for its depiction of Black and Jewish communities in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
The New York Times Book Review is one of the oldest and most influential book review publications in the world. It began publishing as a magazine supplement in 1896, and has been announcing its list of the 10 Best Books for nineteen years.
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