Society

The New York Times Book Review recognizes 10 best books of this year

The selection of the 10 best books of 2024 was the result of several months of discussion and debate. The New York Times Book Review reported this when presenting the list of the best books of the year, Komersant ukrainskyi informs.

As the compilers of the rating explained, in the end, they strive to choose books that have made an indelible impression: stories that have remained in our hearts and souls, life studies that have deepened what we already know.

So, the following titles were included in the list of the 10 best books of this year according to The New York Times Book Review.

Fiction

Four. All Fours by Miranda July

(Miranda July. All Fours)

The second novel by the author, which tells the story of a married mother and artist who, while traveling, stayed in a motel near her home and started an affair with a young car rental worker. Sexually explicit and filled with the author’s sly humor, the book asks the most universal question: what would you risk to change your life?

Good stuff. Dolly Alderton

(Dolly Alderton. Good Material)

In this lively and witty novel, a 35-year-old London comedian tries to make sense of a recent breakup. There are sharp dialogues, shy first dates, and an unforgettable search for a new home. There are no second violins in Good Material; every character sings. And there’s a deeper message, revealed in an unexpected twist, about independence, adventure, and planning your own life.

James. Author Percival Everett

(Percival Everett. James

This novel is a radical reworking of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, telling the story not from Huck’s point of view, but from the point of view of an enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River: Jim (or, as he clarifies, James). The novel is a literary hat trick-a book that illuminates the horrors of American history and complicates an American classic while standing as a work of exquisite originality in its own right.

Martyr! Martyr by Kaveh Akbar

(Kaveh Akbar. Martyr!)

The hero of the work is Cyrus Shams, an aspiring Iranian-American poet and recovering drug addict. He lives in a fictional town in the Midwest. The author pushes Cyrus closer to uncovering the mystery of his family’s past, and turns his hero’s search for meaning in life into an unforgettable affirmation of life, full of intricate beauty, vivid characters, and surprising plot twists.

You have dreamed of empires. Álvaro Enrigue

(Álvaro Enrigue. You Dreamed of Empires)

The novel takes readers to 16th-century Tenochtitlan, or what is now known as Mexico City. Hernán Cortés and his men have arrived at the palace of Moctezuma for a diplomatic-albeit tense and comically unbalanced-meeting of cultures and empires. In this narrative, the people of Moctezuma have the upper hand, although the emperor himself is very prone to hallucinogenic dreams and internal threats.

Nonfiction

The Cold Crematorium. József Debreceny (translated by Pavlo Olkhvari)

(József Debreczeni. Cold Crematorium)

József Debreczeni was 39 years old when he was taken from Hungary to what he calls “the land of Auschwitz” and later described in his book. First published in 1950, The Cold Crematorium is a masterpiece of clinical, stark observation. Debreceny witnessed what was happening and described the best and worst of people.

All those who left are here. Jonathan Blitzer

(Jonathan Blitzer. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here)

Jonathan Blitzer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, provides a timely analysis of the situation on America’s southern border, laying the blame for today’s screaming headlines, detention camps, and unaccompanied minors on post-Cold War US policy. His kaleidoscopic narrative moves between the Central American insurgencies that flooded this country with refugees and the shifting and often inconsistent policies that have made the consequences worse. Jonathan Blitzer tackles his subject with confidence and grace, never losing sight of the human element behind the global crisis.

I heard it calling to me. Lucy Sante

(Lucy Sante. I Heard Her Call My Name)

In 2021, at the age of 66, this veteran writer and cultural critic came out as transgender. Reflecting on her upbringing as an “only child of isolated immigrants,” her early adulthood in 1970s New York, and her career as a writer who sought truth through her writing while hiding important truths about herself, Lucy Sante fearlessly documents her internal and external transformation.

Reagan. Author Max Boot

(Max Boot. Reagan)

This elegant biography of the 40th president is distinguished by the author’s deeply authoritative perspective and distinctive style. Max Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, has idolized Ronald Reagan since childhood, but after numerous interviews and research, he found that it makes sense to ask whether his former hero paved the way for Donald Trump. “It is no exaggeration,” Booth writes, “to say that you cannot fully understand what happened to America in the 20th century without first understanding what happened to Ronald Reagan.

The wide wide sea. From Hampton Sides

(Hampton Sides. The Wide Wide Sea)

This masterful story traces the third and final voyage around the world by English naval officer James Cook. Between tales of adventure on the high seas, complex depictions of Polynesian culture, and colorful scenes of subarctic cold, the reasons for Cook’s own transformation are skillfully explored, creating a vivid and provocative portrait that combines generations of scientific knowledge with firsthand accounts of European explorers and the oral traditions of the indigenous Pacific Islanders.

At the end of November, The New York Times published a ranking of the 100 best books of 2024, which included Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish writer of Ukrainian descent.

Before that, in July, The New York Times ranked the hundred best books of this century, surveying 503 fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and other book lovers.