Not the NYT List

100 fine books from around the world (and not just the USA) of the 21st century. A list curated by the Delhi-based bookseller The Bookshop Inc, with contributions from readers, writers, literary critics, and publishing professionals.

A case of exploding mangoes

2000 • 34 Readers • 295 pages 3.9

A Dictator Calls

A Dictator Calls
ByIsmail Kadare,John Hodgson(Translator)

2023 • 8 Readers • 256 pages 4

A General Theory of Oblivion

A General Theory of Oblivion
ByJosé Eduardo Agualusa,Daniel Hahn(Translator)

2012 • 31 Readers • 245 pages 4

A Gentleman in Moscow

2016 • 1,177 Readers • 512 pages 4.2

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Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

2017 • 18 Readers • 321 pages 4.3

An Unnecessary Woman

An Unnecessary Woman
ByRabih Alameddine

2013 • 59 Readers • 306 pages 3.8

Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete?
ByAngela Y. Davis

225 Readers • 4h 57m 4.3

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

2016 • 172 Readers • 440 pages 4.2

Barracoon

Barracoon
ByZora Neale Hurston

2018 • 103 Readers • 193 pages 4.1

Beauty Is a Wound

Beauty Is a Wound
ByEka Kurniawan,Annie Tucker(Translator)

2002 • 51 Readers • 470 pages 4.3

Bhimayana

Bhimayana
BySrividya Natarajan,S. Anand

2011 • 4 Readers • 106 pages 4

Blankets

Blankets
ByCraig Thompson

2003 • 402 Readers • 15 pages 4.1

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe

2017 • 21 Readers • 401 pages 3.5

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

2013 • 716 Readers • 391 pages 4.5

Breasts and Eggs

Breasts and Eggs
ByMieko Kawakami,Sam Bett(Translator),+1 more

2008 • 395 Readers • 430 pages 3.9

Carpentaria

Carpentaria
ByAlexis Wright

2006 • 28 Readers • 462 pages 4

Circe

Circe
ByMadeline Miller

2018 • 3,257 Readers • 409 pages 4.2

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Cockroaches

Cockroaches
ByScholastique Mukasonga

2006 • 18 Readers • 4h 4.2

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
ByMichael Pollan(Author, Narrator)

2013 • 3 Readers 2

Cry, Heart, But Never Break

Cry, Heart, But Never Break
ByGlenn Ringtved,Robert Moulthrop(Translator)

2001 • 10 Readers • 30 pages 4.1

Cursed Bunny

Cursed Bunny
ByBora Chung,Deaz Putri(Translator)

2017 • 359 Readers • 395 pages 3.7

Doppelganger

Doppelganger
ByNaomi Klein

9 • 291 Readers • 239 pages 4.2

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
ByOlga Tokarczuk,Antonia Lloyd-Jones(Translator)

2009 • 519 Readers • 290 pages 3.8

Educated: A Memoir

Educated: A Memoir
ByTara Westover

2018 • 1,833 Readers • 352 pages 4.4

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Em and The Big Hoom

Em and The Big Hoom
ByJerry Pinto

2012 • 38 Readers • 235 pages 4

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

2020 • 434 Readers • 370 pages 4.3

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Enter Ghost

Enter Ghost
ByIsabella Hammad

2023 • 59 Readers • 336 pages 4.2

Family Lexicon

Family Lexicon
ByNatalia Ginzburg,Jenny McPhee(Translator)

1963 • 18 Readers • 241 pages 4.3

Family Matters

Family Matters
ByRohinton Mistry

2001 • 40 Readers • 487 pages 3.5

Farthest field

Farthest field
ByRaghu Karnad

5 Readers

Ghachar Ghochar

Ghachar Ghochar
ByVivek Shanbhag,Srinath Perur(Translator)

2013 • 59 Readers • 118 pages 3.8

Go, Went, Gone

Go, Went, Gone
ByJenny Erpenbeck,Susan Bernofsky(Translator)

2015 • 47 Readers • 286 pages 4

Hellfire

Hellfire
ByLeesa Gazi,Shabnam Nadiya(Translator)

4 Readers • 204 pages

Home Fire

Home Fire
ByKamila Shamsie

2017 • 243 Readers • 290 pages 4

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

2019 • 498 Readers • 257 pages 3.6

How to Write About Africa

How to Write About Africa
ByBinyavanga Wainaina

2006 • 6 Readers 4

Cover 5

I Have Not Seen Mandu
BySvadeśa Dīpaka

2021 • 342 pages

In a Strange Room

In a Strange Room
ByDamon Galgut

2010 • 22 Readers • 180 pages 3.5

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

2007 • 57 Readers • 900 pages 4.6

Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent

6 Readers • 468 pages 5

In Memory of Memory

In Memory of Memory
ByMaria Stepanova

2017 • 27 Readers • 436 pages 3.9

In the Dream House

In the Dream House
ByCarmen Maria Machado(Author, Narrator)

2019 • 808 Readers • 5h 23m 4.5

Khwabnama

Khwabnama
ByAkhteruzzaman Elias,Arunava Sinha(Translator)

1996 • 1 Reader • 552 pages

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

2000 • 580 Readers • 8h 20m 4.1

Latitudes of Longing

Latitudes of Longing
ByShubhangi Swarup

2018 • 44 Readers • 320 pages 4.4

Minor Detail

Minor Detail
ByAdania Shibli,Elisabeth Jaquette(Translator)

2017 • 127 Readers • 97 pages 4.3

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone

2008 • 6 Readers • 391 pages 4

Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir

2015 • 11 Readers • 288 pages 4

My Seditious Heart: Collected Non-fiction

2019 • 8 Readers • 1,040 pages

Narcopolis

Narcopolis
ByJeet Thayil

2012 • 31 Readers • 292 pages 3.5

Natasha's Dance

Natasha's Dance
ByOrlando Figes

2002 • 21 Readers • 729 pages 4.4

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

27 American Empire Project

2014 • 31 Readers • 319 pages 4.6

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood
ByHaruki Murakami,Jay Rubin

1987 • 1,625 Readers • 389 pages 3.9

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

2019 • 1,186 Readers • 256 pages 4

On the Move: A Life

#2 of 2 in Oliver Sacks' memoirs

On the Move: A Life
ByOliver Sacks

2015 • 98 Readers 4

Open City

Open City
ByTeju Cole

2011 • 62 Readers • 274 pages 3.7

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

#1 of 2 in Persepolis

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
ByMarjane Satrapi,Mattias Ripa(Translator)

2000 • 625 Readers • 165 pages 4.4

Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat

Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat
ByPerumal Murugan,N. Kalyan Raman(Translator)

2018 • 19 Readers 4.4

Reading "Lolita" In Tehran

2003 • 210 Readers • 347 pages 3.5

Seeing Like A Feminist

Seeing Like A Feminist
ByNivedita Menon

2012 • 14 Readers • 120 pages 4.8

Cover 2

Sidewalks
ByValeria Luiselli

2010 • 7 Readers • 120 pages 4

Cover 4

Songs of Kabir
ByArvind Krishna Mehrotra

1 Reader

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

2022 • 111 Readers • 236 pages 3.9

Sudden Death

Sudden Death
ByÁlvaro Enrigue

2013 • 39 Readers • 272 pages 3.3

Terra Nullius

Terra Nullius
BySven Lindqvist,Sarah Death(Translator)

2005 • 4 Readers • 248 pages

The Butterfly's Burden

The Butterfly's Burden
ByMahmoud Darwish,Fady Joudah(Translator)

2006 • 4 Readers

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

2021 • 394 Readers • 24h 4.2

The Devotion of Suspect X

#3 of 9 in Detective Galileo

The Devotion of Suspect X
ByKeigo Higashino,Alexander O. Smith(Translator),+1 more

2005 • 257 Readers • 304 pages 4.2

The Dinner

The Dinner
ByHerman Koch

2009 • 276 Readers • 304 pages 3.2

The Dream Life of Sukhanov

2005 • 12 Readers • 368 pages 4.5

The Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children
ByClaire Messud

2006 • 39 Readers • 448 pages 3.2

The End of Eddy

The End of Eddy
ByÉdouard Louis

2014 • 37 Readers • 192 pages 4.2

The Faraway Nearby

The Faraway Nearby
ByRebecca Solnit

2013 • 48 Readers • 259 pages 4.4

The great fire

The great fire
ByShirley Hazzard

2003 • 23 Readers • 340 pages 3.4

The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Housekeeper and the Professor
ByYōko Ogawa,Stephen Snyder(Translator)

2003 • 349 Readers • 192 pages 4

The House of Doors

The House of Doors
ByTan Twan Eng

2023 • 96 Readers • 291 pages 3.7

The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide
ByAmitav Ghosh

2004 • 54 Readers • 402 pages 4.1

The Inheritance of Loss

2005 • 83 Readers • 324 pages 3.4

The Last Lover

2005 • 4 Readers • 330 pages

The Literary Conference

The Literary Conference
ByCésar Aira,Katherine Silver(Translator)

1997 • 6 Readers • 97 pages

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

2016 • 207 Readers • 336 pages 3.7

The Lost Pianos of Siberia

2020 • 15 Readers • 448 pages 4.3

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

#4 of 3 in Kantelingen

2015 • 106 Readers • 331 pages 4

The Namesake

The Namesake
ByJhumpa Lahiri

2003 • 308 Readers 4

The Night Bookmobile

The Night Bookmobile
ByAudrey Niffenegger

2008 • 35 Readers • 33 pages 3.7

The Order of Time

The Order of Time
ByCarlo Rovelli

2017 • 295 Readers • 172 pages 3.9

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

2001 • 545 Readers • 437 pages 4.4

The Queue

The Queue
ByBasma Abdel Aziz

2012 • 37 Readers • 194 pages 3.8

The Shadow King

The Shadow King
ByMaaza Mengiste

2019 • 70 Readers • 448 pages 3.6

The Shallows

The Shallows
ByNicholas Carr

2010 • 218 Readers • 289 pages 3.8

The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez

2016 • 2 Readers

The Wandering Falcon

2011 • 11 Readers 3.4

Cover 5

2008 • 4 Readers 3.8

Cover 5

Until the Lions
ByKarthika Naïr

2015 • 263 pages

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

2013 • 253 Readers • 322 pages 3.8

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

2011 • 132 Readers • 242 pages 4.3

Wizard of the Crow

Wizard of the Crow
ByNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o

2004 • 63 Readers • 786 pages 4.5

Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

2003 • 22 Readers • 272 pages 3.4