For those who say fiction is dead, Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent, picks 20 novels - along with her favourite non-fiction titles and poetry collections - that should muzzle the pessimists
A Bit on the Side - William Trevor (Viking)
This illustrates the master's subtle, insistent ability to grasp the essential moment, the telling gesture and pause, and, yet again, displays why he is the best.
The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant (Bloomsbury)
Tales of emotional exile and physical displacement told with style, humour, subtle irony and a clear-eyed detachment. The Canadian sage lures the reader into her special world of North American experience transposed to a France that provides a knowing setting. An inexhaustible Pandora's box to keep within reach - for good.
Field Study - Rachel Seiffert (Heinemann)
This collection of 11 terse, intelligent stories from the author of the 2001 Booker short-listed début novel The Dark Room, reiterates her deliberate, honourable and understated vision of life as lived, not debated. Hailed as one of the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists, she is much more - a European writer whose fiction goes beyond national boundaries, and whose themes, personal and universal, often explore guilt in its many guises.
Old School - Tobias Wolff (Bloomsbury)
Although presented as a novel, and not the most satisfying of novels at that, this book of set pieces by one of the world's master short story writers succeeds in defying its shortcomings through the ease of Wolff's balanced prose. Its relaxed tone evokes a mood ideal for hosting the reflections of a man so aware of his less-than-ideal younger self corrupted by the ruthless ambitions of youth. This is a novel containing at least three fine short stories - and one classic.
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (Cape)
The late flowering of Roth continues apace as the self-created, sex-ridden Great American Writer further consolidates himself as the daring chronicler of his country. This latest recent bulletin is profound, funny, passionate and very angry. Forget about his re-invention of history, Roth's evoking of his eight-year-old self engages in a narrative that showcases his seductive, understated, physical prose, mastery of dialogue and despairing, if large-hearted, exasperation.
This Blinding Absence of Light - Tahar Ben Jelloun, Translated by Linda Coverdale (The New Press)
No praise is too high for this devastating, beautiful account of humiliation, suffering, despair and ultimately, belief in survival, based on a real life human rights atrocity in the Moroccan desert.
The Master - Colm Tóibín (Picador)
So much has already been said about this astonishingly polished and profound book, and yet so much more could be added. Tóibín's maturity as a novelist draws grace and weight from his dignified, restrained response to the life, sensibility and repressed turmoil of Henry James.
Götz and Meyer - David Albahari, Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac (Harvill)
Haunted by his need to retrieve the past, and conscious of the ghosts of family members he never knew, the narrator of this heartbreaking and unforgettable war-memoir-as-novel, sets out to reclaim truths. The story of what happened to the contingent of Serbian Jews is horrific. In order to make sense of it, the narrator, himself a study in numbed grief, invents two soldiers entrusted with the task of killing. A stark, marvellous book, it articulates what it is like to be human and to have been left with the legacy of war.
A Hero's Daughter - Andrei Makine, Translated by Geoffrey Strachan (Sceptre)
The first novel by the now internationally established Siberian, who writes in French and whose themes are the horrors of war and its brutal legacy of displacement. Although more bluntly structured and far less lyric than his subsequent work, this angry, raw book possesses urgency. It must be read by all who admire Makine, part poet, part philosopher possessed of a hauntingly elegiac voice.
Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam (Faber)
A pair of tragic lovers battle the disapproval of their families and local society only to abruptly disappear. Sounds Shakespearean? It is. Although set among a small Pakistani community in present-day England, this is a highly moral, richly textured novel for all times. Brave, beautiful, tough and important, shaped by an archaic elegance and its theme of multiple despairing loves, Aslam's second novel exposes the racism of modern Britain as well as religious fundamentalism at its most extreme.
The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderhaghe (Little Brown)
Picaresque adventure, romance, sordid family history, score settling and a good old-fashioned quest are some of the elements that combine to make this excursion into 19th-century Canadian history a terrific read. An example of unpretentious, honest storytelling from yet another fine Canadian writer.
The Swing of Things - Sean O'Reilly (Faber)
Sympathetic Noel Boyle forsakes the North for a half-hearted stab at a new life in Dublin. Charged with muscular grace, a raucous heat, earthy defiance, and some irritation in the form of Fada, a dangerously daft street poet, this is a vivid portrait of Dublin as a city trapped in a violent present with no space for either history or culture. O'Reilly, a stylist committed to mood and tone, has shaped a world class novel that hasn't yet received the acclaim it deserves, but hopefully will.
My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (John Murray)
Variations on the theme of one life in several forms allow Jhabvala immense scope to draw on her heritage of mixed cultures in this lively story sequence - as fellow European-Indian Anita Desai also does in The Zig Zag Way (Chatto) a tellingly atmospheric consideration of nationality, identity and myth making.
Aloft - Chang-Rae Lee (Bloomsbury)
Korean-born Chang-Rae Lee moves away from his immigrant experience and offers a voice that now belongs to an integrated US writer. In doing so, he initially aspires to the jaunty eloquence of Richard Ford before settling closer to the less literary, if always urbane Richard Russo. At times, his central character, likeable late-middle-aged Jerry Battle acquires an out-of-character philosophical sophistication, yet Aloft has a beguiling lightness of touch.
The Body of Jonah Boyd - David Leavitt (Bloomsbury)
Anyone in need of reminding as to how astute Leavitt, the observer of family and personal relationships, can be, need look no further than this witty and increasingly black tale with a sting.
The Honeymoon - Justin Haythe (Picador)
This elegiac, rather Jamesian début, about a nomadic childhood spent in the company of a flamboyant and domineering mother, is told in a quietly thoughtful, near conversational voice. There are echoes of Somerset Maugham and Ford Maddox Ford as the narrator makes clear his plight, without ever complaining. One man's account of how his life was stolen, as well as a study of the power shifts of interpersonal dependency, it makes extraordinary reading.
Sixty Lights - Gail Jones (Harvill)
Charles Dickens and Peter Carey may influence this engaging, rather magical novel but Australian academic Jones is utterly in control of her unusual, hypnotic period narrative. It explores the power of love, as well as the influence of the past and the fear of the future, as it plots the experience of a handful of sympathetic, wounded characters.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
This wonderful yarn about magicians in Regency London is the definitive big picaresque novel for readers of all ages. Just goes to show, the great 19th-century English novel tradition endures.
Havoc in its Third Year - Ronan Bennett (Bloomsbury)
Profound, sophisticated and further proof of the quiet intensity of Bennett's confident vision, this allegorical study of one good man caught up in, and compromised by, the tensions and fears of the 17th-century north of England Puritan community in which he lives, is chillinglyatmospheric and impressive.
The Lambs of London - Peter Ackroyd (Chatto)
Always the cleverest of writers - and among the most eccentric - the mercurial Ackroyd, who considers history to be the best storyteller, continues his love affair with London's past. This is another entertaining, burlesque, high-speed romp featuring the messy domestic life of Charles Lamb and his crazy sister, Mary, who, famously, killed their irritating mother.