The Best Books of 2021

I Kumar Blog 2021-04-02

This year, we were captivated by stories from literary icons, debut novelists, and more.

1.The Lying Life of Adults

Revealed via surprise announcement in September 2019, the reclusive writer’s latest title leaves behind the characters of the Neapolitan Novels to tell a new tale in the same setting. Playing on Ferrante’s favorite themes of beauty versus ugliness and class mobility, The Lying Life of Adults tells the story of a rich and rebellious teenager’s coming of age in a divided Naples.

2.Rodham

3.Transcendent Kingdom: A Novel

rom the author of Homegoing, the breakout debut novel about the two very different legacies of an Asante woman living in 18th-century Ghana, comes a contemporary tale of a Ghanaian family in Alabama struggling to make sense of loss.

4.The Glass Hotel: A novel

Fans of the genre-defying post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven, rejoice: Emily St. John Mandel is back with a new novel that weaves otherworldly elements throughout the storyline of a modern financial thriller.

5.My Dark Vanessa: A Novel

When a fellow former student comes forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Vanessa’s high school English teacher, Jacob, Vanessa must grapple with a discomfiting question: whether her own teenage affair with Jacob was as consensual as she’s been telling herself for 17 years. In the age of #MeToo, Russell’s blistering, deeply uncomfortable, and utterly essential debut achieves required-reading status.