Contemporary literature

Contemporary literature

Authors and most important pieces (top ten)

1. Isabel Allende
Chilean-American author Isabel Allende wrote her debut novel, House of Spirits to great acclaim in 1982.The novel began as a letter to her dying grandfather and is a work of magical realism charting the history of Chile. Allende began writing House of Spirits on January 8th, and subsequently has begunall her books on that day.
2. Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood has numerous critically-acclaimed novels to her credit, most recently Oryx and Crake and The Penelopiad (2005). She isknown for her feminist themes, but her prolific output of work spans both form and genre.
3. Jonathan Franzen
Winner of the National Book Award for his 2001 novel, The Corrections, and a frequentcontributor to The New Yorker magazine, Jonathan Franzen is also the author of a 2002 books of essays entitled How to Be Alone and a 2006 memoir, The Discomfort Zone.
4. Ian McEwan
Britishwriter Ian McEwan started winning literary awards with his first book, First Love, Last Rites (1976) and never stopped. Atonement (2002) won several awards and is being made into a movie, and Saturday (2005)won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
5. David Mitchell
English novelist David Mitchell is known for his tendency toward experimental structure. In his first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), he usesnine narrators to tell the story and 2004's Cloud Atlasis a novel comprised of six interconnected stories. Mitchell won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Ghostwritten, was shortlisted for the BookerPrize for number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas, and is on the Booker longlist for Black Swan Green (2006).
6. Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was named best novel of the past 25 yearsin a 2006 New York Times Book Review survey. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and Toni Morrison, whose name has become synonymous with African American literature, won the Nobel Prize in...