It is not an easy feat to try to rank the most outstanding authors of the 21st century. Listed below are some of the most notable authors that made a significant mark for the past 20 years in no particular order:
David Mitchell
David Mitchell is an English novelist known for frequently using complex and intricate experimental structures in his pieces. His work Cloud Atlas in 2004 is a novel composed of six stories that are interconnected. Mitchell was shortlisted for Booker Prize for his 2001 creation”number9dream” and The Bone Clocks released in 2014. was on Booker’s longlist.
Haruki Murakami
Haruk I Murakami is a Japanese author who is a son of a Buddhist priest. His works are sometimes fantastic and melancholic and usually written in first-person point of view. Westerners love his 2005 Kafka on the Shore’s English translation. In 2011, the English version of “1Q84,” his well-received novel, was released.
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is a British writer and his 2001 book Atonement is a family drama focusing on repentance that bagged several awards with a movie adaptation in 2007 under the direction of Joe Wright. His 2005 novel Saturday was awarded with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. McEwan’s work typically focuses on the close observations of personal lives amidst a world fraught in politics.
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende is a Chilean-American author, the majority of her works often contain vivid female characters and some magical realism touches. Her 2002 work City of Beast has also been a wide commercial success.
John Updike
During John Updike’s lengthy career that spanned years and reached the 21st century, he has been considered one of the three writers who brought home the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction award more than once. In 2006, his four novels about Rabbit Angstrom were named in a New York Times Book Review survey among the finest novels for the past 25 years.
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 novel, won the National Book Award. He is also a frequent essay contributor to The New Yorker. His works include the 2002 book of essays entitled How to be Alone, the acclaimed 2010 work Freedom, and The Discomfort Zone, a 2006 memoir. His work usually touches on family issues and social criticism.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author with several critically acclaimed novels under her belt. One of her bestselling works is the 2003 Oryx and Crake. She is famous for her dystopian political and feminist themes as well as her prolific work output spanning several genres, including short stories, essays, and poetry.
Philip Roth
Philip Roth bagged the Sidewise Award for Alternate History award for his 2005’s The Plot Against America and the 2006 PEN/Nabokov Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work is mostly of Jewish themes exploring a conflicted and fraught relationship with the Jewish tradition. His 27th novel, the 2006 Everyman, focused on what it was like to grow up in America as Jewish.