The Times's staff critics give their choices of the best fiction and nonfiction works of the year.
Image: Shutterstock
While much of the cultural world stood still or shuttered in 2020, books kept arriving, even if some of them were released later than planned. They brought timely and timeless tidings. There was revelatory reporting about the opioid epidemic, accounts of the sometimes perilous and pernicious effects of social media, and a wide-lens view of life in Tibet. There were memoirs by a president, a painter and a poet. New fiction came from Elena Ferrante, Ayad Akhtar, Sigrid Nunez and others. Below, The New York Times’ three daily book critics — Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal and Jennifer Szalai — share their thoughts about their favorites among the books they reviewed this year, each list alphabetical by author.
An annual note on methodology: The critics limit themselves in making these lists, each selecting only from those books they reviewed for The Times since last year at this time. — John Williams, Daily Books Editor and Staff Writer
Dwight Garner
‘HOMELAND ELEGIES’ By Ayad Akhtar (Little, Brown and Co.). This beautiful novel, about an American son and his immigrant father, has echoes of “The Great Gatsby” and circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life. Its author is best known as a playwright. In 2013, Akhtar won a Pulitzer Prize for “Disgraced,” a dinner-party-gone-wrong drama that deals with Muslim American life, 9/11, money and politics. This novel, too, confronts Muslim American experience. (The father is an elite heart specialist who treats Donald Trump in the 1990s and becomes enamored with him.) “Homeland Elegies” is a lover’s quarrel with this country, and it has candor and seriousness to burn.
‘DIRT: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking’ By Bill Buford (Alfred A. Knopf). Buford’s new book is a profound and intuitive work of immersive journalism. It’s about moving with his wife and young sons to Lyon, where he works in restaurant kitchens and divines the secrets of French cuisine. This is a more sober book than Buford’s last one, “Heat,” about Italian food and Mario Batali. It’s as if Johnny Cash followed up “Get Rhythm,” as a jukebox single, with “Hurt.” This book delivers, among other things, an excellent history of cooking in Lyon, with Fernand Point and Paul Bocuse at its molten center. Buford has a smart, literate, sly voice on the page.
©2019 New York Times News Service