In May, the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. published a list of "the greatest literature ever published in English", AKA "The 100 best novels of all time", depending on which page heading you prefer.
The people who nominated books for the Guardian list comprised "more than 170 novelists, critics and academics, including many of the best writers of our time." They could include any book published in English, even if it was originally written in another language. The Guardian tallied these votes "to compile an overall 100": these were then "ranked in order".
One thing that was striking about the list: the bare inclusion of southern-hemisphere writers. At #75, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988); at #58, Disgrace by J.M Coetzee (1999); and at #53, Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard (1980).
How could a list of "the greatest literature ever published in English" be so resolutely bound to the north?
Among the excluded are Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (southern Kenya); Roberto Bolaño (Chile), Peter Carey (Australia) and Janet Frame (New Zealand), as well as Nobel literature laureates Patrick White (Australia); Nadine Gordimer (South Africa); Mario Vargas Llosa (southern Peru); and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania).
Arguments for the dominance of the north in prizes like the Nobel and the Booker follow one or both of these strands: that the publishing industries north of the equator have been operating for centuries longer than in the south; or that the countries represented in a prize shortlist or top 100 are larger in size, and therefore representation is proportional. (The latter argument has been made in the past by a Booker judge, who seemed unaware of the population of Nigeria, let alone India.)
As for the Nobel laureateship, it began in the 20th century, by which time George Eliot – top of the Guardian’s list for Middlemarch – was dead. Even if we look at Nobel literature laureates awarded after 1960 only, when a number of important writers in the southern hemisphere began publishing, the list is scant. Pablo Neruda (Chile) in 1971; White (Australia) in 1973; Gordimer (South Africa) in 1991; Coetzee (South Africa) in 2001; Vargas Llosa (southern Peru) in 2010; and Gurnah (Tanzania) in 2021. Indeed, it is scant for the entire global south.
Nobel literature laureates to date come from 44 different countries: 23 of these countries are in Europe. Eight of the ten most represented countries – beginning with France, with 16 literature laureates – are in Europe. The Nobel Prize is based in Scandinavia. (Chinua Achebe called it a ‘European Prize.’)
The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is based in the U.K. and open only to English-language novels published in London, now with limits on how many titles publishers may submit. In some years two books have shared the prize. Of the 60 winning books to date, just 11 were by writers from the southern hemisphere: Nadine Gordimer (1974); Thomas Keneally (1982); J.M. Coetzee (1983 and 1999); Keri Hulme (1985); Peter Carey (1988 and 2001); DBC Pierre (2003); Eleanor Catton (2013); Richard Flanagan (2014); and Damon Galgut (2021). Eleven books, nine writers, three countries (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). The International Booker Prize, for fiction in translation, has never been awarded to a book from the southern hemisphere. Where lists are made is important.
Our version of the Guardian’s top 100 has similarities and differences. We too included books originally written in another language, as long as they had been translated into English. We polled more than 170 people, including critics and academics worldwide, for up to ten selections, though we also contacted booksellers, festival directors and librarians. The authors we approached are ‘many of the best writers of our time’, all from the southern hemisphere.
We broadened the brief to include short story collections as well as novels, though asking our respondents to choose a specific collection wherever possible rather than a generic ‘selected’, especially for writers – like Katherine Mansfield, say – whose stories appear in multiple selected editions. Many of the greatest fiction writers of the southern hemisphere are story writers, like Mansfield and Borges. Many writers in the southern post-colonial worlds – writing in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and a number of Indigenous languages – have published landmark story collections, groundbreaking for their regions, nations and/or writing lives. We did not want these to be excluded.
The Guardian did not appear to specify that books written for children or young adults were excluded, but there are none on their list. A few of our respondents included a children’s book or YA title, but no book got sufficient votes to make our list. There are many great books published for young people in the southern hemisphere, from classic to contemporary, and they demand a list – or several lists – of their own.
The books topping the Guardian list also reflect novels taught in northern-hemisphere universities. Many have been taught in those universities for more than a century. Fiction publishing in the southern hemisphere arrives later to the party, in some countries not until the twentieth century, post-independence from colonial regimes. This means that too often, in the old centres of empire, our books only appear on a post-colonial syllabus. Of course, many book on the Guardian’s list will be taught in literature departments south of the equator too, of course, but integrated with fiction from our own regions, and with different points of view on what makes a novel great.
One thing we realised early on in this process: many people are confused about the southern hemisphere, even when they live in it. People were nominating books from Nigeria and India and Taiwan and Hong Kong; they were nominating Gabriel García Márquez, who is from the Caribbean region of Colombia, in the northern hemisphere. One person nominated an Irish writer.
Early on we also realised that a single list based on votes would skew hard to the countries where most of our correspondents lived. (In the Guardian’s list, 14 of the top 20 are British or from the U.S., possibly because these countries were most heavily represented in their gang of 170.) So we chose to break our top 100 into four regional lists of 25, vertically sliced: southern Africa; Australia and southern Indonesia; New Zealand and the South Pacific; and southern South America. That way the lists would serve our larger purpose, our kaupapa: to illuminate the great works of fiction published in our own half of the world. A list of "the greatest literature ever published in English" is incomplete without these writers and their books.
One other note: although these lists represent the top titles voted for by our respondents, we chose not to order them by rank. Instead, each of the four regional lists is organised by date, oldest to most recent. (In all our four lists, the works of fiction span over a century of publishing.) We believe lists like ours – and the Guardian’s – are a sample, subject to tastes, fashions, knowledge, bias and the prevailing orthodoxies of the times in which they are concocted. The books on our four lists are a glimpse of artistic endeavour, achievement and impact, not a complete picture of the vibrant regional and national literatures they sample.
Some authors of landmark books in their own regions were too little known to our 170+ voters to make it onto these lists. In the New Zealand and South Pacific list, for example, we could lament the absence in the final list of Dewe Gorde’s The Wreck (New Caledonia) or John Pule’s The Shark Who Ate the Sun (Niue). Some writers, like Shirley Hazzard or NoViolet Bulawayo, were perhaps – and perhaps unfairly – perceived by respondents as belonging more to their adopted country, the U.S., than to Australia or Zimbabwe. In all the lists, some contemporary books were squeezed out, just, by votes for books considered by respondents to be classics; some classics were squeezed out by votes for more recent publications. Roberto Bolaño is no doubt turning in his grave at some of the other books included in the southern South America list.
So the kaupapa mentioned above – to illuminate the great works of fiction published in our own half of the world – has been done with a number of small torches rather than a giant beacon. Like the Guardian list, we hope this Southern Hemisphere Fiction 100 will spark both discovery and dissent. Let’s all read more books, from more places, from more writers.
Southern Hemisphere Fiction 100
Southern Africa*
Chaka, Thomas Mofolo. Lesotho, 1925
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton. South Africa, 1948
A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Kenya, 1967
A Question of Power, Bessie Head. Sth Africa/Botswana, 1973
Waiting for the Rain, Charles Mungoshi. Zimbabwe, 1975
Before the Birth of the Moon, V. Y. Mudimbe. DR Congo, 1976
Going Down River Road, Meja Mwangi. Kenya, 1976
The House of Hunger, Dambudzo Marechera. Zimbabwe, 1978
Life and a Half, Sony Labou Tansi. DR Congo, 1979
Mayombe, Pepetela. Angola, 1980
Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee. South Africa, 1980
July’s People, Nadine Gordimer. South Africa, 1981
Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga. Zimbabwe, 1988
Sleepwalking Land, Mia Couto. Mozambique, 1992
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee. South Africa, 1999
Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda. South Africa, 2000
The Quiet Violence of Dreams, K Sello Duiker. South Africa, 2001
By the Sea, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Tanzania, 2001
In a Strange Room, Damon Galgut. South Africa, 2010
Our Lady of the Nile, Scholastique Mukasonga. Rwanda, 2012
Transparent City, Ondjaki. Angola, 2012
A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa. Angola, 2012
Dust, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. Kenya, 2014
The First Wife, Pauline Chiziane. Mozambique, 2016
Innards Magogodi, oaMphela Makhene. South Africa, 2023
*Includes: Angola; Botswana; Burundi; Eswatini; Lesotho; Madagascar; Malawi; Mauritius; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; Seychelles; South Africa; Tanzania; Zambia; and Zimbabwe. Southern parts of: DR Congo; Gabon; Republic of Congo; Equatorial Guinea; Kenya; Somalia; and Uganda.
Australia and southern Indonesia*
For the Term of His Natural Life, Marcus Clarke. Australia, 1874
My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin. Australia, 1901
The Timeless Land, Eleanor Dark. Australia, 1941
The Harp in the South, Ruth Park. Australia, 1948
The Tree of Man, Patrick White. Australia, 1955
The Long Prospect, Elizabeth Harrower. Australia, 1958
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay. Australia, 1967
Monkey Grip, Helen Garner. Australia, 1977
An Imaginary Life, David Malouf. Australia, 1978
This Earth of Mankind, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Indonesia, 1980
Schindler's Ark, Thomas Keneally. Australia, 1982
The Well, Elizabeth Jolley. Australia, 1986
Cloudstreet, Tim Winton. Australia, 1991
Loaded, Christos Tsiolkas. Australia, 1995
Benang: from the heart, Kim Scott. Australia, 1999
True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey. Australia, 2000
Beauty is a Wound, Eka Kurniawan. Indonesia, 2002
Carpentaria, Alexis Wright. Australia, 2006
The Boat, Nam Le. Australia, 2008
Mullumbimby, Melissa Lucashenko. Australia, 2013
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan. Australia, 2013
Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven. Australia, 2014
The Yield Tara, June Winch. Australia, 2019
The White Girl, Tony Birch. Australia, 2019
Song of the Crocodile, Nardi Simpson. Australia, 2020
*Includes: Australia; Kalimantan; Java; Lesser Sunda Islands; Maluku Islands; Sulawesi; Sumatra; and Western New Guinea.
New Zealand and the South Pacific*
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield. NZ, 1922
Passport to Hell, Robin Hyde. NZ, 1937
Man Alone, John Mulgan. NZ, 1939
That Summer, Frank Sargeson. NZ, 1946
Faces in the Water, Janet Frame. NZ, 1961
The Scarecrow, Ronald Hugh Morrieson. NZ, 1963
Summer in the Gravel Pit, Maurice Duggan. NZ, 1965
Sydney Bridge Upside Down, David Ballantyne. NZ, 1968
Plumb, Maurice Gee. NZ, 1978
Leaves of the Banyan Tree, Albert Wendt. Samoa, 1979
The Lovelock Version, Maurice Shadbolt. NZ, 1980
The Bone People, Keri Hulme. NZ, 1984
All Visitors Ashore, C.K. Stead. NZ, 1984
Potiki, Patricia Grace. NZ, 1986
Bulibasha, Witi Ihimaera Smiler. NZ, 1994
Tales of the Tikongs, Epeli Hau’ofa. Tonga/Fiji, 1994
Coming Home in the Dark, Owen Marshall. NZ, 1995
The Vintner’s Luck, Elizabeth Knox. NZ, 1998
The Book of Fame, Lloyd Jones. NZ, 2000
As the Earth Turns Silver, Alison Wong. NZ, 2009
Rangatira, Paula Morris. NZ, 2011
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton. NZ, 2013
This Mortal Boy, Fiona Kidman. NZ, 2018
Auē, Becky Manawatu. NZ, 2019
The Axeman’s Carnival, Catherine Chidgey. NZ, 2022
*Includes: American Samoa; Fiji; Nauru; New Caledonia; New Zealand; Niue; Papua New Guinea; Samoa; Solomon Islands; Tahiti; Tokelau; Tonga; and Vanuatu.
Southern South America*
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Machado de Assis. Brazil, 1881
Brother Ass (El Hermano Asno), Eduardo Barrios. Chile, 1922
The Seven Madmen, Roberto Arlt. Argentina, 1929
The Invention of Morel Adolfo, Bioy Casares. Argentina, 1940
Fictions (Ficciones), Jorge Luis Borges. Argentina, 1944
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Jorge Amado. Brazil, 1958
End of the Game/Blow Up, Julio Cortazar. Argentina, 1958
On Heroes and Tombs, Ernesto Sabato. Argentina, 1961
The Time of the Hero, Mario Vargas Llosa. Peru, 1963
Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar. Argentina, 1963
Hell Has No Limits, Jose Donoso. Chile, 1966
The Suicides, Antonio di Benedetto. Argentina, 1969
Conversation in the Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa. Peru, 1969
The Word of the Speechless, Julio Ramón Ribeyro. Peru, 1974
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector. Brazil, 1977
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende. Chile, 1982
Leopoldina's Dream, Silvina Ocampo. Argentina, 1988
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Luis Sepulveda. Chile, 1989
Bad Vibes (Mala Onda), Alberto Fuguet. Chile, 1991
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño. Chile, 1998
An Episode in the Life of an Abstract Painter, Cesar Aira. Argentina, 2000
2666, Roberto Bolaño. Chile, 2006
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez. Argentina, 2009
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin. Argentina, 2014
Phenotypes, Paulo Scott. Brazil, 2019
*Includes: Argentina; Bolivia; Chile; Paraguay; Peru; and Uruguay. Southern parts of: Brazil; Colombia; and Ecuador.
This article is republished from The Academy of New Zealand Literature / Te Whare Mātātuhi o Aotearoa with permission. Thank you!
