They weren’t the best decade for literature, but the 90s still gave us some great titles and here you have 5 of those great ones. Hello readers, welcome to my new post and the second book post of this 2025. Step inside.
“Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on. It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats.” ― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
The 1990s were a period of relatively prosperity and, with a few exceptions, a rather peaceful one. The United States obtained a swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War; President Bill Clinton starred in a much publicized scandal and failed to eliminate Osama Bin Laden; Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal, was born; Brazil obtained its fourth title at the 1994 World Cup, whereas France won its first in 1998. The music industry saw the demise of hair metal and the rise of the grunge/alternative rock movement, and U2 became the biggest band in the world. Movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, Boogie Nights, The Matrix and Goodfellas defined the decade and let their mark in cinema history.
The literary world saw its quality diminished when publishing houses stopped giving advances to good writers. A guy was arrested for stealing more than 23,600 books in in the United States; John Grisham was the bestselling author; and the first book about a certain boy magician came out to later become a global sensation. While this decade wasn’t as good as previous ones in terms of good literature, it still produced titles such as Jesus’ Son, Fight Club, Angela’s Ashes and Infinite Jest.
On this post you won’t find the aforementioned (and unreadable) Infinite Jest, but you will find other great works that are definitely worth of your time. I included here the first collection of short stories by a Dominican author; the last journals of a cantankerous and drunk old writer; a sci-fi dystopia, later made into a movie; the beautiful but heartbreaking story of two twins from India; and the last one is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the best novel by a controversial author.
So, without further ado, let’s begin:
5 – Drown (1996)
By Junot Díaz
A cover (via: google.com)
I remember in 2009 the literary world was gushing about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the first and only novel by Junot Díaz. That same year I found by chance in a public library an anthology of short-stories by American authors which included Fiesta, 1980, I read it immediately and liked a lot. But it wasn’t until 2024 when I finally read the book where it was published.
The semi-autobiographical Drown was the first book ever published by Junot Díaz in 1996. It is comprised of 10 short-stories, some better than others, but they all maintain a decent level of quality. My favorite here is Aguantando, where the narrator, Yunior de las Casas, remembers his harsh life in the Dominican Republic, waiting for his father to send some money from the US while he and his family endure hunger and hard times, and go to see martial arts movies to alleviate their pain. Negocios, the last of the stories and probably the best, is about a father who deals with the guilt of having left his woman and children behind to find work in the United States and all the misadventures he must deal with in order to secure a better life.
All the stories are either set in the Dominican Republic or in the United States, and deal with themes of poverty, hunger, drugs, shitty jobs, failed marriages, family and sexuality. Many of them feature the character of Yunior de las Casas who, in the tradition of Henry Chinaski and Nathan Zuckerman, is one of the best alter egos in literature history. If you’re looking for a great short-story to sit down and read after a hard day at work, here you have ten honest ones you will love.
4 – The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)
By Charles Bukowski
A cover (via: goodreds.com)
A book I bought and read in 2012, and always go back to from time to time. The early 1990s, the last period of Charles Bukowski’s life, was a rather peaceful one. Gone were the days of rejections, hunger, troubles with the law, and suffering; by that moment he had achieved a certain level of fame, had a nice house and car, a good woman, a bunch of cats, and divided his time between writing and going to the race tracks in Los Angeles, a city where he was a longtime resident.
But years of alcohol abuse took their toll, and Bukowski felt he wasn’t going to live for much longer. He sat down to write the journals which make this book. Here, he reflects about the process of writing, his troubled past, his menial jobs, and his relationship with fame. He now writes in a Macintosh computer and hasn’t gone back to the old typewriter, and he does it with his old direct prose, devoid of all metaphors, and you get a glimpse of his cynical philosophy. His wry, sarcastic, sense of humor is also present here together with some funny parts, like when he challenges a big black bartender to a fight, only to find out the guy was a fan of his.
Spanning from 1991 to 1993, this book was published in 1998, four years after Bukowski’s death of leukemia at age 73. It also features some curious illustrations by artist Robert Crumb. This is one of the coolest books of the 1990s you will ever find.
3 – The Children of Men (1992)
By P. D. James
A cover (Via: whatculture.com)
A novel I wanted to read for a long time, but it wasn’t until last year when I finally stumbled on a copy in a book giveaway. This is a dystopia that starts in the year 2021, and 25 years after the birth of the last person in the whole world, who has recently died in a street fight. For some strange reason, all men have lost their capacity to reproduce; plus, there are mass suicides and the Omegas, the last people born in the world, have become extremely violent. Theo Faron, a quiet History professor at Oxford, finds himself immersed in a desperate race to protect a young woman who has suddenly conceived a child. Things will get even more difficult for Theo when his cousin Xan Lyppiatt, the charismatic dictator of the new Great Britain, finds out about the secret pregnancy.
One of the best dystopian novels I have ever read. Author P.D. James (1920- 2014) wrote more than a dozen detective novels, but it is The Children of Men the one she will be most remembered for. Narrated in both first and third person, this well-written story has some parts that may be a little too slow for the casual reader; but it also has its share of action and suspense, and the part where Theo and his group are attacked by an enraged group of Omegas will give you the chills.
The film version of 2006 deviated heavily from its source material. Although director Alfonso Cuarón said P.D. James expressed satisfaction with the movie, it would have been better for the movie to be more faithful to the novel, and perhaps it wouldn’t have failed at the box office. You will do better reading this great novel which is far superior to that film version.
2 – The God of Small Things (1997)
By Arundhati Roy
A cover (via: amazon.com)
This beautiful but heartbreaking story about two twins from India won the Booker Prize in 1997 and made its author an instant celebrity. Thanks to this novel, Arundhati Roy, born in 1961, gained financial independence and now divides her work writing non-fiction and as an activist in India, and has been very criticized for her leftists views. She didn’t publish another novel until 2017. She once said: “To me there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing.”
Three generations of a family from Kerala in the late 1960s are narrated here. Twins Rahel and Estha share a special bond, but Estha will end up traumatized for the rest of his life after a despicable man does something terrible to him. Ammu, the twin’s mother, has a secret romance with a man of a lower cast, while her aunt, Baby Kochamma, is always gossiping and intriguing. After a tragic accidental death and the horrible murder of an innocent man, the twins will be separated. It will be 23 years later when Rahel will go back to India to look for her brother.
Written in a classic yet spicy way with sparks of magic realism, its familiar themes and settings also remind you of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight's Children. The loss of innocence, intrigue, gossiping, music, movies, a secret romance, love, death and even incest, all are elements of a novel you will love but will also break your heart.
1 - American Pastoral (1997)
By Philip Roth
First edition cover (via: Wikipedia.org)
One day of 1985, at a Mets game, Nathan Zuckerman will run by chance the brother of one of his childhood friends. This is Seymour "Swede" Levov, a successful Jewish American businessman and former high school star athlete who gave up his career in sports to take care of his father’s glove business.
Years later Levov, now in his seventies, with a new wife and kids, will contact Zuckerman for lunch. Tall, blond, with blue eyes, the Swede Levov was everything the Jewish kids from Newark wanted to be. He married Miss New Jersey and had a daughter. But when Zuckerman starts to dig more, he realizes Levov’s perfect life was actually a tragedy. During the nefarious decade of the 1960s, events like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the Newark Riots, will have an impact on Levov’s business and family life. Then, his teenage daughter will disappear to later become involved with radical hippies who say they don’t kill animals, but plant bombs that kill many innocent people. Riots, drugs, race conflicts, rape, war, government intervention, this is the history of the United States like has never been told in fiction.
This great novel received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and is one of the last where Nathan Zuckerman, the author’s alter ego, makes an appearance. Born in New Jersey in 1933, Philip Roth was one of the most awarded Jewish American authors; he went to write 29 novels and was considered a controversial figure; he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At the moment of his death, in 2018, he was regarded as the best living writer in the world. American Pastoral is his masterpiece.
Conclusion
A man reading a book (via: unsplash.com)
That’s it for my second book post of this 2025 here, guys. I hope you have discovered something new, and I hope you consider adding a few of these titles of the 90s to your reading list. By the way, it was in 1992, when I was still a teenager who loved Guns N’ Roses music, that I read my first novel.
Now I want to know what you think of this post. Have you ever read any of these great books? What do you think in general about 1990s literature? Which one of these books caught your attention the most? Which one do you plan to read first? I’ll be waiting for your answers.
Since you’re here, check now 5 great and easy books to start your literary journey right here:
@thereadingman/5-great-and-easy-books
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Orlando Caine.