As we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, The New York Times published this summer a list of the 100 best books released in the United States since January 1, 2000, based on a survey of over 500 writers and book professionals. In this list, the first gay book, ranked 32nd, is The Line of Beauty, an excellent novel by Alan Hollinghurst released in 2004.
The other gay titles on the list are works I haven’t read and that wouldn’t have spontaneously made it into my personal pantheon: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel in 2006 (35th, a graphic memoir), A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James in 2014 (42nd), Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides in 2002 (59th), The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai in 2018 (64th), and We the Animals by Justin Torres in 2011 (66th).
Among these titles, I plan to read the last two.
Gabriel François