Ninety-nine Novels
Anthony Burgess's book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice (Allison & Busby, 1984, ISBN 0-85031-585-9) covers a 44-year span between 1939 and 1983. Burgess was a prolific reader, in his early career reviewing more than 350 novels in just over two years for the Yorkshire Post. In the course of his career he wrote over thirty novels.
The list represents his personal choices.
In an interview with Don Swaim Burgess reveals that the book was originally commissioned by a Nigerian publishing company, and written in two weeks.
Read more about Ninety-nine Novels: Sorted By Author
Famous quotes containing the words ninety-nine and/or novels:
“There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programmes, or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)