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.
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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)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)