20th Century in Literature - World War II

World War II

1940

• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (Hungary, England)
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - published in English 1966
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• Native Son by Richard Wright (USA, France)
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (USA)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
• Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys
• You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
• The Quiet Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (Russia) - two volumes, first published in 1934

Genre fiction

• Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler (England)
• Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Plays

• The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill

Non-fiction

• To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson

1941

• Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
• Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers
• The Third Policeman by Flan O'Brien

Genre fiction

• Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

Non-fiction

• Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley

1942

• The Stranger by Albert Camus (Algeria, France)
• Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet (France)
• Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Plays

• The Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre

1943

• Arrival and Departure by Arthur Koestler
• The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
• The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (Austria) - trilogy, first volume published 1930

Genre fiction

• Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France)

Poetry

• Selected Poems by Keith Douglas (England)

Non-fiction

• Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

1944

• The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) - short stories
• The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham
• Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley

Plays

• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (USA)

1945

• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Watt by Samuel Beckett - published in 1953
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (England) - trilogy, first volume in 1939

Genre fiction

• If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes (USA, France)
• The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis (N Ireland) - first volume published in 1938

1946

• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (South Africa)
• The Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet
• Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian (France)
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Poetry

• Deaths and Entrances by Dylan Thomas

Plays

• The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan (England)

Non-fiction

• Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas
• Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson

1947

• The Plague by Albert Camus
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (England, Canada)
• Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Victim by Saul Bellow (Canada, USA)
• The Conformist by Alberto Moravia (Italy)
• The Middle of the Journey by Lionel Trilling (USA)
• Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
• Of Love and Hunger by Julian MacLaren-Ross (England)
• Funeral Rites by Jean Genet
• Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Plays

• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Non-fiction

• Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Netherlands)

1948

• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (USA)
• Confessions of a Mask by 'Yukio Mishima' (Japan)
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
• The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (USA)
• Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
• Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet

Genre fiction

• No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase (England)

Plays

• The Browning Version by Terence Rattigan

Non-fiction

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (France — early feminist study

1949

• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Roads to Freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre - trilogy, first volume published 1945
• The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet
• The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (USA)
• The Train Was on Time by Heinrich Böll (Germany)
• The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
• The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier (Mexico)
• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

Genre fiction

• The Trouble with Harry by Jack Trevor Story (England)
• The Mating Season by PG Wodehouse

Plays

• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (USA)