Year-End Lists

The New Yorker: The Best Books of 2023, a list of "essential reads" that accompanies a long list of further recommendations

[see also The Best Books of 2024 • The Best Fiction and Poetry of 2022 • The Best Nonfiction of 2022 • The Best Books We Read in 2020]

Nonfiction

• The Country of the Blind

  A Memoir at the End of Sight
  Andrew Leland
• A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

  Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
  Nathan Thrall
• Fear Is Just a Word

  A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance
  Azam Ahmed
• Fire Weather

  A True Story from a Hotter World
  John Vaillant
• I Love Russia

  Reporting from a Lost Country
  Elena Kostyuchenko
• Judgment at Tokyo

  World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
  Gary J. Bass
• King

  A Life
  Jonathan Eig
• Liliana's Invincible Summer

  A Sister's Search for Justice
  Cristina Rivera Garza
• Master Slave Husband Wife

  An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
  Ilyon Woo
• Ordinary Notes
  Christina Sharpe
• The Rediscovery of America

  Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
  Ned Blackhawk
• Some People Need Killing

  A Memoir of Murder in My Country
  Patricia Evangelista

Fiction & Poetry

• The Bee Sting
  Paul Murray
• Biography of X
  Catherine Lacey
• Birnam Wood
  Eleanor Catton
• The Fraud
  Zadie Smith
• Grand Tour
  Elisa Gonzalez
• The Guest
  Emma Cline
• I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
  Lorrie Moore
• The Lights
  Ben Lerner
• Roman Stories
  Jhumpa Lahiri
• A Shining
  Jon Fosse
• Vengeance Is Mine
  Marie NDiaye
• Y/N
  Esther Yi