Bookatlas
1900–1945

Modernism

The form breaks open. Stream of consciousness, fractured time, and radical interiority remake what a novel can be, in the shadow of two world wars.

Reading path

Modernism

Stream of consciousness, fractured time, and radical interiority remake what a novel can even be.

8 steps

Movements of this era

Japanese Modernism & Aesthetics

Sōseki to Kawabata: the Japanese novel negotiates between tradition and the modern West.

Foundational Latin American Realism

Before the Boom, the novela de la tierra maps land, revolution, and rural power.

Mitteleuropa

Kafka, Musil, Schulz: the Central European imagination between empires and catastrophes.

High Modernism

Joyce, Woolf, Proust, and Mann break the novel open and rebuild it around consciousness.

Modern Chinese Fiction

From Lu Xun's diagnosis of a nation to Mo Yan's hallucinatory histories.

The Lost Generation

American expatriates in Paris strip English prose to the bone.

The Soviet Century

Masterpieces written for the desk drawer: Russian literature under and against the state.

The Harlem Renaissance & After

Black American literature claims the modern novel: from Harlem's flowering to Ellison and Baldwin.

The Brazilian Modern Novel

Amado, Ramos, de Queiroz: Brazil's regional and social novel comes of age.

The Southern Gothic

Faulkner and O'Connor find the grotesque and the sacred in the ruined American South.

The Progressive Writers' Movement

The All-India Progressive Writers' Association pledges Urdu and Hindi fiction to the peasant, the woman, and the untouchable.

Authors of this era

1857–1924Joseph ConradPoland / England1861–1928Italo SvevoItaly1862–1922Ōgai MoriJapan1867–1916Natsume SōsekiJapan1868–1936Maxim GorkyRussia1869–1951André GideFrance1871–1922Marcel ProustFrance1873–1952Mariano AzuelaMexico1873–1939Ford Madox FordEngland1874–1946Gertrude SteinUnited States1875–1955Thomas MannGermany1877–1962Hermann HesseGermany / Switzerland1878–1937Horacio QuirogaUruguay1878–1957Alfred DöblinGermany1880–1942Robert MusilAustria1880–1936PremchandIndia1881–1942Stefan ZweigAustria1881–1936Lu XunChina1882–1941James JoyceIreland1882–1941Virginia WoolfEngland1883–1924Franz KafkaCzechia (Bohemia)1883–1923Jaroslav HašekCzechoslovakia1884–1969Rómulo GallegosVenezuela1885–1930D. H. LawrenceEngland1886–1965Jun'ichirō TanizakiJapan1886–1927Ricardo GüiraldesArgentina1888–1935Fernando PessoaPortugal1889–1948Claude McKayJamaica / USA1890–1938Karel ČapekCzechoslovakia1890–1960Boris PasternakRussia1891–1980Henry MillerUnited States1891–1940Mikhail BulgakovUkraine / Russia1891–1960Zora Neale HurstonUSA1891–1964Nella LarsenUSA1892–1927Ryūnosuke AkutagawaJapan1892–1942Bruno SchulzPoland (Galicia)1892–1982Djuna BarnesUnited States1892–1953Graciliano RamosBrazil1894–1939Joseph RothAustria (Galicia)1894–1940Isaac BabelRussia / Ukraine1894–1967Jean ToomerUSA1896–1940F. Scott FitzgeraldUSA1896–1970John Dos PassosUSA1897–1962William FaulknerUSA1899–1972Yasunari KawabataJapan1899–1966Lao SheChina1899–1961Ernest HemingwayUSA1899–1977Vladimir NabokovRussia / USA1899–1951Andrei PlatonovRussia1899–1960Yuri OleshaUSSR (Ukraine)1900–1989Sándor MáraiHungary1900–1976Eyvind JohnsonSweden1902–1988Shen CongwenChina1904–1969Witold GombrowiczPoland1904–2005Ba JinChina1904–1986Ding LingChina1905–1994Elias CanettiBulgaria / UK1905–1964Vasily GrossmanUkraine / Russia1905–1984Mikhail SholokhovRussia1907–1982Varlam ShalamovRussia1908–1960Richard WrightUnited States1908–1967João Guimarães RosaBrazil1909–2001Eudora WeltyUnited States1910–1998Qian ZhongshuChina1910–2003Rachel de QueirozBrazil1911–1942Xiao HongChina1911–1991Ismat ChughtaiIndia1912–1990Patrick WhiteAustralia1912–2001Jorge AmadoBrazil1912–1955Saadat Hasan MantoPakistan / India1913–1994Ralph EllisonUSA1914–1997Bohumil HrabalCzechia1917–2007Magda SzabóHungary1917–1967Carson McCullersUnited States1918–2008Aleksandr SolzhenitsynRussia1920–1995Eileen ChangChina / USA1920–1977Clarice LispectorBrazil1924–1987James BaldwinUSA / France1925–1964Flannery O'ConnorUSA1929–2023Milan KunderaCzechia / France1933–2023Cormac McCarthyUSA1935–1989Danilo KišYugoslavia / Serbia1937–1969John Kennedy TooleUnited States1938–1990Venedikt YerofeevUSSRb. 1940Gao XingjianChina / Franceb. 1942Péter NádasHungary1950–2016Péter EsterházyHungaryb. 1954Wang AnyiChinab. 1955Mo YanChinab. 1958Yan LiankeChinab. 1960Yu HuaChinab. 1963Su TongChinab. 1977Jesmyn WardUnited States