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Tag: 2000s

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Late one night, the elderly curator of the Louvre is murdered inside the museum, leaving behind a bizarre arrangement of his own body and a string of coded clues. Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology who happens to be in Paris, is summoned by the French police, who quietly regard him as their chief suspect.

    Sophie Neveu, a police cryptologist and the curator's estranged granddaughter, helps Langdon escape, and the two follow a trail of puzzles hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Pursued by a determined police captain and a fanatical monk serving a secretive Catholic organisation, they turn to an eccentric British historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, as the search widens to London and Scotland.

    Brown's formula of short chapters, cliffhangers, art history and conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail and early Christianity made the book one of the best-selling novels of the century. Historians and churches criticised its claims, which only fed public fascination. It inspired tourist trails around its locations and a 2006 film starring Tom Hanks.

    Book details

    AuthorDan Brown
    First published2003
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)454
    SettingParis, London and Scotland over about a day, early 2000s

    Themes

    • Secret societies
    • Religion and history
    • Codes and symbols
    • Conspiracy
    • Art

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a fast, puzzle-packed thriller full of art and conspiracy lore.

    If you liked this, try

    • Angels and Demons
    • The Name of the Rose
    • Labyrinth

  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

    Financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist has just lost a libel case against a corrupt industrialist and faces a prison sentence. Henrik Vanger, the elderly patriarch of a powerful Swedish business dynasty, offers him an unusual job: to discover what happened to his grand-niece Harriet, who vanished from the family's island estate at Hedeby in 1966. Henrik is convinced a relative murdered her.

    Blomkvist's investigation draws him into the Vangers' bitter feuds and past Nazi sympathies. He eventually recruits Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed, socially withdrawn researcher and expert hacker who has suffered abuse at the hands of the state guardianship system. Together they uncover a pattern of violence far wider than one disappearance.

    Larsson, a journalist who campaigned against far-right extremism, died before the book appeared, and it became a worldwide sensation that fuelled the Nordic noir boom. The original Swedish title translates as Men Who Hate Women, signalling its focus on violence against women. Salander became one of contemporary fiction's most recognisable characters, and the book won Scandinavia's Glass Key award.

    Book details

    AuthorStieg Larsson
    First published2005
    Original languageSwedish
    Translated byReg Keeland
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)465
    SettingStockholm and the fictional island of Hedeby, northern Sweden, early 2000s
    AwardsGlass Key Award 2006

    Themes

    • Violence against women
    • Corporate corruption
    • Family secrets
    • Justice
    • Investigative journalism

    Who should read it

    Thriller readers who like dark, intricate mysteries and unforgettable antiheroes.

    If you liked this, try

    • Gone Girl
    • The Snowman
    • The Silence of the Lambs

  • The Three-Body Problem

    The novel opens in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, when astrophysicist Ye Wenjie watches her father beaten to death at a struggle session. Disillusioned with humanity, she is later sent to a remote military base, Red Coast, which turns out to be a secret project to search for extraterrestrial life. A decision she makes there sets the story in motion.

    Decades later, nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao is drawn into an investigation by police officer Shi Qiang after a wave of scientists' suicides. Wang finds his vision disrupted by a mysterious countdown and becomes absorbed in Three Body, a strange virtual-reality game set on a world with chaotic, unpredictable suns, where civilisations rise and fall. The game hides a larger truth.

    Liu blends hard physics, Chinese history and big philosophical questions about contact with alien civilisations. Ken Liu's 2014 translation introduced the book to English readers, and it became the first translated novel to win the Hugo Award. It opens the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy and has been adapted for Chinese television and Netflix.

    Book details

    AuthorLiu Cixin
    First published2008
    Original languageChinese
    Translated byKen Liu
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)400
    SettingChina, from the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s to the present day
    AwardsHugo Award for Best Novel 2015

    Themes

    • First contact
    • Science and politics
    • Disillusionment with humanity
    • Cosmic sociology
    • History's scars

    Who should read it

    Readers who love ambitious, idea-heavy science fiction with a non-Western perspective.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Dark Forest
    • Project Hail Mary
    • Contact

  • The Road

    Some years after an unexplained disaster has destroyed most life on Earth, a man and his young son push a shopping cart along a highway toward the coast, hoping the south will be warmer. The sky is grey with ash, plants and animals are gone, and the few survivors scavenge for canned food or have turned to brutal violence, including cannibalism.

    Neither character is named. The man is ill and determined to protect the boy at any cost, while the boy, born after the catastrophe, clings to the idea that they are the good guys who carry the fire. Their days are a cycle of searching abandoned houses, hiding from roving gangs and talking in brief, tender exchanges as the father teaches survival and tries to preserve his son's humanity.

    McCarthy writes in fragmented, sparse prose with almost no punctuation for dialogue, creating a bleak, hypnotic rhythm. Beneath the horror is one of the most moving portraits of parental love in modern fiction. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, was adapted into a film, and is a landmark of post-apocalyptic literature.

    Book details

    AuthorCormac McCarthy
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)287
    SettingA devastated post-apocalyptic United States, heading toward the southern coast
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction 2007

    Themes

    • Fatherhood
    • Survival
    • Hope
    • Morality amid collapse
    • Love

    Who should read it

    Readers who can handle darkness and want a spare, powerful story about a parent's love.

    If you liked this, try

    • Station Eleven
    • Blood Meridian
    • Never Let Me Go

  • The Book Thief

    In 1939, nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is taken to live with foster parents on Himmel Street in Molching, a small town near Munich. On the way, at her brother's graveside, she picks up her first stolen book, a gravedigger's handbook she cannot yet read. Her accordion-playing foster father, Hans Hubermann, teaches her letters in the basement late at night, while his sharp-tongued wife Rosa hides real tenderness.

    Liesel befriends Rudy Steiner, a lemon-haired neighbour who idolises Jesse Owens, and begins rescuing books from Nazi bonfires and the library of the mayor's wife. The Hubermanns then take a dangerous step by hiding Max Vandenburg, a young Jewish man, in their basement. Words become Liesel's way of understanding and resisting the world around her.

    The narrator is Death, weary, wry and oddly compassionate, who announces some events in advance and comments on human nature. Zusak, an Australian whose parents grew up in Germany and Austria, drew on their stories. Published for adults in Australia and as young adult fiction elsewhere, the book became an international bestseller and a 2013 film.

    Book details

    AuthorMarkus Zusak
    First published2005
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)552
    SettingMolching, a fictional town near Munich, Germany, 1939-1943
    AwardsMichael L. Printz Honor 2007

    Themes

    • The power of words
    • Death
    • Courage
    • Friendship
    • Life under Nazism

    Who should read it

    Teenagers and adults who want a moving Second World War story about books, family and kindness.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Diary of a Young Girl
    • All the Light We Cannot See
    • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

  • A Thousand Splendid Suns

    Mariam is born outside marriage near Herat in the 1960s, the daughter of a wealthy man who visits but will not acknowledge her publicly. At fifteen she is married off to Rasheed, a much older shoemaker in Kabul, and her life narrows to his house and his moods as she fails to give him the son he wants.

    Years later Laila, a bright girl raised by a bookish father who believes in educating daughters, grows up on the same street, in love with her childhood friend Tariq. The civil war that follows the Soviet withdrawal tears her life apart and brings her into Rasheed's household. The two women begin as rivals but slowly form a bond that sustains them through the rise of the Taliban.

    Hosseini shifts focus from fathers and sons, the heart of The Kite Runner, to mothers, daughters and the experience of Afghan women under successive regimes. The novel traces history from the monarchy to the post-2001 period through the domestic lives of its heroines. It is often praised for its emotional force and its portrait of endurance and quiet courage.

    Book details

    AuthorKhaled Hosseini
    First published2007
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)372
    SettingHerat and Kabul, Afghanistan, 1960s to early 2000s

    Themes

    • Women's lives under oppression
    • Female friendship
    • Domestic abuse
    • War
    • Sacrifice

    Who should read it

    Readers who were moved by The Kite Runner or want a novel about women's resilience in wartime.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Kite Runner
    • The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
    • A Fine Balance

  • The Kite Runner

    Amir grows up in an affluent Kabul neighbourhood in the 1970s, the son of a charismatic businessman he calls Baba. His constant companion is Hassan, the son of the family's servant and a member of the persecuted Hazara minority. Hassan is fiercely loyal, and the two boys excel together at kite fighting, a beloved Afghan winter pastime.

    On the day of a great kite tournament, Amir witnesses an act of cruelty against Hassan and fails to intervene, a choice that poisons their friendship. When the Soviet invasion forces Amir and Baba to flee to Fremont, California, Amir builds a new life as a writer, but the past is unfinished. Years later a phone call from an old family friend draws him back to a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

    Hosseini's debut novel became a global bestseller, valued for its portrait of Afghan life before decades of war and for its emotional story of guilt and redemption. It touches on ethnic discrimination, father-son relationships and the immigrant experience. It was adapted into a film in 2007 and is widely read in book clubs and schools.

    Book details

    AuthorKhaled Hosseini
    First published2003
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)371
    SettingKabul, Afghanistan, and Fremont, California, 1970s to 2001

    Themes

    • Guilt and redemption
    • Friendship
    • Fathers and sons
    • Ethnic discrimination
    • Exile

    Who should read it

    Readers who want an emotional, page-turning story set against Afghanistan's recent history.

    If you liked this, try

    • A Thousand Splendid Suns
    • And the Mountains Echoed
    • The Book Thief

  • Life of Pi

    Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi, grows up in Pondicherry, where his father runs a zoo. A curious, spiritual boy, he becomes a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim all at once, to the confusion of the local priests. When his family decides to emigrate to Canada with some of their animals, they sail on a Japanese cargo ship that sinks in the Pacific.

    Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a fully grown Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Much of the novel describes his survival over months at sea: rationing supplies, fishing, catching rainwater, learning to establish dominance over the tiger, and coping with despair, hunger and moments of wonder, including a strange floating island.

    Martel frames the story as one told to a writer who hears it is a tale that will make him believe in God, which signals the novel's interest in faith, storytelling and how people choose to understand suffering. It won the Booker Prize in 2002 and was adapted by Ang Lee into an Oscar-winning film.

    Book details

    AuthorYann Martel
    First published2001
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)319
    SettingPondicherry, India, and a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean, 1970s
    AwardsBooker Prize 2002

    Themes

    • Faith
    • Survival
    • Storytelling
    • Animals and humans
    • Truth

    Who should read it

    Readers who want an adventure story that doubles as a meditation on belief.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Old Man and the Sea
    • Robinson Crusoe
    • The Alchemist

  • Never Let Me Go

    Kathy H., now in her early thirties and working as a carer, recalls growing up at Hailsham, an apparently idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. The students are encouraged to make art and poetry, guarded closely by their teachers, called guardians, and told very little about the outside world or why they are there.

    Her memories centre on two friends: Ruth, bossy and eager to belong, and Tommy, a boy prone to rages who struggles with art. The three form a lasting triangle of affection and rivalry that carries on after they leave Hailsham for a run-down farm called the Cottages, and as adults they piece together the truth about their own purpose.

    Ishiguro reveals his premise gradually, through Kathy's calm, matter-of-fact narration, which makes the book's speculative element more unsettling rather than less. It is less a story about science than about how people accept the lives they are given, and about memory, love and mortality. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a 2010 film.

    Book details

    AuthorKazuo Ishiguro
    First published2005
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)288
    SettingHailsham boarding school and rural England, late 20th century

    Themes

    • Mortality
    • Friendship
    • Acceptance
    • Memory
    • What makes us human

    Who should read it

    Readers who like quietly devastating literary fiction with a speculative edge.

    If you liked this, try

    • Klara and the Sun
    • The Remains of the Day
    • The Handmaid's Tale

  • Kafka on the Shore

    On his fifteenth birthday, a boy who calls himself Kafka Tamura runs away from his father's home in Tokyo, haunted by a dark prophecy and the absence of his mother and sister, who left when he was small. He ends up in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, where he finds refuge in a quiet private library run by the elegant, reserved Miss Saeki and a sharp librarian named Oshima.

    In alternating chapters, Satoru Nakata, an elderly man left unable to read after a strange incident during the Second World War, earns pocket money by finding lost cats, with whom he can converse. A violent encounter sends him on the road too, accompanied by a good-natured truck driver named Hoshino. Fish fall from the sky, Colonel Sanders appears, and the two journeys draw toward each other.

    Murakami borrows the shape of Greek tragedy, especially the Oedipus myth, and blends it with Japanese folklore, pop culture and classical music. The novel resists tidy explanation and invites readers to live with mysteries. Philip Gabriel's translation won it a wide English readership, and it received the World Fantasy Award in 2006.

    Book details

    AuthorHaruki Murakami
    First published2002
    Original languageJapanese
    Translated byPhilip Gabriel
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)467
    SettingTokyo and Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan
    AwardsWorld Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2006

    Themes

    • Fate
    • Identity
    • Memory
    • The unconscious
    • Loss of a parent

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy dreamlike, puzzling fiction that mixes myth, metaphysics and everyday detail.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
    • 1Q84
    • Norwegian Wood