US debut fiction: the best-written novels of the year and century

Read the opening pages of our picks below

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COMING SOON:

—The best-written books of 2024.

—Julian Evans on prose style.

IN TODAY’S ISSUE

—‘Andi Taylor is pumping her hands together, hitting her own flat stomach, thinking not of her mother sitting at home with her little brother, not of her car, which barely got her here, not of her summer job, her lifeguarding at the overcrowded community pool, not of the four-year-old she watched die, the four-year-old she practically killed, and his blue cheeks’: the best-written work on the shortlist for this year’s Centre for Fiction Prize for debuts. The winner will be announced on the 6th of December.

—‘I got the world’: the best-written previous winner of the prize (this choice is part of our project to identify the best-written books of the century).

If you’d l…