By: E&P Staff "Beloved" is most beloved. That was the result of a New York Times Book Review's survey of 124 prominent authors, critics and editors, who selected Toni Morrison?s ?Beloved? as the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years. The results will appear in the May 21 issue of the Book Review.
The Morrison novel, published in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Among those surveyed were noted authors Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Safran Foer, Carlos Fuentes, Nadine Gordimer, John Irving, William Kennedy, Stephen King, Ian McEwan, William Styron, Anne Tyler, William T. Vollmann and Tom Wolfe.
?Beloved? received the most votes of any single work of fiction, but the prolific Philip Roth amassed the most overall votes, with six of his novels among the 22 books that received multiple votes.
Besides "Beloved," those in the top five were Roth?s ?American Pastoral," Don DeLillo's ?Underworld,? Cormac McCarthy's ?Blood Meridian,"
and the collection of John Updike's four "Rabbit" novels, "Rabbit Angstrom."
The survey, according to a Times release, "was inspired by a similar poll conducted by the New York Herald Tribune?s Book Week in 1965, which chose 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison."
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