Ten top 20th-century political novels

Tim Pears is the author of seven novels: In the Place of Fallen Leaves (which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), Blenheim Orchard, In a Land of Plenty, A Revolution of the Sun, Wake Up, Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the 2011 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011) and Disputed Land.

In 2003 he named his top ten 20th-century political novels for the Guardian.  One title on the list:

Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (2000)

A forensic anthropologist in America returns to her birthplace, Sri Lanka, with a human rights group to study the bodies of murder victims. Against her will and better judgment she is drawn into the political turmoil behind the violence, forcing herself open to the messy complexity of truth. A dark, challenging, beautiful novel that both describes and answers the writer's (and the reader's) challenge: escape or engagement?

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue