1925:It is the height of the modernist period in literature, numerous books later considered classics are published. These works include Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, T. S. Eliot'sThe Hollow Men, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans, and Virginia Woolf s Mrs. Dalloway. The 1925 Pulitzer Prize for fiction goes to Edna Ferber for her novel So Big.

Today:Recent British and American books that have earned praise include Alice McDermott's novel about ill-fated romance and family deception, Charming Billy, which won the National Book Award; Ian McEwan's exploration of personal intrigue and public humiliation, Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; Phillip Roth's examination of a father-daughter relationship in the turbulent 1960s, American Pastoral, honored with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction; and Rafi Zabor' s uniquely humorous story about...