Top Modern Books That Could Become Future Classics 

Explore which 21st-century books could be considered future classics worth reading today. 

Some modern books will become future classics because they explore deep themes, reflect their time, and stay relevant across generations.

Each year, thousands of new fiction and romance novels hit the shelves. But how do you know which ones are destined to last? Which books will still matter decades from now?

There’s no clear list of what modern books should be considered future classics. Unlike 20th-century or vintage novels, today’s books don’t have years of study or review behind them. That leaves many readers unsure about which titles to trust.

Some books get praised for a short time, then fade away. Others grow in value as more people realize their depth. The challenge is figuring out which is which while the books are still new.

You may wonder what makes a book become a classic in the first place. It’s often a mix of timeless themes, strong storytelling, and staying power. Think of dystopian fiction or British contemporary classics that still feel fresh today.

Young adults especially want books that feel current but have meaning. You might like stories that speak to your life now but also think about the future. A top novel from the 21st century could one day be as respected as old literary classics.

If you look for books that explore big ideas and human truth, you're already on the right path. The best books are not just popular—they stay relevant, connect across time, and spark lasting conversations.

On this Content …

1. All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

2. Americanah

3. Beloved

4. Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

5. White Teeth

6. A Thousand Splendid Suns

7. American Gods

8. Gone Girl

9. The Kite Runner

10. Into the Wild

11. Never Let Me Go

12. Underground Railroad

13. Norwegian Wood

14. We Need to Talk About Kevin

15. Educated: A Memoir

1. All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

Author Anthony Dole won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for this novel; no need for proof.

It’s a beautiful, complete story that makes people believe that no matter how hard times are, goodness survives, life dies, and wars end.

The war destroyed not only the countless lives of the country and the family but also left the survivors with lifelong spiritual torture. The story of this war period is full of sadness, helplessness, and hesitation. If there is a choice, who does not want eternal peace?

I’m ashamed to say that I originally watched it for the romantic plot. In fact, the French blind girl and the German boy met for less than a day in total. Much of the novel still writes about their respective fates like rivers.

The Second World War brought them together and quickly separated them. The innocent, intelligent German boy became a nameless state machine because of the war.

The blind French girl lost her father because of the war and was stranded in a French town by the sea. Werner and Marie’s seemingly inexplicable love affair is romantic and cruel.

By the end, Marie, who was already a grandmother, looked down on Paris, and she heard so many voices, those densely packed TV broadcasts.

And when she was sixteen, she only had a radio hidden in the attic. I also like the episode where Jutta goes to find Marie in France at the end.

The grown-up German woman is on the French train, sees the French, and thinks desperately in her heart, “They must have recognized me, maybe I smell like a German. “Isn’t that anti-war not enough to preach without a word?

2. Americanah

This classic modern book is divided into four stages.

• The first stage is when Ifemelu was in high school,

• The second stage is when she first arrived in the United States,

• The third stage is when she slowly settles down in American society, and

• The last stage is when she chooses to go back to Nigeria.

Objectively speaking, each stage has its own characteristics, but subjectively speaking, my personal favorite is the second stage, that is, she came to the United States alone, from the beginning of yearning for infinite possibilities to deep depression.

In the struggle in reality, in the end, she compromised in an instant. I figured that day would stay with her for the rest of my life, that strange tennis coach and that self-loathing that sickened her. But she did give in at that moment, like thousands of desperate people in real life.

One of the things I particularly like about this phase of the story is because of the authenticity, not like she was in phase three, but more of a teenage rebel with a poignant attitude to find all the racial facts in life. contradiction.

She looks for contradictions in white people, in her black-American boyfriends, and in immigrants who have failed to escape their Nigerian background.

These contradictions are true or false, but from a certain point of view, I think it is also a kind of prejudice from her own, a level of thinking that can never transcend race.

It was more like a constant reminder of her own ethnicity than those of white men, their boyfriends, or Nigerian immigrants in hair salons.

Regardless, the angle of this classic modern book is interesting and engaging, especially for someone like me who has a similar experience.

Ifemelu in the book has a slightly embarrassing identity. In one word, I summed up, it can be called a 1.5-generation immigrant.

Such a generation lives in the gap between mainstream society and a generation of immigrants. They may have grown up in foreign countries, or they may have immigrated abroad with their parents at the age of ten, but most of them have very traditional family backgrounds and experienced traditional family education.

This kind of growth process prevents them from being fully integrated into the mainstream local groups, and also unable to integrating with the so-called international students and a generation of immigrants.

They enjoy the unique advantage of being able to speak two or more languages and be fluent in both cultures. At the same time, they also bear the burden of these advantages — the higher-than-average expectations and demands of their parents, and the repression from traditional culture.

In such an embarrassing position where they can advance and retreat but cannot truly belong to a group, the 1.5-generation immigrants formed their own group.

However, as I am in this embarrassing group, I sometimes have questions about myself and the future position of this group in society. It also feels unpredictable.

So when faced with some of Ifemelu’s ideas in the book, I can also smile with deep understanding, which may be the main reason why this book touched me.

3. Beloved

Facing the shelves full of books, my friend recommended I read this classic modern book, <Beloved>. When I read the introduction, it seemed to be a bizarre story describing the love of a mother.

At first reading, there is a considerable degree of pain because the book is very personal. The expression of the angle and the completely unfamiliar situation have thrown the reader into a very strange and helpless situation.

If not so many people said that they should keep reading, I might have given up at the beginning.

After reading, it is really shocking, and it is difficult to describe or retell in simple words. There is a strong maternal love in the book, and there is a stronger love for freedom, which seems to come from the instinct of life.

Slavery, for us, is a familiar word from textbooks, but the simple definition does nothing to help us understand its true meaning. This book institutionalizes the larger society into personal experience, and the reader feels the meaning of slavery.

Of course, if I describe it again, it becomes the language of textbooks. The characters in the book are almost all black people who have no education. Inhuman injustice. The love for freedom grows naturally and cannot be shaken.

The protagonist Sethe’s mother’s love is such a strong feeling that she can exchange her own life for the lives of her children.

But for freedom, she can kill her daughter, to escape her fate as a slave. After reading the famous poem that haunts my mind, “For freedom, both can be thrown away”.

Another deep impression is that the ill-fated black man, the fate of suffering seems to have given them endless endurance, even as broad and benevolent as black soil.

In the classic modern book, many painful and even miserable scenes are described as almost peaceful and indifferent, even beautiful, which is exactly the character of those characters.

I can’t use my shallow language to write notes for such a book, but to record the vibrations in my heart.

4. Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel

Although it is a novel, it is not like a novel. It is very similar to the style of When Breath Becomes Air. Everyone has a rich and subtle perspective hidden deep inside. It’s no surprise to win an award, and it’s no surprise to not win an award. The writing is very good.

Racial conflict is a common literary theme in the United States. But as an outsider, it’s hard to empathize with it all at once. The structure of the novel is really good.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been able to read this classic modern book if it wasn’t on the list.

The theme of the book revolves around racism, and the reading experience is not a lighthearted type; many chapters have flavors and sound effects, there are unfamiliar slaughters and screams, and the familiar stomach acid and innocence of baby vomit in the car. Crying endlessly.

Every black man in the book seems to be suffering. Born black, I’m sorry. But is it really all due to racism? Is equality really impossible?

In fact, the book also gives a positive answer through Michael’s letter, “This is not a place for people to stay. Black and white people are the same, there is no difference.” horrific, violent prisons.

It is said that everyone is equal before the law, and there are indeed such things in the world, like death, disease, and poverty. In front of these demons, blacks and whites, men and women, are the same; there is no difference.

So, is the torment, pain, and struggle of all the characters in the book really because of their skin color? Leonie is jealous of her best friend and co-worker, Misty, because she has always been ostracized by her white lover’s family, feeling that she was born with everything she could dream of because of her milk complexion.

In fact? Is Misty really a jealous girl? Of course not, Misty’s life is just as messy as Leonie’s, working in the smell of drunken vomit, indulging in drugs, and men in jail. But even this made Misty Leonie jealous.

The first half of the book is also about the miserable life of the protagonist’s covenant, the poor life, the mother who suffers from an illness, the indifferent mother, the father in prison, the white grandparents who have not met since birth, and the little sister who is waiting to be fed. , just like a textbook-like image of the protagonist of Les Misérables,

but in the second half of the book, he has become the object of the jealousy of the little boy Richie. Grandpa’s love, small family, and brother-sister friendship, even if only alive, are the sweet dreams that the ghost can’t ask for.

Yoyo’s arrogant and narrow-minded white grandparents and his white father, Michael, have escaped the trap of life because they are white. Of course not, their lives were just as bad and miserable.

But can you deny white people the privileges and bonuses that men are born with in this world? Of course not. You may not be able to sympathize with the equal rights of blacks and whites, and you can only substitute some feelings of equal rights between men and women.

The suffering of everyone in the book comes partly from life itself, but the other part is indeed brought about by skin color and gender, and they need to suffer more and pay more than others. Why “Black life matters” and not “ALL life”

Anyway, there is only one kind of heroism in the world, that is, after recognizing the truth of life, still loving life.

5. White Teeth

Sometimes when I look at the album, I will find that I have completely forgotten the image of myself from many years ago in the album, and I conclude that it is because of too much change.

When I first met “White Teeth” on the sixth floor of the Book Building, I didn’t think I would be interested in this kind of book before, and I bought it purely by chance. When I got home and read it carefully, I felt the taste.

The whole classic modern book reveals a kind of British culture; he is not writing about the British aristocracy, nor is it a pure poor life. But it is a coincidence that two of the three families are full of different skin colors, religions, and beliefs, while the other family resolutely implements its own family’s unique “Sharfenism” in terms of lifestyle and behavior…

It is said that the development of each character is stable, but in the end, you just can’t see their original shadow, and then looking back at their appearance when they appeared, is like looking at the previous photo album to find each person’s lost character.

As the book says, before telling an old story, put a figure back into the stomach one by one like a Russian nesting doll. On the other hand, as long as one link goes wrong, everything will be different.

The intricate layers of religion, ethics, science, and emotion are peeled off in front of your eyes and then rubbed together into this novel.

Various religious beliefs survived together in that era, each fighting for its own status, and each religion also wanted to occupy other people’s minds and influence other people’s cultures.

Generations of people quarreled desperately over the generation gap between them, to prove that they were right, and all kinds of emotions were intertwined and accumulated into one soul after another. There are several very different ways of living in a family.

The world in the book is really dazzling, and you can experience different cultures in different periods from page to page.

6. A Thousand Splendid Suns

Marian, a 15-year-old illegitimate daughter, lives with her mother in a shabby hut in the mountains. Her biggest wish is to watch a movie with her father for her birthday. Unexpectedly, her mother committed suicide, and she was forced to marry a 40-year-old. A widower shoe dealer.

Twenty years later, Laila, a well-educated 15-year-old girl from a middle-class family, lost all her relatives in the war. To survive, she had to choose to marry Marianne’s surly husband.

Although Marian and Laila are 19 years apart and have very different concepts of love and family, their fates are intertwined because of war and bereavement.

After experiencing the abuse of their husbands together, they not only sympathized with each other, but were even more interdependent as mothers and daughters, and finally reversed their own life paths.

With moving force, the author depicts how Afghan women desperately endured suffering and struggled with fate under fire, starvation, tyranny, and fear, and how they bravely sacrificed themselves by their love for their families, In the end, it is also love, or rather, the memory of love, which supports the survivors to live bravely.

It’s a haunting, heartbreaking tale of a brutal age, an impossible friendship, and a love that will never be destroyed.

And although life is full of pain and bitterness, there is a faint glimmer of hope in every tragic story. Thought-provoking and deeply moving, A Thousand Splendid Suns dissects love, sacrifice, and the deepest meaning of being alive.

On every page of “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, there are hidden feelings alive: feelings that cannot be tolerated in the local society but are beautiful, great, and enduring.

Hosseini carefully lays out the life quality of the characters in the classic modern book and uses superb skills to depict the ever-changing human emotions, vividly showing the anger of the abused women. These are what make the content of this book unforgettable and unforgettable.

7. American Gods

That a book about the American gods was written by an Englishman is a profound thing in itself.

I agree with the view that gods become gods because some people believe in them and worship them, and when people stop believing in them, their divinity will dissipate, and they need to rely on some ancient occupations to support themselves, such as prostitutes, grave diggers, liars, wizards, etc.

I think Shadow is a hidden god, a god who didn’t know he was a god but didn’t expect him to be the son of a god — on second thought, it was almost inevitable.

However, as far as a novel is concerned, more than 400 pages is long enough. America is a land fit for human habitation, but not for gods.

And we have always been materialistic, gods stop killing gods, and Buddhas stop killing Buddhas. Few people probably remember the legends in “The Classic of Mountains and Seas”.

It is popular now that comrades who don’t believe in constellations are not good. The gods behind the constellations?! Sorry, those are not important; you just tell me your weekly fortune.

What attracts me most about “American Gods” is “truth” and “richness.” In fact, Neil Gaiman is not talking about gods, but people, and human nature. Lots of subtle details strike my heart suddenly while reading. A few excerpts:

“If all your friends jumped off a cliff to commit suicide, would you jump with them?”.

“Maybe after living in one place for a while, this becomes your home; maybe, home. It’s a place you’ll find eventually, if you go long enough, wait long enough, wait long enough.”

“People are just like that, they can’t live without faith, but they don’t take responsibility for their faith… They fill the darkness they can’t grasp with ghosts, gods, electrons, and legends. They imagine something and then believe it exists, and that’s faith, the most naked faith. That’s how it all started.

8. Gone Girl

Let me get my thoughts together first. This classic modern book is insanely compelling.

I saw myself everywhere, to be honest. I saw myself in Amy, and I saw myself in Nick. I saw myself in their constant lies and fantasies about their illusion of fake and ideal selves.

I saw myself in their irresistible desire to present the best personality to satisfy the thirst to win. I saw myself in their endless struggle to avenge just to get back at those who go against their wishes.

The main catch (also the selling point) of this book, I suppose, is done you really know and how much you think you know that person you go to bed with every day. Imagine one day when you wake up and find your spouse gone, all you’re left with is just evidence accusing you of killing your missing spouse. How horrifying would that be!

All the time, you think you know or even understand that person by your side. And then boom, it’s over. As Amy said, it takes time and discipline to plan this. But besides this, it also takes unthinkable insanity to frame a murderer, which is, by the way, almost perfect.

Reading this book would definitely remind you of your previous relationships, especially the failed ones. It all started really well, with each of you trying to deliver the best possible versions of yourselves.

And how it all changed and faded somehow, with someone “ stopped trying” or “getting tired”. But no matter what happened, it all hurt. Yes, like catastrophically painful. That’s what our ideal love costs us, I’d assume.

While I was going through this novel, interestingly, I had two connections in my mind with Gone Girl. One is about the judicial system of the United States. Just like many fictional cases in Gone Girl or the real ones, such as Simpson, it hardly matters whether or not the accused committed the crime.

What matters is whether the jury thinks he/she did it or not. The truth here is ironically irrelevant. What’s more, in our digital age, it’s impossible to get an unbiased jury without being affected by the media in one way or another.

Another connection is about a quote from Alicia when she tried to explain why she decided to separate from her husband to her daughter. I remember explicitly she said, “Adults have complicated feelings .”

I’ve been pondering this ever since from time to time. It’s interesting to discover how amazingly fit it is to describe how Amy and Nick felt. Yes, adults do have complicated feelings.

But is it justifiable to use this as an excuse to cheat or even murder?

Cheating seems to have become kind of an indispensable part of every relationship now. In every movie I see, and every book I read, there seems to be a cheetah. So are people really incapable of sustaining a faithful relationship, or is monogamy simply wrong?

9. The Kite Runner

This classic modern book is not a grand structure, but it is so vivid that the history of Afghanistan from the time of the king to the Soviet invasion of the Taliban regime is vividly represented.

The whole book is full of true feelings, Amir’s cowardly guilt for redemption is full of development in the storyline, and several episodes are particularly wonderful: Hassan’s sodomy, Baba’s death, the confrontation between Amir and Assef, and Sohrab’s wrist cut.

The downside is that some chapters are slightly dragged, which spoils the rhythm of the story. I haven’t read a few modern novels, and by my standards, this is a memorable one — one that will leave you with a lot to think about and sigh.

The origin of the story lies in Kabul, Afghanistan. The protagonist Amir is a rich young master. At the age of 12, Amir and his servant’s son Hassan participated in the traditional Afghan kite-fighting competition.

Amir defeated all of his opponents, but to win the final victory, he had to chase down the kite that he finally cut. Hassan was the best kite runner in the area. He chased Amir and promised that Amir would catch up.

However, when the kite catches up, Hassan suffers a tragedy. Amir witnessed everything, but with a weak personality, he chose to stand by and again made the wrong choice to force Hassan to leave the house.

Then, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Amir and his father fled to the United States and started their new life.

However, many years later, a phone call from Pakistan pulled Amir out of his seemingly peaceful life in a foreign country.

The truth, responsibility, and redemption brought Amir back to Afghanistan, which had been devastated and devastated for many years, to find Hassan’s child. Mir chose his own unique way of atonement…

10. Into the Wild

When I got this classic modern book, what puzzled me the most was how the experience of a young homeless man allowed many reporters to follow his trail and spend a year or two solving the mystery.

More importantly, the book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years, touching the hearts of millions of Americans. After all, Chris is just an unfortunate outcast.

“There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people,” and that’s because readers have added their own understanding of life.

Chris miraculously received so many people’s love, concern, praise, and criticism. Can it be said that they all have a Chris in their hearts?

Some readers may argue that who would go to a place with no water and no electricity to eat and sleep, it is a paradise for mosquitoes, beasts, and lunatics.

However, who can say that he has never been young, never had a sensitive, rebellious, and longing for a wandering heart? There are “hippies” and “beat generation” in the United States, and they once dreamed of wandering with an acoustic guitar.

However, most of us learn to be prudent and rational in our growth, and even blame those unrealistic homeless people in turn. Because of this, human society reproduces and develops endlessly.

However, a small group of marginalized people who are regarded as alternatives, physical or spiritual nomads, can’t let go of their aesthetic stubbornness, in the shadow of neon lights, on the edge of the soul, and insist on that romantic mess, but a noble and moving dream.

Crowded people do not necessarily mean abundance and contentment. Don’t people often feel empty and confused in office buildings, banquets, and 24-hour, brightly lit metropolises?

It’s just that people think that they don’t have enough and are lost because of poverty, so they are more eager to find more fulfilling jobs, rather than a desolate place with nothing.

Some people say that we are insufferable. Most people have never compared this society with one, but choose to silently accept the society, ideas, rules, and even the views of their neighbors created by others.

We weighed ourselves and decided to keep our heads down silently, seasoned with a lot of spiritual food and love beliefs to make it easier to swallow.

People who become legends do not accept this way of living. They say that even if I can’t live, I have to live by myself.

Perhaps the reason so many people lashed out at Chris was that Chris reminded them of their former selves. Once young, sensitive, rebellious, and extreme self. Surprised. Inexplicably lost.

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