10 Great Contemporary Fiction Authors

10 Great Contemporary Fiction Authors | Audible.com

This list is a compilation of 10 of the best authors currently writing contemporary fiction. If you like well-written novels that prioritize compelling timely storylines along with artful prose and structure, then this is the genre for you. While contemporary fiction can be character driven, those characters are affected and shaped by events that happen over the course of the novel. So, why is it called “contemporary”? Because it’s fiction set in the real world, in times contemporary to the date it was published, and the stories deal with real-world issues.

Contemporary fiction isn’t primarily about escapism; rather, it’s about examining the world we live in and trying to make sense of it. With that in mind, here are 10 authors who write amazing contemporary fiction.

Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author with global appeal. While Murakami’s works are primarily set in Japan, the author speaks to the human condition in a way that is identifiable across cultures. It’s no wonder, then, that Murakami’s works have been translated into more than 50 languages. If you’ve got the time and are ready to commit to a longer work, 1Q84, which clocks in at just under 47 hours, is a very rewarding experience. The audiobook, narrated by Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, and Mark Boyett, is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winner and features a bonus interview with the novel’s translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. Looking for something a bit shorter? Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is one of his most popular for a reason. It is truly unforgettable.

1Q84

Tokyo

Don’t approach Murakami expecting instant payoff. At least that’s what my friends warned me before I tackled 1Q84, the heralded author’s heftiest book. My previous Murakami experience was limited to What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a meditative take on the sport that obsesses him. This magic-realist tale about a male writer, Tengo, and a female assassin named Aomame can’t be easily summed up, and Allison Hiroto’s calm, measured narration reveals the tangled parallel plot, drip by drip. Meanwhile Tokyo, in its isolating and frenetic way, takes shape: “Nighttime Tokyo poured its light into the room. Tokyo Tower’s floodlights, the lamps lining the elevated expressway, the moving headlights of cars, the lighted windows of high-rise buildings, the colorful rooftop neon signs: they all combined to illuminate the hotel room with that mixed light unique to the big city ... Aomame saw the light with a pang of familiarity. This was the light from the world to which she herself belonged.”

Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist whose fiction often explores themes of race and oppression in America. He recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2019 novel, The Nickel Boys. Set in the 1960s and the near present, the novel is based on the real story of the Dozier School, a Florida reform school that became notorious when investigators uncovered evidence of the horrific abuse inflicted on students by the staff. This is Whitehead’s second time winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; the first was in 2017 for The Underground Railroad, which follows a young slave's journey to freedom. Both prize-winning stories have great narrative voices behind their audiobooks: JD Jackson narrates The Nickel Boys, and Bahni Turpin narrates The Underground Railroad. Two of the most talented audiobook narrators of our time reading two of today’s most important works of hard-hitting fiction is a combination that's not to be missed.

The Nickel Boys

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020

The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead's follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning best seller The Underground Railroad, in which he dramatises another strand of United States history, this time through the story of two boys sentenced to a stretch in a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college.

But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'.

Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's scepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.