The Best Queer Books of the 21st Century, According to the NYT

This Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel was published in 2000 and follows two Jewish cousins during the 1940s who worked in the comics industry during its Golden Age. One of the cousins, Sammy, is gay, and we follow him as he struggles to come to terms with his sexuality during a time when it was dangerous to be suspected of homosexuality. Andrew Sean Greer, the author of Less, says, “Chabon opened the doors not just for comic book nerds, but for every kind of nerd, including this gay one. Chabon’s book made me the writer I am, and I’m still dazzled by it: the century’s first masterpiece.”

As a representation of being intersex, this is a controversial book. It was published in 2002, and in many ways it was groundbreaking, but Eugenides is not intersex and did not consult with any intersex people while writing, relying solely on research. You can read Chris M. Arnone’s review, Intersex Reading Middlesex, for one perspective from an intersex reader.

It’s hard to overstate the accolades of this 2015 sci-fi series. All three books in the trilogy won the Hugo Award, making Jemisin the first author to win a Hugo Award three years in a row or for all three books in a trilogy. The series has many queer characters; Syfy names it one of the queerest SFF novels of the last decade. The New York Times says, “From its heartbreaking opening (a mother’s murdered child) to its shattering conclusion, Jemisin shows the power of what good fantasy fiction can do.”

This 2004 novel won the Man Booker Prize. It’s told in three parts — 1983, 1986, and 1987 — as Nick Guest navigates being gay in 1980s Britain. Nick moves into a wealthy classmate’s home and soon aligns himself with this display of privilege and power, despite their politics directly contributing to the AIDS epidemic. The New York Times says, “Lust, money, literature, power: Rarely has a novel made it all seem so gorgeous, and so annihilating.”