Sean Musial, Managing Editor

Postmodernist literature is a style of experimental writing that rose to popularity in the late 1950s and 1960s. It rejects what modernism created and embraces confusion, irony, and the idea that the reality we live in is made up of multiple points of view rather than just one singular truth/identity. The stories that fit into this category tend to consist of these key features: metafiction, fragmentation, unreliable narrators, intertextuality and pastiche. 

To get a better understanding of what a postmodern novel actually is, here are seven of the best novels that fit this description: 

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 

One of the defining novels of the 90’s, the 1,097-page thrilling epic with 388 endnotes and around 300 to 350 named characters has been labeled one of the hardest books to read. With that intimidating overview, Infinite Jest is a deep dive into addiction, depression and entertainment that is presented in a darkly philosophical yet humorously absurd tone. Do you dare to be one of the few to pick it up and finish the entire book? A book that seems mandatory to have at least two bookmarks to keep up with the main plot and every single endnote you have to flip back-and-forth to get to? 

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

Published in 1969, it is a semi-autobiographical anti-war novel about a man named Billy Pilgrim: a WWII soldier who becomes “unstuck in time,” captured by German troops, and eventually abducted by aliens, so it goes. It’s a satirical novel that reflects Vonnegut’s PTSD and the experiences he had in war at the destruction of Dresden, but with a twist that makes the novel fight against the public perception of war through a time-jumping plot that makes you question if the main character is in his right mind. 

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 

A counterculture book set in WW2 that embraces the paranoia of the late 60’s and early 70’s in a tale that revolves around V2 rockets and a man’s bizarre erections that seem to interlock with where the bombs land next. Don’t let this strange synopsis fool you. The book is a story with around 400 named characters, a clustered narrative that makes it hard for some to grasp or understand in spots, and a journey through war-torn Europe. 

Underworld by Don DeLillo

Regarded as DeLillo’s magnum opus, this epic spans the second half of the 21st century and starts at an iconic 1951 baseball game. It’s an exploration into pop culture, the politics of the Cold War and forgotten history, with most of the narrative moving backwards from the 1990s, leading back to the 1950s where it had initially begun. The story is a master class in some of the nonlinear elements that make a postmodern novel and is arguably one of the best for someone to try to explain the genre of writing to someone else. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

The grandiose story of the seven generations of the Buendia family living in a fictional town called Macondo. It seamlessly blends magical realism with the everyday lives of the family members as the reader experiences their evolution through time. The novel transcends language with multiple translations and the tens of millions of copies that have been sold since its publication in 1967. 

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

The latest publication in this list, Bolaño’s 2004 novel, is divided into five very distinct parts that are interconnected through a Mexican border city. Throughout the novel, we are given an examination of 20th-century violence, evil, art, literature and the search that lies with the fragmented truth that life and history have provided since the dawn of time. Each part of the novel brings each theme to a different light, but never resolving as clearly as some may hope—a reflection on what some parts of history have given us, or haven’t provided. 

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Considered to be one of the first postmodern books ever written, this satirical war novel ponders a troublesome rule with no real form of escape. Against the backdrop of WWII, if a pilot asks for a mental evaluation to stop flying life-threatening missions, he proves to his commanding officers that he is, in fact, sane, because he understands the gravity and risk of what he is doing in the sky. He must fly! Every page you read makes you understand the absurdity of war and the rules that come at the risk of soldiers. 

Postmodernist books can be difficult reads for the average reader and even incoherent for those who don’t read at all. For an avid reader, postmodern books can challenge someone to truly read between the lines rather than being handed every fact and detail. These types of novels aren’t meant for us to be handed everything on a silver platter. Instead, we are asked to think. No matter how hard it is to get through, in my opinion, we become smarter individuals with every page we get through. We bring together our own understanding of the novel and its message. We finish and flip over that final page, letting our minds become enamored with something complex and out of the ordinary, allowing it to sit with us weeks or months after the book is shut.