Beste Amerikaanse romans. Wat zijn de allerbeste romans van Amerikaanse schrijvers en schrijfsters? Welke romans uit de Verenigde Staten worden gezien als de beste?

Beste Amerikaanse romans

Uiteraard kun je uitgebreid discussiëren over wat de beste Amerikaanse romans zijn? Sterker nog iedere lezer zal zijn persoonlijke voorkeur hebben. Dus een top zoveel lijst van de beste romans van uit de Verenigde Staten afkomstige auteurs is niet helemaal nuttig.

• Beste Chicago romans thrillers en andere boeken

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Wat zijn de beste Amerikaanse romans?

Onze redactie kiest ervoor om een alfabetisch overzicht te maken van Amerikaanse romans die volgens velen het lezen meer dan waard zijn. Er zullen bovendien nieuwe uitstekende en uitmuntende romans van Amerikaanse schrijvers en schrijfsters worden toegevoegd. Ook is er aandacht voor de Nederlandse vertaling van de roman, mits deze verschenen is, uiteraard.

Djuna Barnes – Nightwood

roman uit 1936
Nederlands vertaling: Nachtwoud
In Nachtwoud vertelt Djuna Barnes de verhalen van een groep Amerikaanse en Europese ontwortelden in het Parijs van de jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw, die in de marges van de maatschappij leven: circusartiesten, homoseksuelen, transgenders, travestieten – een nachtelijke onderwereld, excentriek, louche en mooi…lees verder >

Truman Capote – In Cold Blood

A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
true crime roman uit 1966
Nederlandse vertaling: In koelen bloede
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote’s comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved…lees verder >

Willa Cather – The Song of the Lark

Amerikaanse roman uit 1915, The Prairie Trilogy 2
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Thea Kronberg, a young girl from a small town in Colorado has a great gift – her beautiful singing voice. Her talent takes her to the great opera houses of Europe, and through ambition and hard work, she forges a life as an artist. But if she can never go home again, nor can she leave behind her past…lees verder >

Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man

sociale roman uit 1952
Nederlandse vertaling
Nederlandse vertaling: Onzichtbare man
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Defeated and embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being, the ‘invisible man’ retreats into an underground cell, where he smokes, drinks, listens to jazz and recounts his search for identity in white society: as an optimistic student in the Deep South, in the north with the black activist group the Brotherhood, and in the Harlem race riots. And explains how he came to be living underground…lees verder >

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

roman uit 1925
Nederlandse vertaling: De grote Gatsby
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach … Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby – young, handsome, fabulously rich – always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting…lees verder >

Joanne Greenberg – I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

roman uit 1964, gepubliceerd als Hannah Green
Nederlandse vertaling: Ik heb je nooit een rozentuin beloofd  
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Sixteen-year-old Deborah’s identity is shattering, as she retreats further and further from the ‘normal’ world into her imaginary kingdom of Yr, a fantastical inner refuge both lush and horrifying. Sent to a psychiatric hospital, she must, with the help of a gifted psychiatrist, try to find a way back…lees verder >

Joseph Heller – Catch-22

roman over de Tweede Wereldoorlog uit 1961
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: Catch-22
It’s the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, each flight mission introduces him to thousands of people determined to kill him. But the enemy above is not Yossarian’s problem – it is his own army intent on keeping him airborne…lees verder >

S.E. Hinton – The Outsiders

coming of age-roman uit 1967
Nederlandse vertaling: De outsiders
The bestselling American classic of youthful rebellion and coming of age on the streets, adapted into an award-winning film by Francis Ford Coppola. The Greasers and the rich-kid Socs are at war on the Tulsa streets. Ponyboy, a fourteen-year-old brawler, chainsmoker and dreamer, is a fiercely loyal greaser. But a single, murderous catastrophe is to wrench him from his old life and overturn everything he thinks he knows…lees verder >

Langston Hughes – Not Without Laughter

Harlem Renaissance roman uit 1930
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
In a poor town in Kansas, an African American family struggles. At its centre sits Sandy Rodgers – a young boy attempting to find purpose amid the chaos, meagreness and music of his surroundings. His narrative intertwines with those of his family – his wandering father, his fervent grandmother, his blues-singing aunt – to create a brilliantly intricate portrait of Black life in the early twentieth century…lees verder >

Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

roman uit 1962
Nederlandse vertaling: En ééntje zag ze vliegen
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electroshock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates…lees verder >

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

roman uit 1960
Nederlandse vertaling: Spaar de spotvogel
Summers for Scout in the Deep South are long and golden. Her story is one of innocence, and growing up. It is also about justice. When Scout’s father Atticus Finch, a lawyer, agrees to defend a black man against an accusation by a white girl, he takes on the prejudice of the whole town…lees verder >

Jack London – The Call of the Wild

roman uit 1903
Nederlandse vertaling: De roep van de wildernis
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London’s vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author’s unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest…lees verder >

William Maxwell – So Long, See You Tomorrow

roman uit 1980
Nederlandse vertaling: Tot ziens, tot morgen
In the quiet farmlands of Illinois, two lonely teenagers – bound by the burden of their rural lives – forge a delicate friendship. But when jealousy ignites between their farming families, it leads to unthinkable tragedy, and severs their bond forever. Fifty years later, haunted by the past, the narrator seeks to piece together those harrowing events and find redemption for a lifetime of regret…lees verder >

Bernice L. McFadden –  Sugar

roman uit 2000
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
When she arrives in the southern town of Bigelow, it isn’t long before the neighbourhood is alight with gossip and suspicion. Sugar fears her past is catching up with her. Then she meets Pearl, a woman trying to forget her own trauma. As these next-door neighbours become unlikely friends, they wonder if their lives could finally be changing for the better. But small towns have long memories…lees verder >

Claude McKay – Home to Harlem

Harlem Renaissance roman uit 1928
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
When Jake Brown joins the army during the First World War, he is treated more like a slave than a soldier. After deserting his post to escape the racial violence he is facing, Jake travels back home to Harlem. But despite the distance, Jake cannot seem to escape the past and the explosive ways in which it can culminate…lees verder >

Herman Melville – Moby-Dick

avonturenroman uit 1851
Nederlandse vertaling: Moby-Dick
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Moby-Dickis a haunting social commentary, populated by some of the most enduring characters in literature; the crew of the Pequod, from stern, Quaker First Mate Starbuck, to the tattooed Polynesian harpooner Queequeg, are a vision of the world in microcosm, the pinnacle of Melville’s lifelong meditation on America…lees verder >

Toni Morrison – Beloved

historische slavernijroman uit 1987
Nederlandse vertaling: Beminde
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home – the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, ‘Beloved’…lees verder >

Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged

roman uit 1957
Nederlandse vertaling: De kracht van Atlantis
Opening with the enigmatic question ‘Who is John Galt?’, Atlas Shrugged envisions a world where the ‘men of talent’ – the great innovators, producers and creators – have mysteriously disappeared. With the US economy now faltering, businesswoman Dagny Taggart is struggling to get the transcontinental railroad up and running. For her John Galt is the enemy, but as she will learn, nothing in this situation is quite as it seems…lees verder >

J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye

coming of age-roman uit 1951
Nederlandse vertaling: De vanger in het graan
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic coming-of-age story: an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind…lees verder >

Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose

westernroman uit 1971
Nederlandse vertaling: De fundamenten van ons leven
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
An iconic novel of the American West — a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of the past. Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada. Living with a debilitating bone disease, he embarks on a search of monumental proportions, as he strives to rediscover the life of his grandmother – now long dead…lees verder >

John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath

roman uit 1939
Nederlandse vertaling: De druiven der gramschap
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck’s Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness…lees verder >

John Steinbeck – East of Eden

roman uit 1952
Nederlandse vertaling: Ten oosten van Eden
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
East of Eden was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America’s most enduring novels…lees verder >

Wallace Thurman – The Blacker the Berry

Harlem Renaissance roman uit 1929
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first novel to openly address prejudice among black Americans and the issue of colorism, The Blacker the Berry is a book of undiminished power about the invidious role of skin color in American society…lees verder >

Edith Wharton – The Age of Innocence

roman uit 1920
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Nederlandse vertaling: De jaren van onschuld
The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society. Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingénue, when May’s cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence…lees verder >

Edith Wharton – The Glimpses of the Moon

roman uit 1922
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Inhoud roman: Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young and attractive, but penniless. Gracefully moving through New York high society, they have the right connections but none of the wealth. When they inconveniently fall in love, Susy devises a plan. They will marry and spend a year flitting across Europe, staying in the homes of their rich friends and living off honeymoon gifts until either one of them meets a better, richer prospect…lees verder >

Marguerite Young – Miss MacIntosh, My Darling

roman uit 1968
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Inhoud roman: This novel is one of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of our time. It is a picaresque, psychological novel—a novel of the road, a journey or voyage of the human spirit in its search for reality in a world of illusion and nightmare. It is an epic of what might be called the Arabian Nights of American life. Marguerite Young’s method is poetic, imagistic, incantatory; in prose of extraordinary richness she tests the nature of her characters—and the nature of reality…lees verder >

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Bijpassende boeken en informatie

• Amerikaanse schrijfsters
• Amerikaanse schrijvers
• Beste Engelse romans

Afbeelding bovenzijde: E, Robertson (Unsplash)