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.

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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.

Warren Adler – The War of the Roses

roman uit 1981
Nederlandse vertaling: The War of the Roses
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Jaren 80-klassieker over een huwelijk in verval, een onvergetelijk portret van een scheiding. In deze vlijmscherpe, zwarte komedie doen beide echtgenoten er alles aan om hun wederhelft te vernietigen – tot elke prijs…lees verder >

James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room

roman uit 1956
Nederlandse vertaling: Giovanni’s kamer
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
In het Parijs van de jaren vijftig valt de jonge Amerikaan David voor de Italiaanse barman Giovanni. Als Davids verloofde Hella terugkeert van een reis raakt hij verscheurd tussen zijn verlangens en de conventionele moraal. Ondertussen neemt het leven van Giovanni een vreselijke wending…lees verder >

Djuna Barnes – Nightwood

roman uit 1936
Nederlands vertaling: Nachtwoud
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
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 >

John Fante – Wait Until Spring, Bandini

roman uit 1938, Bandini Quartet 1
Nederlandse vertaling: Wacht op het voorjaar, Bandini
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
A powerful, lyrical and touching tale of a turbulent adolescent trying to break out of the suffocating, prison-like confinements of family, poverty and religion in a small town, Wait Until Spring, Bandini tells the story of a winter in the childhood of Arturo Bandini, oldest son of Italian immigrants living in Colorado during the Great Depression…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 >

Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections

familieroman uit 2001
Nederlandse vertaling: De correcties
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
The Lamberts – Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children – are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to Parkinson’s. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas…lees verder >

Jewelle Gomez – The Gilda Stories

futuristische slavernijroman uit 1991
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men’s clothing and seem to know others’ innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to ‘share the blood’ and live forever. They name her Gilda. Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, gold-rush bars, Black women’s suffrage groups, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world…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
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
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 >

Elaine Kraf – I Am Clarence

roman uit 1969
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
For Clarence’s mother, life revolves around her young son; she takes him to see specialists to find the cause of his blindness and developmental delays, protects him from the cruelty of other children, and loves him tenderly. But she has her own struggles too. Her sanity is precarious and fractured, making caregiving increasingly difficult…lees verder >

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

roman uit 1960
Nederlandse vertaling: Spaar de spotvogel
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
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
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
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 >

Cormac McCarthy – The Border Trilogy

Amerikaanse westernromans
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
The Crossing (1994)
Cities of the Plain (1998)
Nederlandse vertaling: De grenstrilogie
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
De jongemannen in deze drie klassieke meesterwerken groeien op in de jaren dertig op ranches in het zuidwesten van de VS. Aan de andere kant van de grens lonkt Mexico, met zijn desolate schoonheid en zijn wrede belofte van een plek waar dromen met bloed bekostigd worden…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 >

Larry McMurtry – Lonsesome Dove

Amerikaanse westernroman uit 1971
Winnaar Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1986
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
This is the story of a group of audacious cowboys on a perilous cattle drive across the sprawling wilderness, from Texas to Montana. Bound by duty and hardened by the relentless frontier, their shared journey embodies the enduring spirit of the West. The saga paints the American West with a palette of nuanced characters, from heroes to outlaws, in a narrative that is as unflinching as it is captivating…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 >

Henry Miller – Sexus

The Rosy Crusifixion 1

autobiografische erotische roman uit 1949
Nederlandse vertaling: Sexus
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Henry Miller called the end of his life in America and the start of a new, bohemian existence in 1930s Paris his ‘rosy crucifixion’. His searing fictionalized autobiography of this time of liberation was banned for nearly twenty years. Sexus, the first volume in The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, looks back to his early sexual escapades in Brooklyn, and his growing infatuation with the playful, teasing dance hall hostess who will become the great obsession of his life…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 >

Ann Petry – The Street

Afro-Amerikaanse roman over Harlem uit 1946
Nederlandse vertaling: De straat
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitmuntend)
De straat, de roman van de Afro-Amerikaanse schrijfster Ann Petry verscheen in 1946 en werd een verkoopsucces met zo’n 1 miljoen verkochte exemplaren. Het boek is gesitueerd in de New Yorkse wijk Harlem in de veertiger jaren van de vorige eeuw en schetst het leven van een alleenstaande jonge vrouw die samen met haar zoon zo goed en zo kwaad als het kan verbetering aan te brengen in haar miserabele leefomstandigheden en een bestaan probeert op te bouwen…recensie lezen >

Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged

roman uit 1957
Nederlandse vertaling: De kracht van Atlantis
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
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 >

James Salter – A Sport and a Pastime

Amerikaanse roman uit 1967
Nederlandse vertaling: Spel en tijdverdrijf
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
A Sport and a Pastime is a seductive classic that established James Salter’s reputation as one of the finest writers of our time. It is remarkable for its eroticism, its luminous prose and its ability to explore the boundaries between what is dreamt and what is lived, between body and soul…lees verder >

Leslie Marmon Silko – Ceremony

native American roman
Nederlandse vertaling: Ceremony
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Tayo, a young Second World War veteran of mixed ancestry, is coming home. But, returning to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, he finds himself scarred by his experiences as a prisoner of war, and further wounded by the rejection he finds among his own people. Only by rediscovering the traditions, stories and ceremonies of his ancestors can he start to heal, and find peace…lees verder >

Jean Stafford – The Mountain Lion

coming of age-roman uit 1947
Waardering redactie: ∗∗∗∗∗ (uitstekend)
Ralph and Molly are inseparable siblings: united against the stupidity of daily routines, their prim mother and prissy older sisters, the world of adult authority. One summer, they are sent from their childhood home in suburban Los Angeles to their uncle’s Colorado mountain ranch, where they write, hunt, roam. But this untamed wilderness soon becomes tainted by dark stirrings of sexual desire…lees verder >

Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose

westernroman uit 1971
Nederlandse vertaling: De fundamenten van ons leven
Winnaar Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1972
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)