As 2011 draws to a close, we put together a best of the year list pulled entirely from books we reviewed:

1. Fiasco by Imre Kertész (Melville House)
Kertész is the greatest living writer in Europe, maybe the world, and Fiasco is perfect. That is not hyperbole.

2. The Absent Sea by Carlos Franz (McPherson and Company)
A powerful novel about the legacy of Pinochet that has been criminally overlooked by the critical establishment.

3. Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya (New Directions)
Central America’s Thomas Bernhard has yet to disappoint.

4. Suicide by Edouard Levé (Dalkey Archive)
Haunting book made more haunting by the real suicide of the author.

5. Erasure by Percival Everett (Graywolf)
Paperback reprint of Everett’s classic novel about race and publishing.

6. A Heaven of Others by Joshua Cohen (Starcherone)
New, corrected edition of Cohen’s terrifying vision of the afterlife.

7. The Sexy Part of the Bible by Kola Boof (Akashic)
An African sort-of-sci-fi political feminist thriller that has to be read.

8. Tres by Roberto Bolaño (New Directions)
It was hard to pick which Bolaño to include in this list, but the prose poems stand out even more than the essay collection.

9. Demolishing Nisard by Eric Chevillard (Dalkey Archive)
Obsessive, strange, and hilarious.

10. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (Coffee House)
Lerner’s fiction debut lives up to the hype and speaks to the condition of his generation better than anything else.

11. Charles Olson at Goddard College ed. by Kyle Schlesinger (Cuneiform)
A rare look into the mind of one of the great poets of the 20th Century.

12. From the Observatory by Julio Cortazar (Archipelago)
Cortazar’s mixing of two unrelated subjects is masterful.

13. 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction ed. by Blake Butler and Lily Hoang (Starcherone)
A more experimental alternative to the New Yorker’s list. The Shane Jones story is worth the price of admission.

14. The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton (NYRB Classics)
The assassination of Lincoln is retold in this exciting and powerful novel.

15. The Snow Whale by John Minichillo (Atticus)
The funniest book we reviewed all year. A retelling of Moby Dick that takes on the absurdity of identity and authenticity.