# The best Latin American novels

The Latin American novels that appear most often in lists by critics, booksellers and readers: the Boom, its forerunners and the best of recent decades.

- 7 votes · 26 items
- May 22, 2025 · Yesenia C.
- https://even.best/en/l/104/the-best-latin-american-novels

## Top 25

1. **2666** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Roberto Bolaño (Chile), 2004. Five parts around the femicides of Santa Teresa; published after his death.
2. **One Hundred Years of Solitude** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), 1967. Seven generations of the Buendía family in Macondo; the peak of magical realism.
3. **Conversation in The Cathedral** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), 1969. 'At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?': the Odría dictatorship in a four-hour conversation.
4. **Love in the Time of Cholera** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), 1985. Florentino Ariza waits more than half a century for Fermina Daza.
5. **Where the Air Is Clear** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), 1958. A choral portrait of Mexico City in the mid-20th century.
6. **Paradiso** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — José Lezama Lima (Cuba), 1966. José Cemí's coming of age in a uniquely baroque prose.
7. **Pedro Páramo** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Juan Rulfo (Mexico), 1955. Juan Preciado arrives in Comala, a village of murmuring dead.
8. **Hopscotch** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Julio Cortázar (Argentina), 1963. Horacio Oliveira between Paris and Buenos Aires; it can be read in more than one order.
9. **The Devil to Pay in the Backlands** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — João Guimarães Rosa (Brazil), 1956. The bandit Riobaldo tells his life in a reinvented Portuguese.
10. **The Invention of Morel** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina), 1940. A fugitive on an island with visitors who repeat themselves; Borges called it perfect.
11. **The Savage Detectives** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Roberto Bolaño (Chile), 1998. Two 'visceral realist' poets search for Cesárea Tinajero; Rómulo Gallegos Prize.
12. **The Feast of the Goat** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), 2000. Trujillo's last days in the Dominican Republic.
13. **Explosion in a Cathedral** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Alejo Carpentier (Cuba), 1962. The French Revolution reaches the Caribbean aboard Victor Hugues' ship.
14. **The House of the Spirits** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Isabel Allende (Chile), 1982. Four generations of the Trueba family up to the coup d'état.
15. **Recollections of Things to Come** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Elena Garro (Mexico), 1963. The town of Ixtepec narrates the Cristero War; for many, the best Latin American novel written by a woman.
16. **A Brief Life** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay), 1950. Brausen invents Santa María, the city of all Onetti's work.
17. **Chronicle of a Death Foretold** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), 1981. The whole town knew Santiago Nasar was going to be killed.
18. **On Heroes and Tombs** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Ernesto Sabato (Argentina), 1961. Martín and Alejandra, with the 'Report on the Blind' at its heart.
19. **The Tunnel** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Ernesto Sabato (Argentina), 1948. The painter Juan Pablo Castel confesses from prison that he killed María Iribarne.
20. **A World for Julius** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Alfredo Bryce Echenique (Peru), 1970. The childhood of a boy from Lima's upper class.
21. **Dom Casmurro** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Machado de Assis (Brazil), 1899. Did Capitu betray Bentinho? The great doubt of Brazilian literature.
22. **The President** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala), 1946. A dictator novel by the future Nobel laureate.
23. **The Truce** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Benedetti (Uruguay), 1960. The diary of a widowed office worker about to retire who falls in love.
24. **Son of Man** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay), 1960. Paraguay's history from Dr Francia's dictatorship to the Chaco War.
25. **Like Water for Chocolate** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Laura Esquivel (Mexico), 1989. Tita expresses her feelings through cooking; a worldwide success.
26. **The Time of the Hero** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), 1963. Cadets at the Leoncio Prado military school; it opened the Boom.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.