NY Times 10 best books of 2005

December 11, 2005
Holiday Books
The 10 Best Books of 2005

Fiction

KAFKA ON THE SHORE
By Haruki Murakami.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95.This graceful and dreamily cerebral novel, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, tells two stories - that of a boy fleeing an Oedipal prophecy, and that of a witless old man who can talk to cats - and is the work of a powerfully confident writer. • Review • First Chapter • Featured Author

ON BEAUTY
By Zadie Smith.
Penguin Press, $25.95.In her vibrant new book, a cultural-politics novel set in a place like Harvard, the author of ''White Teeth'' brings everything to the table: a crisp intellect, a lovely wit and enormous sympathy for the men, women and children who populate her story. • Review
PREP
By Curtis Sittenfeld.
Random House, $21.95. Paper, $13.95.This calm and memorably incisive first novel, about a scholarship girl who heads east to attend an elite prep school, casts an unshakable spell and has plenty to say about class, sex and character. • Review • First Chapter

SATURDAY
By Ian McEwan.
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.As bracing and as carefully constructed as anything McEwan has written, this astringent novel traces a day in the life of an English neurosurgeon who comes face to face with senseless violence. • Review • First Chapter • Featured Author

VERONICA
By Mary Gaitskill.
Pantheon Books, $23.This mesmerizingly dark novel from the author of ''Bad Behavior'' and ''Two Girls, Fat and Thin'' is narrated by a former Paris model who is now sick and poor; her ruminations on beauty and cruelty have clarity and an uncanny bite. • Review

Nonfiction
THE ASSASSINS' GATE America in Iraq
By George Packer
.Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.A comprehensive look at the largest foreign policy gamble in a generation, by a New Yorker reporter who traces the full arc of the war, from the pre-invasion debate through the action on the ground. • Review • First Chapter • George Packer Answers Readers' Questions

DE KOONINGAn American Master
By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.
Alfred A. Knopf, $35.A sweeping biography, impressively researched and absorbingly written, of the charismatic immigrant who stood at the vortex of mid-20th-century American art. • Review • Slide Show

THE LOST PAINTING
By Jonathan Harr.
Random House, $24.95.This gripping narrative, populated by a beguiling cast of scholars, historians, art restorers and aging nobles, records the search for Caravaggio's ''Taking of Christ,'' painted in 1602 and rediscovered in 1990. • Review • First Chapter

POSTWAR A History of Europe Since 1945
By Tony Judt.
The Penguin Press, $39.95.Judt's massive, learned, brilliantly detailed account of Europe's recovery from the wreckage of World War II presents a whole continent in panorama even as it sets off detonations of insight on almost every page. • Review

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
By Joan Didion.
Alfred A. Knopf, $23.95.A prose master's harrowing yet exhilarating memoir of a year riven by sudden death (her husband's) and mortal illness (their only child's). • Review • A Profile of Joan Didion • Audio: An Interview • Featured Author • An Essay Adapted From 'The Year of Magical Thinking'