Books ‘95

No list of the year’s best books could be long enough to satisfy all the authors, critics and readers who have some reason to hope that a particular work will be there. But if more good books appeared in 1995 than we have room to mention, this list is a good place to start.

Fiction

“All the Days and Nights,” by William Maxwell (Knopf, $25). Winner of this year’s Heartland Prize for fiction, this book collects the stories of an American master.

“Novels, Stories and Other Writings,” by Zora Neale Hurston (Library of America, 2 vols. $35 each). A major African-American writer gets her due at last.

“The Polish Officer,” by Alan Furst (Random House, $23). A modern Eric Ambler with a flavor all his own, Furst writes of spying before and during World War II.

“Arabian Nights and Days,” by Naguib Mahfouz (Doubleday, $22.95). The Egyptian novelist plays variations on a classic tale.

“Moo,” by Jane Smiley (Knopf, $24). In Smiley’s inventive satire, many things go haywire at a vast Midwestern university.

“Ladder of Years,” by Anne Tyler (Knopf, $24). A woman flees her family to build a new life in a small town.

“The Man Without Qualities,” by Robert Musil (Knopf, 2 vols. $65). Musil’s masterly epic of pre-World War I Vienna is given a new and more complete translation.

“The Matisse Stories,” by A.S. Byatt (Random House, $17). The painter’s works inspire three fanciful tales.

“The Information,” by Martin Amis (Harmony, $24). A failed writer is bedeviled by a bad but successful one in this fierce, lyrical farce.

“Poison,” by Kathryn Harrison (Random House, $23). This tragic tale of two women in 17th century Spain is a remarkable act of imaginative re-creation.

“Interstate,” by Stephen Dixon (Holt, $25). Dixon gives us eight ways of looking at a deadly incident.

“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape,” by Michel Butor (Dalkey Archive, $19.95). Translated at last, this is a pathbreaking 1967 work by a pioneer of the French “new novel.”

“The Richer, The Poorer,” by Dorothy West (Doubleday, $22). West’s stories probe the anomalies of growing up African-American.

“Night Departure and No Place,” by Emmanuel Bove (Four Walls Eight Windows, $25, $14 paper). A Frenchman escapes from a World War II prison camp but not from himself.

“Sabbath’s Theater,” by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin, $24.95). Roth’s enraged, lustful hero rails against the constraints of the human condition.

“RL’s Dream,” by Walter Mosley (Norton, $22). Mosley spins a tale about bluesman Robert Johnson.

“The First Man,” by Albert Camus (Knopf, $23). Camus’ unfinished, powerful first novel finally appears.

“Mrs. Ted Bliss,” by Stanley Elkin (Hyperion, $22.95). Elkin wryly celebrates a widow in a Florida condo.

“The Chess Garden,” by Brooks Hansen (Farrar Straus Giroux, $22). Game pieces come to life in a fable of good and evil.

“The Master and Margarita,” by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ardis, $35). This is a new, complete translation of a Russian modernist masterwork.

“All Souls’ Rising,” by Madison Smartt Bell (Pantheon, $25). Bell imagines his way into Haiti’s 18th century slave revolt.

“The Unconsoled,” by Kenzo Ishiguro (Knopf, $25). A concert pianist finds himself adrift in a dreamlike city.

“The Hundred Secret Senses,” by Amy Tan (Putnam, $24.95). Two Chinese half-sisters find they have lived prior lives.

“The Island of the Day Before,” by Umberto Eco (Harcourt Brace, $25). A 17th century castaway confronts the dawn of modern consciousness.

Nonfiction

“A Biographical Dictionary of Film,” by David Thomson (Knopf, $40, $25 paper). This is an often controversial but always stimulating guide.

“Chuck Jones,” by Hugh Kenner (University of California Press, $16). A literary critic celebrates the creator of the “Roadrunner” cartoons.

“A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2,” by John P. Meier (Doubleday, $35). What in the Gospels can we accept as historically factual? Meier offers fascinatingly detailed answers.

“The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison” (Norton, 3 vols., $150). These letters are a vital part of America’s heritage.

“Charlotte Bronte,” by Lyndall Gordon (Norton, $27.50). Gordon captures the author of “Jane Eyre.”

“An Anthropologist on Mars,” by Oliver Sacks (Knopf, $24). Sacks is at his best in this collection of unusual neurological case histories.

“A Sistermony,” by Richard Stern (Donald I. Fine, $17.50). Winner of this year’s Heartland Prize for nonfiction, this is a graceful, moving account of the life and death of Stern’s sister.

“Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters” (Viking, $25). As good as his best fiction, the first batch of Kerouac’s letters is an instant classic.

“Crossing the Line,” by Alvin Kernan (Naval Institute Press, $21.95). In this remarkable World War II memoir, a literary critic recalls his youth in the U.S. Navy.

“Dreaming,” by Carolyn See (Random House, $23). See’s is a surprisingly funny account of growing up amid a family of alcoholics and eccentrics.

“God: A Biography,” by Jack Miles (Knopf, $27.50). Miles looks at the Old Testament in a new way.

“The Romantic Generation” by Charles Rosen (Harvard, $39.95). Chopin, Liszt and Schumann are at the center of this major work of history and criticism.

“The Liars’ Club,” by Mary Karr (Viking, $22.95). With rare honesty and skill, Karr evokes her tough Texas childhood.

“The Executive Way,” by Calvin Morrill (University of Chicago Press, $27.50). A sociologist takes a detailed, “inside” look at the hows and whys of American corporate warfare.

“Walden: The Annotated Edition,” edited by Walter Harding (Houghton Mifflin, $30). Thoreau’s text comes wrapped in notes that tell readers everything that’s known about the work’s background.

“Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb,” by Richard Rhodes (Simon & Schuster, $32.50). At once ghastly and fascinating, Rhodes’ account captures a key chapter in modern history.

“Grass Soup,” by Zhang Xianliang (Godine, $21.95). A former political prisoner traces the insidious legacy of Chairman Mao.

“Edward Hopper,” by Gail Levin (Knopf, $35). Levin’s portrait of the painter focuses on his intense, fractious marriage.

“Lincoln,” by David Herbert Donald (Simon & Schuster, $35). Donald gives us a bracing, innovative account of Lincoln’s career.