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The 20 best books of 2022, according to our critics

Pictures of a man and woman plus four book covers on a colorful background
Sequoia Nagamatsu, left, and Namwali Serpell.
(Illustration by Mel Cerri / For The Times. Photographs by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster; William Morrow; Lauren B Photography; Hogarth; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Jordan Kines)
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Ask four critics to name their favorite books of any year and you’ll get an array of singular narratives. But if any theme emerged among our top 20 books of 2022, it was the individual struggle to shape the future in a range of hostile words: the harsh dystopias crafted by Celeste Ng and Sequoia Nagamatsu; the vicious liars who questioned Sandy Hook; the British colonizers Samuel Adams outwitted and the American colonizers bested by the great Native athlete Jim Thorpe. These are stories told brilliantly — substance meeting its match in style — in which reality might be inescapable, but hope is unkillable.

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