They had to pile books crushingly on top of me until I gave in and agreed to do this, because I hate a definitive list and the decisions paralyse me.

I feel weighed down by all the books I've missed, entire genres ignored, those not represented, the fear of being wrong, wrong, wrong.

I can only take comfort in hoping that everyone reading this is making their own furiously contrarian lists, reading more and thinking about books and why they matter.

So, as partial and up-for-debate as this decade list might be, when I look at it I can see history itself being written into fiction, remade and experimented with again and again.

Ancient stories, too, keep being rewritten, mythologies referenced and appropriated. Non-realist, poetic and dystopian forms of fiction also powerfully remake — or resist — history and the present.

And again and again, it's the writing itself that draws us in, the style of the storyteller, around the campfire that is a book. Kate Evans (KE)

Room by Emma Donoghue, 2010

This is a deceptively simple story written for the most part from the perspective of a 5-year-old boy, Jack. Since his birth, Jack and his mother lived in a single-cell bunker built (and sound-proofed) by their captor.

The author never revels in the brutality of the circumstances that have imprisoned them in this room. In fact, because this room is all Jack has ever known, it is his safe space.

The claustrophobia builds as his mother's desperation to escape increases. It is a clever and psychologically deft novel by this Irish-born, Canada-based master storyteller. Sarah L'Estrange (SL)

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott, 2010

That Deadman Dance won the 2011 Miles Franklin Award. ( Supplied: HarperCollins )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 51 minutes 1 second 51 m That Deadman Dance Download 23.4 MB

This is a book about the dancing of culture at the edges of Australia; about an exchange between the Noongar people of Western Australia and the newcomers, the strangers, in the early days of colonialism.

But what an exchange it was, as Kim Scott has imagined it. One of creativity and recognition, not simply of violence and rejection.

Excerpts from the Noongar language meet the scratchings on the page of the white visitors, not to mention the later memories of characters looking back to this pivotal time when things seemed more cooperative, more hopeful, and history might have been prepared to take a different turn.

It's in the crook of that imagined turn that a novel like this one sits. KE

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, 2011

The centrifugal force of this novel swirls around a couple of mysteries: why can the women of an Amazonian tribe give birth into their 70s, and what happened to Anders Eckman?

Scientist Marina Singh journeys to the Amazon to find answers, but it's a fraught trip because she discovers that the ethnobiologist researching the tribal women's remarkable fertility will protect her secret at all costs.

Ethics, big pharma and capitalism surface in the evolving moral scrum. In the meantime, the main character must contend with her own childless state and her failed relationships.

There is wonder throughout this fascinating novel that traverses the globe to find the beating heart at the centre. SL

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, 2012

Bring up the Bodies won the Man Booker Prize and Costa Book of the Year in 2012. ( Supplied: HarperCollins )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 11 minutes 31 seconds 11 m Bring Up the Bodies at Sydney Writers' Festival Download 5.3 MB

They never do say "off with her head", of course. But this novel builds to the sweep of a sword in 1536 that decapitates Anne Boleyn, second wife to English Tudor King Henry VIII.

But this is a tale that has been told many times.

Instead, Mantel focuses on Thomas Cromwell: court adviser, lawyer, father, working-class scrapper, friend, plotter — a character Mantel has made so complex that he can sustain acts of bastardry as well as moments of warmth and tenderness.

This is a novel of power and politics, the second in a trilogy that began with Wolf Hall and will end in The Mirror and the Light (publishing in March 2020) with another beheading. The blade will be struck anew, with a pen. KE

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, 2013

Based on a true story, this debut novel by Australian author Hannah Kent takes the reader to Iceland in 1829. Agnes Magnusdottir has been charged with murder and condemned to death and must wait out her sentence before execution with a local farming couple.

While Kent's novel might draw on the classic trope of the "stranger in the midst", it's the psychological portrayal of Agnes that's most compelling.

Appropriately, as the execution nears, the winter weather imbues the narrative with a sense of icy foreboding.

The historical details about the time, particularly life in an Icelandic farmhouse, are seamlessly woven into the narrative. It's a fascinating sojourn in a different world. SL

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2013

Who knew moss could teach us so much? ( Supplied: Bloomsbury )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 54 minutes 20 seconds 54 m Elizabeth Gilbert at Perth Writers Festival Download 24.9 MB

Alma Whittaker is a clever but plain girl who develops a passion for botany. She's able to indulge this interest as her father is one of the richest men in Philadelphia in the 1800s, and has greenhouses on his large estate.

Alma is most fascinated by moss (yes, one of the best books of the decade is about moss).

It becomes her obsession in lieu of potential suitors, but her desire for love and sexual fulfilment is ultimately not satisfied by her scientific interests. She becomes infatuated by artist Ambrose Pike and after he disappears to Tahiti, Alma sets sail for the Polynesian islands, where she makes a startling discovery.

A captivating heroine, botanical history, evolution and self-discovery are all part of this enlightening novel. SL

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood, 2015

A group of women wake up imprisoned in regional Australia somewhere.

They don't know why they're there, they don't know what they have in common. Except their wayward bodies have been rehoused in uniforms: skirts, which are an encumbrance. Bonnets, that inhibit both sight and conversation.

And the imprisoned women start to realise something, about themselves and each other. They have all pissed off powerful men in some way. Threatened them. They are being punished.

This is a furious novel. Enraged. But that anger is pared back to a clear set of stories and towering characters. It's as unsettling for its familiarity as for its strangeness. KE

How many have you read from RN's best of the decade list? And which is next? ( ABC Arts: Michelle Pereira )

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma, 2015

Obioma's debut made a big splash and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. ( Supplied: Scribe )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 12 minutes 7 seconds 12 m Listen to an interview with Chigozie Obioma about The Fishermen Download 5.6 MB

This Booker-shortlisted debut novel explores the tension between modernity and tradition in a middle-class Nigerian family.

During an extended absence by their father, four brothers go fishing at a forbidden river. Their father expects his sons to become lawyers, doctors and engineers, not fishermen. At the river, the boys encounter the grotesque figure of Abulu, a madman, whose curse becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The family is torn apart.

On one level, the novel is about family, childhood and coming of age, but on another, it's a parable for the state of Nigerian politics in the 1990s. It's a compelling insight on both levels. SL

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, 2016

Colson Whitehead takes the brutality of slavery and its aftermath in America and somehow manages to be playful with that history. Playful, not trivial.

He begins with a child named Cora, born into slavery. The violence, pettiness, and humiliation of that institution are written in such a way as to make it hard to look at, while knowing you must not look away. But when Cora escapes and goes on the run, Whitehead creates an "underground railroad" that is literal.

There is a steam-train, a platform and a series of conductors who usher her through an altered map of the country and its history. This is fiction remaking a bloodied map. KE

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith, 2016

When your forgeries come back to haunt you. ( Supplied: Allen & Unwin )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 16 minutes 38 seconds 16 m Listen to an interview with Dominic Smith about The Last Painting of Sara de Vos Download 7.6 MB

Art history and art fraud sit side by side in this vivid novel that switches between contemporary Sydney, 50s New York and 17th-century Holland.

At the centre of the narrative is the story of Sara de Vos, a fictional 17th-century master painter who must learn to survive in a hostile environment after she's abandoned by her painter husband.

When her last remaining landscape is stolen and forged in 50s New York, a cat and mouse game ensues between the owner of the painting and its forger, Australian art historian Ellie Shipley.

Like a Dutch Golden Age masterpiece, Sydney-born Seattle-based author Dominic Smith evokes the many-layered intricacies of these interwoven lives. SL

Days without End by Sebastian Barry, 2016

Irish writer Sebastian Barry knows how to temper violence with joy; privation with beauty.

And he has an eye for the striking image: two young men, hungry, dirty and afraid, who find work dancing in a bar in a town without women, wearing dresses and holding each other, touching hands and slowly realising they don't ever want to let go.

Thomas McNulty and John Cole are Irish teenagers who travel to America on the coffin-ships of the 1850s, ships that rattle with the bones of the starving. They arrive to find more hunger, more battles.

For a writer whose work has long been tied up in the mythologies of his own family history, it was a risk to write a western and a risk perhaps to track across that great migrant sea. But he knows what he's doing, and he's done it again. KE

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, 2016

Rose's Stella Prize-winning book revolves around a performance by Marina Abramovic. ( Supplied: Allen & Unwin )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 13 minutes 22 seconds 13 m Listen to an interview with Heather Rose about The Museum of Modern Love Download 12.2 MB

In 2010, thousands of visitors to New York's Museum of Modern Art sat opposite performance artist Marina Abramovic in her 75-day endurance performance, The Artist is Present.

This performance forms the spine of this sparkling novel about love, relationships, grief and loss, by Tasmanian Heather Rose.

The story centres around characters who visit Marina's marathon sitting. All are at a crossroads in their life.

The ghost of Marina's mother also haunts the narrative.

Reading this novel will bring you closer to answering the question about the role of art in our lives: it's everywhere. SL

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, 2017

Novelist Kamila Shamsie is both Pakistani and English. She begins Home Fire with the story of a woman named Isma, interrogated at an airport for daring to be both English and brown.

Isma has two younger siblings, Aneeka and Parvais. We meet each of the siblings in turn and watch Parvais — who grew up in London — be radicalised.

But it's Aneeka's experience that spirals outwards, when grief and a series of tragic events turn her into a wailing and emblematic creature of myth. Implacable.

This 21st-century story merges with the ancient Greek story of Antigone, from an assured and clever writer. KE

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton, 2018

Dalton's debut novel won all four major prizes at the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards. ( Supplied: HarperCollins )

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 20 minutes 36 seconds 20 m Trent Dalton's Boy Swallows Universe Download 18.9 MB

This debut novel by journo-turned-author Trent Dalton is based on his experience of growing up on the outer fringes of Brisbane in the 80s with a mother in jail for drug offences and an alcoholic father living in a housing commission.

It's not a misery memoir in novelistic disguise, however, as it's imbued with the wonder, hope and verve of 12-year-old Eli Bell and his mute older brother August, as they navigate the obstacles of a difficult childhood while learning what it means to be a "good man".

Eli's role models aren't ostensibly good, but they have shown him what love means.

It's a wild ride, but worth getting on board. There's a reason this debut caused such a fuss in 2018. SL

Lanny by Max Porter, 2019

I wrote about this book for our winter reading guide — so I'll try not to say the same things about the plot.

Instead, I'll add that this is a book that is poetic and inventive.

On one level it's the story of a beautiful young boy, Lanny, eccentric and creative. Then the boy is lost, and it's a dreadful churning, sobbing story of looking and hoping and feeling everything with his mother.

But by this point, Porter has already made the book into something else. The place is inhabited by a creature who spreads out amongst the leaf litter, listening to all the stories, ventriloquising back. His name is Dead Papa Toothwort and you will never forget him. KE

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