Collider has published a ranked list of the ten greatest book masterpieces of the 20th century, highlighting the era's dramatic literary shifts, from modernism and postcolonial writing to the post-Tolkien fantasy boom and the rise of science fiction as a respected genre. The list spans diverse traditions and styles, including Latin American magical realism, American true crime non-fiction and Japanese literary surrealism.

Featured entries include Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (1955), praised by Jorge Luis Borges as one of the greatest texts in any language despite its initial critical and commercial failure; Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), regarded as a foundational work of the true crime genre; and Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–1995), his most acclaimed 20th-century novel. Other works cited in the wider list include Dune and Gravity's Rainbow, reflecting the century's range from genre fiction to postmodernism.