The best work of American fiction in the last 25 years.

The NYT says it's "Beloved." As this essay explains, they asked "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages."

A few respondents, not content to state their own preferences, pre-emptively attacked what they assumed would be the thinking of the majority. So we received some explanations of why people were not voting for "Beloved," the expected winner...

We're not shown those explanations though!