The 10 Most Classic Brooklyn Novels
Jonathan Lethem, Fortress of Solitude
Lethem grew up on Dean Street, where he befriended LJ Davis’s kid. (Paula Fox also lived on Dean Street before moving to Cobble Hill.) One of the rare Brooklyn natives of his literary generation, Lethem’s greatest local novel is this 2003 semi-autobiographical account that traverses the 70s into the 90s, a portrait of the city (though it wanders) in transformation from racially tense to the mellowed one we know today.
