The New York Public Library put together this map of the best books set in various New York City neighborhoods (most of Manhattan is covered, as well as a the trendier parts of Brooklyn). There aren't any big surprises—The Great Gatsby takes Midtown; The Catcher in the Rye, Central Park; Breakfast at Tiffany's, Fifth Avenue—though it does tend to skew towards more recent works. Ben Lerner's 10:04 (Brooklyn Heights), Teju Cole's Open City (Upper West Side), and Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers (Soho), all published within the last five years, all make the list. Can you think of any big snubs? Motherless Brooklyn and Paul Auster's New York Trilogy both get multiple mentions in the NYPL's comment section.
Manhattan
Financial District
American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis
World Trade Center
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Chinatown
Shoplifting from American Apparel, by Tao Lin
The Bowery/Five Points
The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsey Faye
Lower East Side
Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart
SoHo
The Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner
Alphabet City
Call It Sleep, by Henry Roth
Greenwich Village
Great Jones Street, by Don Delillo
Washington Square, by Henry James
Flatiron District
Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow
Chelsea
Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill
Midtown
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Times Square
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
Fifth Avenue
Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote
Central Park
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Upper East Side
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The Catcher in the Rye
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
Upper West Side
Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin
Open City, by Teju Cole
Harlem
Push, by Sapphire
Jazz, by Toni Morrison
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Brooklyn
Bedford-Stuyvesant
Brown Girl, Brownstones, by Paule Marshall
Downtown Brooklyn
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
Brooklyn Heights
10:04, by Ben Lerner
Boerum Hill
The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem
Carroll Gardens
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Coney Island
The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman
Flatbush/Ditmas Park
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
Sunset Park/Bay Ridge
Last Exit to Brooklyn, by Hubert Selby Jr.
Williamsburg
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Tropic of Capricorn, by Henry Miller
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok
Queens
Astoria
The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte
Flushing
Native Speaker, by Chang Rae Lee
Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish
Woodside
We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas
Bronx
South Bronx
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
West Bronx/Fordham
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
Staten Island
Port Richmond
Small Mercies, by Eddie Joyce
· The Best New York City Novels by Neighborhood [NYPL]
· NY Public Library's List of the Best Books Based in Your Neighborhood [DNAinfo]
· Cool Map Things [Curbed]
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