Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It's a mystery why White isn't widely recognized as a giant of English fantasy, the way Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling are. His project was simple enough: to rewrite the story of King Arthur in modern literary English. But the result was a sprawling masterpiece of glowing historical prose and psychological power. Arthur's growth from unsung orphan to king to tragic hero, his friendship with the (in White's telling) hilariously ugly Lancelot, their love triangle with Guinevere, the quest for the holy grail — it all sheds its clunky, stained-glass medieval origins and becomes a rich, limber, powerful, funny modern novel that's the equal of anything by White's better-known colleagues. (Yes, it was the — very loose — basis for the musical Camelot. But it's so much more than that.)

—Lev Grossman