The 20th-century was a century that began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. It was the tenth and final century of the 2nd millennium.
The 20th century was dominated by a chain of events that heralded significant changes in world history as to redefine the era: flu pandemic, World War I and World War II, nuclear power and space exploration, nationalism and decolonization, the Cold War and post-Cold War conflicts; intergovernmental organizations and cultural homogenization through developments in emerging transportation and communications technology; poverty reduction and world population growth, awareness of environmental degradation, ecological extinction, and the birth of the Digital Revolution. It saw great advances in communication and medical technology that by the late 1980s allowed for near-instantaneous worldwide computer communication and genetic modification of life.
Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century (1901 to 2000).
The rise of the globalization has allowed European literary ideas to spread into non-Western cultures fairly rapidly so that Asian and African literature can be included into these divisions with only minor qualifications. And in some ways, such as in Postcolonial literature, writers from non-Western cultures were at the forefront of literary development.
Technological advances during the 20th century allowed cheaper production of books, resulting in a significant rise in the production of popular literature and comparable to similar developments in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the 20th century is by no means absolute, and various genres such as detectives or science fiction fluctuate between the two. Largely ignored by mainstream literary criticism for most of the century, these genres developed their own establishments and critical awards. Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic literature developed due to the development of hypertext and later the world wide web.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded annually throughout the century (with the exception of 1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940–1943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme. The New York Times Best Seller list has been published since 1942.
The best-selling literary works of the 20th century are estimated to be The Lord of the Rings (1954/55, 150 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, 120 million copies) and And Then There Were None (1939, 115 million copies). The Lord of the Rings was also voted "book of the century" in various surveys.
