What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorWhite Teeth
Zadie Smith · 480 pages
One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, WHITE TEETH is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous
A Replacement Life
Boris Fishman · 321 pages
"A ... story of an aspiring twenty-something Russian-Jewish writer who struggles to reconcile his immigrant roots with his fragile new American identity"--
The Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri · 304 pages
"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, c
'Tis A Memoir
Frank McCourt · 512 pages
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 588 pages
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented li
The Golem and the Jinni
Helene Wecker · 512 pages
In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.
Foreign Gods, Inc.
Okey Ndibe · 341 pages
"Foreign Gods, Inc., tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Ike's plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he
American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang · 240 pages
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.
Brooklyn
Colm Toibin · 262 pages
In Ireland in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one of many who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving behind her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, t
Everything Sad Is Untrue
Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages
Native Speaker
Chang-rae Lee · 349 pages
Korean-American Henry Park is a "surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, yellow peril: neo-American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy ..." or so says his wife, in the list she writes upon leaving him. Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance. As a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betra
Sour Sweet
Timothy Mo · 278 pages
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen · 384 pages
Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.
Behold the Dreamers
Imbolo Mbue · 408 pages
When Jende Jonga journeys to New York City from Cameroon in 2004 on a visitors' visa in hopes of obtaining a green card, he's sure his life will only improve. After saving up enough money to bring over Jende's wife, Neni, and six-year-old son, the family moves into an apartment in Harlem. Then Jende hits the jackpot in 2007 when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a wealthy Lehman Bro
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
Amara Lakhous, `mr@ lkhwS · 131 pages
A small culturally mixed community living in an apartment building in the centre of Rome is thrown into disarray when one of the neihgbours is murdered. An investigation ensues & as each of the victim's neighbours is questioned, the reader is offered an all-access pass into the most colourful neighbourhood in contemporary Rome.
Pao
Kerry Young
As a boy, Pao came to Jamaica with his mother and brother in the wake of the Chinese Civil War. Pao becomes a powerful man, but he's not a typical crime boss. He is sensitive at heart and guided by the principles of Sun Tzu's Art of War, even though, as he discovers, the wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage can be tough to interpret when applied to the criminal annd predicament he faces. "Kingston,
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson · 396 pages
The Fortunate Pilgrim
Mario Puzo · 301 pages
Lucia Santa has traveled three thousand miles of dark ocean, from the mountain farms of Italy to the streets of New York, hoping for a better life. Instead, she finds herself in Hell's Kitchen, in a bad marriage, raising six children on her own. As Lucia struggles to hold her family together, her daughter confronts the adult world of work and romance while her eldest son is drawn into the mafia. M
My New American Life
Francine Prose · 306 pages
While working for an idealistic college professor, twenty-six-year old Lula, an Albanian trying to make a better life for herself in America, finds her life taking a complicated turn when her Albanian "brothers" return, in a novel set in the aftermath of 9/11.
A Free Life
Ha Jin · 666 pages
From Ha Jin, the widely-acclaimed, award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash, comes a novel that takes his fiction to a new setting: 1990s America. We follow the Wu family--father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao--as they fully sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and begin a new, free life in the United States.At first, their future seems well
Choke
Chuck Palahniuk · 304 pages
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be "saved" by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, go on to send checks to support him. When he's not pulling this
How to Read the Air
Dinaw Mengestu · 312 pages
Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, sets out to retrace his mother and father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today.