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Flotsam

Erich Maria Remarque · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Shanghai Girls

Lisa See · 417 pages

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Th

Loss of a HomeRefugee ExperienceBittersweetImmigrant Protagonist
❤️

The Woman from Tantoura

Radwa Ashour · 376 pages

Refugee ExperienceLoss of a HomeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
❤️

Salt Houses

Hala Alyan · 320 pages

"From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut novel about a Palestinian family caught between present and past, between displacement and home ... On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they wi

Refugee ExperienceLoss of a HomeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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The Four Winds

Kristin Hannah · 472 pages

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is

Loss of a HomeRefugee ExperienceBittersweetCharacter-Driven
❤️

Everything Sad Is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri · 356 pages

Refugee ExperienceBittersweetImmigrant ProtagonistCharacter-Driven
❤️

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Dinaw Mengestu · 234 pages

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death, selling off his parents' jewelry to pay for passage to the United States. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of f

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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The House at Tyneford

Natasha Solomons

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Little Bee

Chris Cleave · 288 pages

A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers--one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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When the Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka · 143 pages

Loss of a HomeImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Enemies: A Love Story

Isaac Bashevis Singer · 280 pages

Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives; Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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The Ministry of Pain

Dubravka Ugresic · 264 pages

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essay

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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Suite Française

Irene Nemirovsky · 426 pages

Écrit dans le feu de l'Histoire, Suite française dépeint presque en direct l'Exode de juin 1940, qui brassa dans un désordre tragique des familles françaises de toute sorte, des plus huppées aux plus modestes. Avec bonheur, Irène Némirovsky traque les innombrables petites lâchetés et les fragiles élans de solidarité d'une population en déroute. Cocottes larguées par leur amant, grands bourgeois dé

Refugee ExperienceBittersweetLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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Us Conductors

Sean Michaels · 347 pages

"In a finely woven series of flashbacks and correspondence, Lev Termen, the Russian scientist, inventor, and spy, tells the story of his life to his "one true love, " Clara Rockmore, the finest theremin player in the world. In the first half of the book, we learn of Termen's early days as a scientist in Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution, the acclaim he receives as the inventor of the there

Immigrant ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Desert

Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio · 352 pages

After being driven from their land by French colonial soldiers in 1909, Nour and his people, "the blue men" must search for a haven out of the desert that will shelter them. Interspersed with the story of Nour is the contemporary story of Lalla, a descendent of the blue men, who lives in Morocco and tries to stay true to the blood of her ancestors while experiencing life as a modern immigrant.

Loss of a HomeRefugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistLiterary Fiction
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Mornings in Jenin

Susan Abulhawa · 352 pages

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. Th

Refugee ExperienceLoss of a HomeLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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The Shell Seekers

Rosamunde Pilcher · 582 pages

The Shell Seekers is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The Shell Seekers is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husband and lovers--inspired with real values. The Shell Seekers centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in world you'll never forget. The Shell Seekers is a magical

Loss of a HomeBittersweetCharacter-DrivenHistorical Fiction
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Broken Paradise

Cecilia Samartin · 384 pages

Cousins Alicia and Nora experience profound life changes from different perspectives when Castro's rise to power incites political turbulence and revolution in Cuba, forcing Alicia to flee the country with her parents while Nora remains behind.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetCharacter-Driven
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The Master Butchers Singing Club

Louise Erdrich · 416 pages

What happens when a trained killer discovers, in the aftermath of war, that his true vocation is love? From the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of Love Medicine comes an enchanting, richly imagined world "where butchers sing like angels."

Immigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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Ignorance

Milan Kundera

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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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.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistLiterary FictionCharacter-Driven
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The Arrival

Shaun Tan · 128 pages

In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and try to support his family back home. His new country is full of strange arquitectural wonders, fantastic animals and other immigrants with stories of why they left home.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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The Winter Vault

Anne Michaels · 341 pages

Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling a

Loss of a HomeBittersweetCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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A Distant Shore

Caryl Phillips · 294 pages

Dorothy has taken early retirement and walked away from a bad marriage, an affair gone sour and a dangerous obsession. She moves to a small English village where she soon learns that England itself is changing beyond measure as the world outside its borders encroaches and intrudes.

Refugee ExperienceImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri · 208 pages

Title: Interpreter of Maladies. - Boston : Houghton Mifflin. "Interpreter of Maladies" is a collection of nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, exploring the lives of Indian and Indian-American characters who are grappling with issues of identity, displacement, and the complexities of human relationships. Here’s a brief summary of each story in the collection: "A Temporary Matter": A couple,

Loss of a HomeImmigrant ProtagonistBittersweetLiterary Fiction

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