What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorSeason of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih · 169 pages
"When a young man returns to his village in the Sudan after many years studying in Europe, he finds that among the familiar faces there is now a stranger -- the enigmatic Mustafa Sa'eed. As the two become friends, Mustafa tells the younger man the disturbing story of his own life in London after the First World War. Lionized by society and desired by women as an exotic novelty, Mustafa was driven
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer · 288 pages
A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, J
The Silence of Trees
Valya Dudycz Lupescu · 302 pages
Bless Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya · 252 pages
Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.
The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri · 406 pages
Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.
Every Day is for the Thief
Teju Cole · 162 pages
"Visiting Lagos after many years away, Teju Cole's unnamed narrator rediscovers his hometown as both a foreigner and a local. A young writer uncertain of what he wants to say, the man moves through tableaus of life in one of the most dynamic cities in the world: he hears the muezzin's call to prayer in the early morning light, and listens to John Coltrane during the late afternoon heat. He witness
The Hungry Ghosts
Shyam Selvadurai · 378 pages
Shivan Rassiah, a Canadian man in his early thirties, prepares to leave his home in Toronto to visit his dying grandmother in Sri Lanka. Much is riding on this trip for Shivan, who hopes it will bring the renewal he so desperately needs.
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.
A River Called Time
Mia Couto · 231 pages
Mariano, who has lived in the city from an early age, is summoned back to his village to attend his grandfather's funeral...
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz · 352 pages
Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us
The Writing On My Forehead
Nafisa Haji · 314 pages
Free-spirited and rebellious Muslim-American Saira Qader rejected the constricting notions of family, duty, obligation, and fate, choosing instead to become a journalist, but when tragedy strikes five years later Saira looks to the stories of those who came before--her grandparents, a beloved aunt, her mother and father--and discovers that choice is not always our own, and that faith is not just a
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"--
Dreams of My Russian Summers
Andrei Makine · 241 pages
A Frenchwoman's account of Russia before and after the 1917 revolution. She is Charlotte who came as a nurse in World War I and married a Russian lawyer. The story is told by her grandson who listened to her tales, fascinated by her power of observation.
American Dervish
Ayad Akhtar · 357 pages
A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides · 544 pages
A unique coming of age story. While the main character in this novel is dealing with gender identity issues the main focus of this brilliantly written story is the confusion we all face as we grow into the person we were meant to be. The reader finds himself identifying with the main character's experiences. This is a brilliantly written story. The prose is honest in a way that few authors dare t
The Teahouse Fire
Ellis Avery · 400 pages
The story of two women whose lives intersect in late nineteenth century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is also a portrait of one of the most fascinating places and times in all of history-Japan as it opens its doors to the West. Told through the enchanting and unforgettable voice of Aurelia, an American orphan adopted by proprietors of a tea ceremony school, this is "a magisterial novel that is equal pa
The Mimic Men
V.S. Naipaul · 275 pages
"A profound novel of cultural displacement, The Mimic Men masterfully evokes a colonial man's experience in a postcolonial world. Born of Indian heritage and raised on a British-dependent Caribbean island, Ralph Singh has retired to suburban London, writing his memoirs as a means to impose order on a chaotic existence. His memories lead him to recognize the paradox of his childhood during which he
The Mango Season
Amulya Malladi · 244 pages
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini · 368 pages
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacri
The Saffron Kitchen
Yasmin Crowther · 271 pages
In a powerful debut novel that moves between the crowded streets of London and the desolate mountains of Iran, Yasmin Crowther paints a stirring portrait of a family shaken by events from decades ago and worlds away. On a rainy day in London the dark secrets and troubled past of Maryam Mazar surface violently, with tragic consequences for her daughter, Sara, and her newly orphaned nephew. Maryam l
The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan · 532 pages
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past--including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s,
The Hundred-Foot Journey
Richard C. Morais
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