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Recommendations based on Home Fireby Kamila Shamsie
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Elmet
by Fiona Mozley
A family living off the grid in rural England faces threats from the outside world. A haunting exploration of violence, loyalty, and love.
The narrator who speaks in the sections in cursive seems to be looking for somebody against a modern landscape of highways, lorries and café stopovers. We will come to realise that this is Daniel, ... (Wikipedia)
Stay with Me
by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
A sweeping tale of love, betrayal, and the power of family, set in Nigeria.
This celebrated, unforgettable first novel, shortlisted for the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction and set in Nigeria, gives voice to both husband and wife as they tell the story of their ... (Goodreads)
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Spanning centuries, the intertwining stories of two African sisters, their descendants, and the legacy of slavery.
Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but ... (Wikipedia)
Pachinko
by Lee Min-jin
A saga spanning four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, struggling to survive and thrive amidst prejudice and poverty.
The novel takes place over the course of three books: Book I Gohyang/Hometown, Book II Motherland, and Book III Pachinko. In 1883, in the little island fishing village of Yeongdo , which is a ferry ... (Wikipedia)
Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
Reflection on displacement and immigration as two refugees traverse the world in search of a new life.
Nadia and Saeed meet when they are working students in an unnamed city. Saeed is more conservative and still lives at home, as custom generally requires, but the more independent Nadia has chosen to ... (Wikipedia)
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
A moving story of two siblings growing up in India, exploring love, politics, and class.
The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car ... (Goodreads)
Commonwealth
by Ann Patchett
Intertwining story of two families across multiple generations, and how their lives become intertwined.
It started at Franny Keating’s christening party. Bert Cousins wasn’t even invited, but looking for an excuse to get out of the house, away from his three noisy children and pregnant wife for a few ... (Wikipedia)
How to Be Both
by Ali Smith
Exploring duality and interconnectedness through the life of a girl and a Renaissance artist.
Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently ... (Goodreads)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
A novel-in-verse that follows the interconnected lives of twelve British women of color.
Joint Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2019 Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve ... (Goodreads)
Tin Man
by Sarah Winman
A story of friendship, love, and loss as three characters navigate life-altering decisions.
This is almost a love story. Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to ... (Goodreads)
Milkman
by Anna Burns
A young woman navigates the dangerous political and social landscape of Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about ... (Goodreads)
Autumn
by Ali Smith
A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.
Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)
There There
by Tommy Orange
A powerful novel that follows the lives of twelve Native Americans living in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow.
The book begins with an essay by Orange, detailing "brief and jarring vignettes revealing the violence and genocide that Indigenous people have endured, and how it has been sanitized over the ... (Wikipedia)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
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 ... (Goodreads)
Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry
A young Irishman flees famine and war, finding love and a new family in the American West during the Indian and Civil Wars.
Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian ... (Goodreads)
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
A spiritual exploration of death, exploring the afterlife through the eyes of President Lincoln.
In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by ... (Goodreads)
An American Marriage
by Tayari Jones
A newlywed couple's lives are torn apart when the husband is wrongfully convicted of a crime. The novel explores love, loyalty, and injustice.
Roy, a sales representative for a textbook company, and Celestial, an artist specializing in custom made baby dolls, are newlyweds who live in Atlanta. After their first year of marriage they travel ... (Wikipedia)
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
A family's journey through the Mississippi Delta, confronting a traumatic past.
It is Jojo's thirteenth birthday. To step into his new role as a man, Jojo tries to bravely help his grandfather, Pop, kill a goat. Jojo ends up throwing up at the sight although Pop is sympathetic. ... (Wikipedia)
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
by Arundhati Roy
Exploration of the lives of a diverse group of characters in India, searching for identity and purpose.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years – the story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the ... (Goodreads)
M. Butterfly
by David Henry Hwang
A French diplomat falls in love with a Chinese opera singer, only to discover a shocking truth.
The first act introduces the main character, René Gallimard, a civil servant attached to the French embassy in China. In a prison, Gallimard is serving a sentence for treason. Through a series of ... (Wikipedia)
Goodbye, Vitamin
by Rachel Khong
A young woman returns home to help care for her father with Alzheimer's, reflecting on family, love, and memory.
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR;, O, The Oprah Magazine,;, Vogue,;, San Francisco Chronicl,e;, Esquire,;, Huffington Post,;, Nylon,;, Entertainment Weekly,;, BuzzFeed,;, Booklist,; and, The ... (Barnes & Noble)
Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too
by Jomny Sun
An alien visits Earth and learns about humanity, love, and friendship. A heartwarming graphic novel about finding your place in the world.
Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too is the illustrated story of a lonely alien sent to observe Earth, only to meet all sorts of creatures with all sorts of perspectives on life, love, and ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
Winter
by Ali Smith
A novel set in the winter season, exploring family relationships, politics, and the impact of technology on society.
A family gathers in a large Cornwall house for a Christmas reuinion. With matriarch Sophia and her estranged sister Iris are her son Art and who they believe is his girlfriend Charlotte. Art has paid ... (Wikipedia)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
The Ninth Hour
by Alice McDermott
A young Irish immigrant commits suicide, leaving his pregnant wife to be taken care of by the nuns of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor.
From National Book Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Alice McDermott,, The Ninth Hour, is the critically-acclaimed “haunting and vivid portrait of an Irish Catholic clan in early twentieth ... (Barnes & Noble)
Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
Two college students explore the complexity of relationships and their place in the world.
A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple. Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A ... (Goodreads)
The Heart's Invisible Furies
by John Boyne
A man's life journey spanning seven decades and three continents, searching for love and acceptance.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast ... (Goodreads)
