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Recommendations based on Please Look After Momby Shin Kyung-sook
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The Forty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak
A story of romance and spiritual enlightenment, exploring the teachings of a Sufi master.
Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy , a novel written by a ... (Goodreads)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
Snow
by Orhan Pamuk
A man's journey of self-discovery in a politically charged atmosphere in Turkey.
Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling ... (Wikipedia)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
Mornings in Jenin
by Susan Abulhawa
A Palestinian family's generations-long journey, struggling for identity and freedom.
A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that could do for Palestine what, The Kite Runner, did for Afghanistan. Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of ... (Goodreads)
Sweet Bean Paste
by Durian Sukegawa
An elderly woman's story of redemption, exploring life's hardships and joys.
Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, ... (Goodreads)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (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)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
The Virgin Cure
by Ami McKay
A young girl in 19th century New York City is sold into prostitution and must navigate the dangerous world of sex work to survive.
From #1 international bestselling author Ami McKay comes The Virgin Cure, the story of a young girl abandoned and forced to fend for herself in the poverty and treachery of post-Civil War New York ... (Barnes & Noble)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel García Márquez
A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.
The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
by Agatha Christie
Amateur detective investigates the mysterious murder of a wealthy landowner.
In King's Abbot, wealthy widow Mrs Ferrars unexpectedly commits suicide, which distresses her fiancé, widower Roger Ackroyd. At dinner that evening in Ackroyd's home of Fernly Park, his guests ... (Wikipedia)
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
A grim tale of a Victorian industrial city, highlighting its struggles of poverty, injustice and strife.
"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else," proclaimed Charles Dickens in explaining the theme of this classic novel. Published in 1854, the story concerns one Thomas ... (Goodreads)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
by Milan Kundera
An exploration of the power of memory and the meaning of life through a series of interconnected stories.
The first section occurs in 1971 and is the story of Mirek, as he explores his memories of Zdena. Knowing that he loved this ugly woman has left a blemish, and he hopes to rectify this by destroying ... (Wikipedia)
State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett
A journey in the Amazon rainforest to find a missing colleague and unlock the secrets of a mysterious drug.
In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, "State of Wonder" presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional ... (Goodreads)
The Black Tulip
by Alexandre Dumas
A thrilling tale of justice and revenge set in 17th-century Holland.
'To have discovered the black tulip, to have seen it for a moment...then to lose it, to lose it forever!', Cornelius von Baerle, a respectable tulip-grower, lives only to cultivate the elusive black ... (Goodreads)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
A story of two unlikely outcasts who find solace and comfort in each other's company.
The story revolves mainly around the characters of Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, residents of an upper-middle class Left Bank apartment building at 7 Rue de Grenelle – one of the most elegant ... (Wikipedia)
My Name Is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
An art mystery set in 16th century Istanbul, delving into the power of art, religion and love.
At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of ... (Goodreads)
What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
A young African refugee's journey from Sudan to America, struggling to survive and keep his culture alive.
Achak is separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War when the Arab militia, referred to as murahaleen (which is Arabic for the deported), wipes out his Dinka village, Marial Bai . ... (Wikipedia)
The Spy
by Paulo Coelho
A young man's journey of self-discovery and exploration of his own destiny.
In his new novel, Paulo Coelho, best-selling author of The Alchemist and Adultery, brings to life one of history's most enigmatic women: Mata Hari. HER ONLY CRIME WAS TO BE AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN When ... (Goodreads)
Frankenstein in Baghdad
by Ahmed Saadawi
A quest for justice in a war-torn Baghdad, as a supernatural creature stalks the city.
In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq , a junk-dealer named Hadi al-Attag collects the scattered body parts of bomb victims with the intention of giving them a proper burial. Al-Attag first ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
The Palace of Illusions
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
A narrative of a brave woman's journey through Indian mythology, coming to terms with her fate.
A reimagining of the world-famous Indian epic, the Mahabharat—told from the point of view of an amazing woman. Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to a time that ... (Goodreads)
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
A young Indian-American's journey of reconciling two different cultures and his own identity.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta , India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Ashoke is an engineering student at the ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway
A story of resilience and courage in the midst of a war-torn city.
This brilliant novel with universal resonance, set during the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo, tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and ... (Goodreads)
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
An orphan's journey of survival and resilience in the face of poverty and injustice.
Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune, raised in a workhouse in the fictional town of Mudfog , located 70 miles (110 km) north of London . , , , He is orphaned by his father's ... (Wikipedia)
Human Acts
by Han Kang
An exploration of the devastating effects of political violence, told through the lens of one family's tragedy.
Human Acts deals with the May 1980 Gwangju uprising and the death of the young boy Kang Dong-ho. The novel is composed of seven chapters including the final epilogue, with each chapter tracing the ... (Wikipedia)
