Recommendations based on The Sympathizerby Viet Thanh Nguyen

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. 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)

  2. 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)

  3. 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)

  4. 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)

  5. A Brief History of Seven Killings

    by Marlon James
    A fictionalized account of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, exploring the history of Jamaica.

    On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly ... (Goodreads)

  6. Less

    by Andrew Sean Greer
    A man's journey of self-discovery and coming to terms with his life choices.

    PROBLEM: You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would all be ... (Goodreads)

  7. 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)

  8. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    by Junot Díaz
    An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.

    Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)

  9. The Story of the Lost Child

    by Elena Ferrante
    An exploration of the complexities of motherhood and female friendship, spanning four decades.

    "Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a ... (Goodreads)

  10. 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)

  11. The Story of a New Name

    by Elena Ferrante
    Two young women's search for identity and independence in a patriarchal society.

    In 2012, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New ... (Goodreads)

  12. Cutting for Stone

    by Abraham Verghese
    A sweeping journey of two twin brothers and their search for identity, belonging and family.

    The story is told by the protagonist, Marion Stone. He and his conjoined twin Shiva are born at Mission Hospital (called "Missing" in accordance with the local pronunciation), Addis Ababa , in ... (Wikipedia)

  13. Moonglow

    by Michael Chabon
    A multigenerational family saga reflecting on the past to unlock secrets of the present.

    The novel is about the story of the author's (Chabon) grandfather. Throughout the book, the grandfather's name is not referred to. The story is sort of a memoir, jumping around in time. It starts ... (Wikipedia)

  14. 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)

  15. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

    by Michael Chabon
    Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.

    The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Refugees

    by Viet Thanh Nguyen
    Short stories of Vietnamese refugees in America, and their struggles to assimilate and find belonging.

    From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse ... (Goodreads)

  17. Interpreter of Maladies

    by Jhumpa Lahiri
    Collection of stories exploring the struggles of Indian-American immigrants in the US.

    A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four ... (Wikipedia)

  18. White Teeth

    by Zadie Smith
    A multi-generational saga exploring identity, race, and culture in modern-day London.

    On New Year's Day 1975, Archie Jones, a 47-year-old Englishman whose disturbed Italian wife has just walked out on him, is attempting to take his own life by gassing himself in his car when a chance ... (Wikipedia)

  19. The Round House

    by Louise Erdrich
    A teenage boy seeks justice for a crime committed against his mother in a Native American community.

    The novel opens with Joe Coutts and his father, Judge Bazil Coutts, pulling out saplings from their house's garden and foundation. They realize Joe's mother and Bazil's wife, Geraldine Coutts, has ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Beloved

    by Toni Morrison
    A haunting story of loss and resilience in the aftermath of slavery.

    Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio , where the protagonist Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver at 124 Bluestone Road. The book ... (Wikipedia)

  21. Fates and Furies

    by Lauren Groff
    A tale of the secrets and passions of a marriage, exploring the depths of private lives.

    Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, ... (Goodreads)

  22. 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)

  23. Invisible Man

    by Ralph Ellison
    A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.

    The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)

  24. My Name Is Lucy Barton

    by Elizabeth Strout
    A woman's journey of self-reflection, uncovering secrets from her past.

    Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront ... (Goodreads)

  25. Half of a Yellow Sun

    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Story of two sisters navigating a civil war in Nigeria, and the effects of colonialism.

    The novel takes place in Nigeria prior to and during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The effect of the war is shown through the relationships of five people's lives including the twin daughters of ... (Wikipedia)

  26. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

    by Elena Ferrante
    Two friends navigate the changing relationships of their youth and adulthood, and the consequences of their choices.

    In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her abusive ... (Goodreads)

  27. Redeployment

    by Phil Klay
    Collection of stories of soldiers' experiences in Iraq, spanning the battlefield and homecoming.

    Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven ... (Goodreads)

  28. The Yiddish Policemen's Union

    by Michael Chabon
    A murder mystery set in an alternate reality, with characters that explore the boundaries of identity and tradition.

    The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Beside the corpse lies an open ... (Wikipedia)

  29. The Three-Body Problem

    by Liu Cixin
    A science fiction novel exploring the consequences of first contact with an alien civilization.

    The story takes place in flash-forwards, flashbacks, and the present time. Below is a chronological plotline. During the Cultural Revolution , Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua ... (Wikipedia)

  30. The Buried Giant

    by Kazuo Ishiguro
    An elderly couple's journey through a mythical land, confronting the forgotten secrets of the past.

    Following the death of King Arthur , Saxons and Britons live in harmony. Along with everyone else in their community, Axl and Beatrice, an elderly Briton couple, suffer from severe selective amnesia ... (Wikipedia)