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Recommendations based on The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
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)
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)
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)
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam War refugee returns to his homeland and struggles to reconcile conflicting loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be ... (Goodreads)
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)
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 Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
Two boys sentenced to a brutal reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida struggle to survive and maintain their humanity.
Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida. ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
An outrageous satire of race and civil rights in modern America.
The novel concerns a narrator, referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me," who attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles ... (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)
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)
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)
Another Brooklyn
by Jacqueline Woodson
A poetic story of four teenage girls growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s.
The story starts with August, an adult anthropologist, returning to New York to bury her father. On the subway, she encounters an old friend, and begins to reminisce. She remembers being an 8 year ... (Wikipedia)
Swing Time
by Zadie Smith
Two brown girls dream of becoming dancers, but only one has talent. Their friendship is tested by ambition and the world's inequalities.
Beginning in 2008, the novel tells the story of two mixed-race, black and white, girls who meet in 1982 in a tap class in London . The unnamed narrator, who has a white, working-class father, and a ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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)
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
A post-apocalyptic story of survival, hope, and the power of community.
This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with, 1984, or, The Handmaid's Tale," (John Green,, New York Times,)–now with a ... (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)
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)
Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
A modern woman is thrown back in time, forced to confront the harsh realities of slavery.
Kindred scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main ... (Wikipedia)
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)
News of the World
by Paulette Jiles
Captain Kidd travels through Texas in 1870, reading the news to townspeople. He is tasked with returning a young girl to her family.
The book opens in 1870 on the wild border between Texas and Indian Territory , where a 10-year-old girl has been released after four years of captivity. Kiowa raiders had killed her family and taken ... (Wikipedia)
The Nix
by Nathan Hill
A middle-aged man's quest to discover the truth about his mother and his own identity.
The Nix is an American epic novel in 10 parts that follows community college professor of English, Samuel Andresen-Anderson who is struggling to find meaning in his life in the years following his ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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)
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
A world where women have the power to control electricity, and use it to fight against gender-based oppression.
In a matriarchal society, a gushing male writer writes to an influential author about his fictional account of how the matriarchy came to be. Five thousand years earlier (in our current time), men ... (Wikipedia)
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
A story of redemption and transformation amidst a hostage crisis.
Set in an unspecified South American country, , the story begins at a birthday party thrown at the country's vice presidential home in honor of Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large ... (Wikipedia)
The North Water
by Ian McGuire
A gruesome, dark journey on a whaling ship to the icy north, uncovering the depths of human depravity.
A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little ... (Goodreads)
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)
