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Recommendations based on A Brief History of Seven Killingsby Marlon James
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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)
The Book of Night Women
by Marlon James
A young slave girl in Jamaica plots a rebellion against her cruel plantation owner.
The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of ... (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)
This Is How You Lose Her
by Junot Díaz
A collection of stories about young love, heartache, and the struggle to find one's place in the world.
On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
A dynamic narrative spanning centuries, exploring the interconnectedness of humanity.
The book consists of six nested stories; each is read or observed by a main character of the next, thus they progress in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each ... (Wikipedia)
The Orphan Master's Son
by Adam Johnson
A man's struggle to survive in a totalitarian North Korean regime and his journey to freedom.
Part 1 details Jun Do's upbringing in a state orphanage and his service to the state, including as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens , and later as a signal operator stationed on a fishing boat. Due ... (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 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)
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)
Tenth of December
by George Saunders
A collection of stories exploring the human condition through diverse characters and their struggles.
A young girl named Alison is kidnapped three days before her birthday. Kyle, a boy who lives nearby whose parents enforce very strict household rules, sees the event unfold and must decide whether to ... (Wikipedia)
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.
There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
by Richard Flanagan
A man's journey to reconcile his past and make sense of his actions during the Japanese occupation of Burma.
Dorrigo Evans has found fame and public recognition as a war veteran in old age, but inwardly he is plagued by his own shortcomings and considers his numerous accolades to be a “failure of perception ... (Wikipedia)
Wolf in White Van
by John Darnielle
A mysterious, psychological journey of a reclusive man, linked to a game he created.
Sean Phillips lives with a caretaker after shooting himself in the head at age 17, causing facial disfigurement. The circumstances of the shooting are initially left ambiguous. Sean's relationship ... (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)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
by Anthony Marra
An exploration of the aftermath of a civil war, and the power of human connection.
A brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences. In the final days of December 2004, in ... (Goodreads)
The Moor's Account
by Laila Lalami
A fictional memoir of the first black explorer of America, Estebanico, who was part of the Narváez expedition in the 16th century.
The story is narrated in the first person by Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori, a Moroccan slave who has been taken by his Spanish master, Andrés de Dorantes, on an expedition to the New ... (Wikipedia)
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 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)
Shantaram
by Gregory David Roberts
An Australian convict escapes to India and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to a 19-year imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions , and shops. In July 1980, he ... (Wikipedia)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
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)
Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
A magical tale of India's history told through the story of a boy born at the stroke of midnight.
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem ... (Goodreads)
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
A sweeping narrative of two people, their pasts and their parallel paths through history.
The prologue is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World , a home run by Bobby Thomson on October 3, 1951, that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their ... (Wikipedia)
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)
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)
