Books like The Famished Road

01

Beloved

Toni Morrison · Literary fiction

Beloved is set in post-Civil War Ohio, where Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, lives with her daughter Denver in a house shadowed by the ghost of a baby she killed rather than let be taken back into slavery.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy · Literary fiction

War and Peace follows five aristocratic Russian families across fifteen years of Napoleonic war and peace, from the drawing rooms of St.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho · Religion & Spirituality

The Alchemist is a Brazilian novel first published in 1988 and translated into 80 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Maxine Hong Kingston · Memoir

The Woman Warrior is not a conventional memoir.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

Exit West

Mohsin Hamid · Literary fiction

Exit West follows Saeed and Nadia, two young people who meet and fall in love in an unnamed city beginning to fracture under the pressure of civil conflict.

Both dig into political violence.

07

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez · Literary fiction

One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the founding, flourishing, and eventual obliteration of Macondo, a fictional Colombian town, through six generations of the Buendía family.

Both dig into political violence.

08

The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen · Literary fiction

The Sympathizer is narrated by a nameless communist spy who is also the aide-de-camp to a South Vietnamese general.

Both dig into political violence.

09

Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry · Literary fiction

Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel takes place on a single day — the Mexican Day of the Dead, November 2, 1938 — in the small town of Quauhnahuac (Cuernavaca) in the shadow of the Popocatépetl volcano.

Both dig into political violence.

10

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Patrick Radden Keefe · History

Say Nothing opens with a scene that sets its register precisely: Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, is dragged from her Belfast flat by a gang of masked strangers in December 1972 and never seen alive again.

Both dig into political violence.

11

The Anatomy of Fascism

Robert O. Paxton · History

Robert O.

Both dig into political violence.

12

The Dogs of Riga

Henning Mankell · Thriller

The Dogs of Riga is the second Kurt Wallander novel, published in 1992 and set partly in Sweden but primarily in Latvia at the moment the Soviet Union is collapsing.

Both dig into political violence.