Books like Washington Black

01

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.

A kindred historical fiction read.

02

Pachinko

Min Jin Lee · Historical fiction

Pachinko follows four generations of a Korean family from a small fishing village in early twentieth-century Korea to Osaka and Yokohama in postwar Japan.

A kindred historical fiction read.

03

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi · Historical fiction

Homegoing begins in eighteenth-century Ghana with two half-sisters who never meet.

A kindred historical fiction read.

04

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 historical fiction read.

05

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead · Historical fiction

The Underground Railroad takes a central metaphor of American history — the network of safe houses and abolitionists that helped enslaved people flee north — and makes it literal: Colson Whitehead imagines the railroad as an actual underground train system, with tunnels, platforms, and conductors.

Both dig into race and power.

06

Along Came a Spider

James Patterson · Thriller

Along Came a Spider introduces Alex Cross, a Black homicide detective and forensic psychologist working in Washington D.C., in the case that made James Patterson a bestseller.

Both dig into race and power.

07

Blindsight

Peter Watts · Science fiction

Blindsight follows a crew of post-human specialists sent to intercept an alien object at the edge of the solar system in 2082.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

08

Dark Matter

Blake Crouch · Science fiction

Jason Dessen is a physics professor in Chicago, content with his career, his marriage to Daniela, and his teenage son.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

09

James

Percival Everett · Literary fiction

James retells Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim — renamed James here — the enslaved man who escapes down the Mississippi with Huck Finn.

Both dig into race and power.

10

L.A. Confidential

James Ellroy · Mystery

L.A.

Both dig into race and power.

11

Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides · Literary fiction

Cal Stephanides is a middle-aged man living in Berlin who decides to tell the whole story — not just his own life, but the lives of his Greek immigrant grandparents and parents, all the way back to the incest that introduced a recessive gene into his bloodline and the gene that made Cal intersex.

Both dig into identity and selfhood.

12

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Richard P. Feynman · Science

Richard Feynman died in 1988, but he gave talks, interviews, and lectures throughout his career that were preserved in recordings and transcripts.

Both dig into scientific curiosity.