The best novels told in interconnected short stories

Rebecca Sacks Author Of City of a Thousand Gates
By Rebecca Sacks

Who am I?

I’m a novelist whose debut, City of a Thousand Gates, follows the lives of over thirty characters as they collide and intersect in modern-day Jerusalem and the West Bank. In order to develop the skills and techniques necessary to make such a large cast of characters feel cohesive—and have their storylines intersect plausibly—I read obsessively from the novel-in-stories form. As I found, many of these books existed in a grey area between the novel and the short story. Personally, I consider grey areas to be the most exciting to explore. By examining how fiction writers created brilliantly interconnected short stories, I was inspired to create an ambitious, sweeping novel with a diverse cast of characters.


I wrote...

City of a Thousand Gates

By Rebecca Sacks,

Book cover of City of a Thousand Gates

What is my book about?

Hamid, a college student, has entered Israeli territory illegally for work. Rushing past soldiers, he bumps into Vera, a German journalist headed to Jerusalem to cover the story of Salem, a Palestinian boy beaten into a coma by a group of revenge-seeking Israeli teenagers. On her way to the hospital, Vera runs in front of a car that barely avoids hitting her. The driver is Ido, a new father traveling with his American wife and their baby. Ido is distracted by thoughts of a young Jewish girl murdered by a terrorist who infiltrated her settlement. Ori, a nineteen-year-old soldier from a nearby settlement, is guarding the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem through which Samar—Hamid’s professor—must pass. 

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The books I picked & why

Lost in the City

By Edward P. Jones,

Book cover of Lost in the City

Why did I love this book?

This book changed the way I think about setting. Although it might be considered more of a story cycle than a novel, what makes Lost in the City a novel in my mind is the presence of the city where it is set: Washington, D.C. By depicting the joy and pain of its residents, Jones paints a portrait of the city where he was born and raised. My own novel is largely set in the beguiling, complex location of modern-day Jerusalem. I was inspired by Jones—who himself was inspired by Joyce’s Dubliners—to think about the force of place when depicting the discordant harmonies of life happening in overlapping communities.

By Edward P. Jones,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Lost in the City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Original and arresting….[Jones’s] stories will touch chords of empathy and recognition in all readers.”
—Washington Post

 “These 14 stories of African-American life…affirm humanity as only good literature can.”
 —Los Angeles Times

A magnificent collection of short fiction focusing on the lives of African-American men and women in Washington, D.C., Lost in the City is the book that first brought author Edward P. Jones to national attention. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and numerous other honors for his novel The Known World, Jones made his literary debut with these powerful tales of ordinary people who…


Homegoing

By Yaa Gyasi,

Book cover of Homegoing

Why did I love this book?

Talk about expansive, sweeping novels! Homegoing is a novel in the form of a family tree. Beginning in a West African village in the 18th century, the narrative splits into two branches, emerging from two Black women whose lives are distinctly shaped by the slave trade. Each chapter is a story from a subsequent generation, eventually bringing us to the present day. My own novel is often described as “ambitious,” and I am certain that reading Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel made me a more ambitious writer. If you’re looking for a book that spans generations and continents, this is the one for you.

By Yaa Gyasi,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Homegoing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A BBC Top 100 Novels that Shaped Our World

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.…


In Our Time

By Ernest Hemingway,

Book cover of In Our Time

Why did I love this book?

Hemingway can be a challenge for me—reading him, I sometimes feel I’m standing in front of a closed-door—so I rolled my eyes a bit when a mentor of mine suggested that this short story collection might help me with my own work. But boy, did I stand corrected. Through short stories and fragmentary vignettes, Hemingway paints a deeply interior portrait of a man trying to return from war. It directly inspired me to include short, emotionally intense interstitial chapters to break up the longer, meatier chapters of my novel. 

By Ernest Hemingway,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Our Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Vintage Classics edition of the early collection of short fiction that first established Ernest Hemingway's reputation, including several of his most loved stories

Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time, published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major…


There There

By Tommy Orange,

Book cover of There There

Why did I love this book?

Published in 2018, There There is the most recent book on this list. I read at a time when I was struggling to wrangle dozens of characters’ storylines into a novel that would have a sense of culmination. This book appeared in my life just when I needed it. Orange’s debut is a masterclass in the art of collision, as characters from one story begin to shape other storylines. Like all great climaxes, the one in There There is at once unforeseeable and inevitable. 

By Tommy Orange,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked There There as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award **

One of Barack Obama's best books of 2018, the New York Times bestselling novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice

'A thunderclap' Marlon James
'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
'Pure soaring beauty' Colm Toibin

Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance.

All of…


Olive Kitteridge

By Elizabeth Strout,

Book cover of Olive Kitteridge

Why did I love this book?

What connects all the stories in this collection is the titular Olive, a gruff yet good-hearted middle-aged woman living in Crosby, Maine. Although she appears in every story, the strength of her presence varies greatly—sometimes, she is a main character, other times, she’s a barely visible background character. But always she is present, like a thread tying together the lives of a disparate set of characters from rural Maine.

By Elizabeth Strout,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Olive Kitteridge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again
 
“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Book World • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Seattle Post-Intelligencer • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Plain Dealer • The Atlantic • Rocky Mountain News • Library Journal
 
At times stern, at…


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