100 books like Children of Sugarcane

By Joanne Joseph,

Here are 100 books that Children of Sugarcane fans have personally recommended if you like Children of Sugarcane. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Out of Darkness, Shining Light

Helen Moffett Author Of Charlotte

From my list on Historical novels by Southern African women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a closet historian who’s always been fascinated by the power of novels to enable readers to travel in time and space and stand in the shoes of historical characters–blending imagination and enlightenment. As a scholar, I’ve worked to uncover women’s unknown and secret historieshistories of subversion, disruption, and humor. As a South African who grew up under apartheid, I passionately believe that if we don’t confront history, we’re doomed to repeat its nastier passages. As a writer, I’ve published a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice that showed me how immersion in another historical era can enable us to grapple with truths about our current societies.

Helen's book list on Historical novels by Southern African women

Helen Moffett Why did Helen love this book?

One of the best examples of “history from below” I’ve read.

It tells the well-known story of David Livingstone’s last journey–how after he died in tropical Africa, his servants marched his body across the continent to the port of Dar es Salaam, so that it could be shipped back to England and buried there with appropriate pomp and reverence. This forms the framework for an utterly original novel that presents this epic trek from the perspective of two of Livingstone’s slave servants: his feisty Muslim cook, Halima, who brings her gossipy sardonic perspective to the enterprise, and his devout and pompous body servant Joseph, a Christian determined to do right by his master.

This work sparkles with energy and humor, as well as presenting a fresh perspective on a well-trodden path.

By Petina Gappah,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Out of Darkness, Shining Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 2020 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS: Petina Gappah's epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa is 'engrossing, beautiful and deeply imaginative.' (Yaa Gyasi)

This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone - and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country.

The wise men of his age say Livingstone blazed into the darkness of their native land leaving a track of light behind where white men who followed him could tread in perfect safety.…


Book cover of The History of Man

Helen Moffett Author Of Charlotte

From my list on Historical novels by Southern African women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a closet historian who’s always been fascinated by the power of novels to enable readers to travel in time and space and stand in the shoes of historical characters–blending imagination and enlightenment. As a scholar, I’ve worked to uncover women’s unknown and secret historieshistories of subversion, disruption, and humor. As a South African who grew up under apartheid, I passionately believe that if we don’t confront history, we’re doomed to repeat its nastier passages. As a writer, I’ve published a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice that showed me how immersion in another historical era can enable us to grapple with truths about our current societies.

Helen's book list on Historical novels by Southern African women

Helen Moffett Why did Helen love this book?

I’m in awe of this author’s trilogy of award-winning novels about Zimbabwe’s colonial history. Haunting and hypnotic, they blend magical realism, epic history, and social satire. Although they form a series with some recurring characters, all are standalone reads.

Her first, The Theory of Flight, won South Africa’s biggest literary award. The second, recommended here, is a sustained act of grace in which the author climbs into the skin of an alpha white male Rhodesian, Emil Coetzee, whose ambitions lead to his running the doomed colony’s sinister secret police. It humanizes him without excusing him in an imaginative tour de force that asks a burning question: why do we sometimes choose evil?

If you love this book (you will), Ndlovu’s third novel, The Quality of Mercy, brings the series to a redemptive close.

By Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The History of Man as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

Book 2 in the City of Kings trilogy, including  her multiple award-winning debut novel The Theory of Flight

Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility—told with empathy, generosity, and a light touch—is an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer.

Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But…


Book cover of The Spiral House

Helen Moffett Author Of Charlotte

From my list on Historical novels by Southern African women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a closet historian who’s always been fascinated by the power of novels to enable readers to travel in time and space and stand in the shoes of historical characters–blending imagination and enlightenment. As a scholar, I’ve worked to uncover women’s unknown and secret historieshistories of subversion, disruption, and humor. As a South African who grew up under apartheid, I passionately believe that if we don’t confront history, we’re doomed to repeat its nastier passages. As a writer, I’ve published a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice that showed me how immersion in another historical era can enable us to grapple with truths about our current societies.

Helen's book list on Historical novels by Southern African women

Helen Moffett Why did Helen love this book?

For every dreaming rebel. This novel weaves together two tumultuous periods in history–the last decades of slavery and the start of grand apartheid–and the stories of two women bursting the seams of their existence.

In 1794, Katrijn van der Caab, a freed slave, finds herself on a farm where the master’s obsession with experimentation reflects a growing fixation with racial classification. In 1961, Sister Vergilius, a nun in rural South Africa, wants to escape the confines of her order even as the political and social strictures of the time hem her in still further.

This complex book demands commitment from the reader, but it is so beautifully written that phrases still linger in my mind. And the main characters were so compelling that I tracked down the author to ask her their fates!

By Claire Robertson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spiral House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker's apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love. Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer…


Book cover of The Shining Girls

Helen Moffett Author Of Charlotte

From my list on Historical novels by Southern African women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a closet historian who’s always been fascinated by the power of novels to enable readers to travel in time and space and stand in the shoes of historical characters–blending imagination and enlightenment. As a scholar, I’ve worked to uncover women’s unknown and secret historieshistories of subversion, disruption, and humor. As a South African who grew up under apartheid, I passionately believe that if we don’t confront history, we’re doomed to repeat its nastier passages. As a writer, I’ve published a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice that showed me how immersion in another historical era can enable us to grapple with truths about our current societies.

Helen's book list on Historical novels by Southern African women

Helen Moffett Why did Helen love this book?

This is the novel that brought South Africa’s Lauren Beukes international plaudits, and which was serialised for Apple TV. 

But she writes speculative fiction, and this has an especially zany hook–a time-travelling serial killer–so why is this a historical novel? Beukes did deep research into several key periods in US history, bringing the “shining girls” of those eras alive in ways that are breathtakingly imaginative and entertaining.

In particular, her accounts of the black women who worked in shipyards during World War 2–and the middle-class women who operated “underground railways” for abortion in the 1960s–are heartbreakingly relevant in current times. Beukes explicitly states that she wanted women–so often the passive corpses or suffering victims in crime fiction–and their histories to be front and center of this novel.

By Lauren Beukes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Shining Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The jaw-dropping, page-turning, critically-acclaimed book of the year: a serial-killer thriller unlike any other from the award-winning Lauren Beukes. 'GONE GIRL has not exactly gone. But THE SHINING GIRLS have arrived' (The Times).

THE SHINING GIRLS is now streaming on Apple TV+, starring Elisabeth Moss and Jamie Bell

"It's not my fault. It's yours. You shouldn't shine. You shouldn't make me do this."

Chicago 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature - it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen 'shining girls'…


Book cover of A Daughter's Courage: An Utterly Heartbreaking Novel of Family Secrets, Tragedy and Love

Pankaj Giri Author Of The Fragile Thread of Hope

From my list on contemporary fiction that bring tears to your eyes.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an Indian writer of contemporary fiction revolving around family, relationships, emotions, and hope, I am constantly on the lookout for similar novels to take inspiration from them and learn how to build beautiful, well-etched characters and portray heart-wrenching emotions. I love books that make me cry as they give me a fulfillment like nothing else. I love characters that are likable and make me feel a strong connection with them. And I like to write similar characters in my books as well. The readers of my novel The Fragile Thread of Hope have corroborated the same. I live in Gangtok, a hill station in northeast India.

Pankaj's book list on contemporary fiction that bring tears to your eyes

Pankaj Giri Why did Pankaj love this book?

This novel oscillates between pre-independent times in India and the present. It is about Gowri, Lucy, and James, the terrible sacrifices they make, and how they affect their families in the present. I love Renita D’Silva’s descriptions of Indian culture and food, and the powerful emotions her stories trigger in me. A Daughter’s Courage is my favorite book of hers. The sacrifices and dialogues wrenched my heart, the revelation of family secrets astonished me, and the skilled narrative bound me from start to finish. A masterpiece.

By Renita D'Silva,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Daughter's Courage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How much would you sacrifice to save your family?

1929. When a passionate love affair threatens to leave Lucy in disgrace, she chooses a respectable marriage over a life of shame. With her husband, coffee-plantation-owner James, she travels to her new home in India, leaving her troubled past behind her.

Everything in India is new to Lucy, from the jewel-coloured fabrics to the exotic spices. When her path crosses that of Gowri, a young woman who tends the temple on the plantation’s edge, Lucy is curious to find out more about her, and the events that lead her to live…


Book cover of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Daniel Graham Author Of An Internet in Your Head: A New Paradigm for How the Brain Works

From my list on challenging everything you know about the brain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am trained in physics but moved over to psychology and neuroscience partway through graduate school at Cornell University because I became fascinated with the stupefying complexity of brains. I found that a lot of the main ideas and approaches in these fields seemed flawed and limited—things like defining something to study such as “emotion” or “perception” without specifying what measurable quantities are necessary and sufficient to understand those things. Luckily, I was (and continue to be) mentored by independent thinkers like neuroanatomist Barbara Finlay and computational neuroscientist David Field, who instilled in me their spirit of free and deeply informed inquiry. Today, more and more brain researchers are rethinking established ideas.

Daniel's book list on challenging everything you know about the brain

Daniel Graham Why did Daniel love this book?

Lisa Barrett is one of the most respected researchers in psychology today in part because she is unafraid to debunk the comforting misconceptions we have about our minds, and especially about our emotions. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain dispels myths about emotion, and about our reptilian brain, among others. One of the most important lessons in the book is that your brain is not for thinking—it is primarily for myriad other processes of maintaining internal organs, blood oxygenation, energy consumption level, balance, and for performing a host of other tasks. But for Barrett, it’s not just about debunking. She has a compelling vision of how the brain actually does work. Not only does she have deep expertise in human behavior, brain anatomy, evolution, and neurochemistry, her vision of how our minds work is also described in energetic prose.

By Lisa Feldman Barrett,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Highly accessible, content-rich and eminently readable . . . Fascinating and informative . . . popular science at its best.' - The Observer

'Subtly radical . . . It presents a revelatory model of consciousness that will be completely new to most readers' - The Guardian 'Best Reads For Summer'

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, bestselling author of How Emotions Are Made, demystify that big grey blob between your ears . . .

In seven short chapters (plus a brief history of how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible…


Book cover of Days and Nights in Calcutta

Peggy Payne Author Of Sister India

From my list on sensuous literature of India.

Why am I passionate about this?

About thirty years ago, I spent three months on an Indo-American Fellowship in Varanasi taking notes on daily life in this holy city where my novel Sister India is set. That winter felt like a separate life within my life, a bonus. Because all there was so new to me, and it was unmediated by cars, television, or computers, I felt while I was there so much more in touch with the physical world, what in any given moment I could see, hear, smell…. It was the way I had felt as a child, knowing close-up particular trees and shrubs, the pattern of cracks in a sidewalk.

Peggy's book list on sensuous literature of India

Peggy Payne Why did Peggy love this book?

Days and Nights in Calcutta is a fascinating dual view of the same time and place by a husband and wife, both highly esteemed writers. The couple has returned to her family home in the famously complex and crowded Indian city and this is the account-in-two-voices of their year there. His feels full of wonder and surprise; it has a sunlit quality. Hers feels full of intensity and concern; it is tightly wrought. The book shows me not just India, a place I love to see and feel, but the importance of everyone’s story and view.

By Clark Blaise, Bharati Mukherjee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Days and Nights in Calcutta as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Book by Blaise, Clark, Mukherjee, Bharati


Book cover of We That Are Young

Mircea Raianu Author Of Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism

From my list on capitalism in 21st century India.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a historian of global capitalism and South Asia, writing about corporations as they are and how they could be. I've looked at India with the eyes of an outsider, drawing on my experiences growing up in 1990s Eastern Europe during a time of political upheaval and shock privatizations as the old communist order crumbled. Having witnessed the rise of a new class of monopolists and oligarchs in its stead, I became interested in the many different ways capitalists exercise power in society over time and around the world, and how we as ordinary citizens relate to them. I'm now interested in thinkers, activists, and entrepreneurs who have tried to experiment with alternatives

Mircea's book list on capitalism in 21st century India

Mircea Raianu Why did Mircea love this book?

There is no better book for understanding India’s family businesses in a broader social and political context than this sprawling, powerful novel. Preti Taneja retells and reworks Shakespeare’s King Lear as three sisters (and an illegitimate son) fight over the inheritance of a massive company that makes everything from textiles to cars (echoes of the Tatas, Birlas, and Ambanis, but also of the East India Company as the subcontinent’s original corporate sovereign). Taneja touches on all the big issues, including gender, caste, climate, and Kashmir, without ever being preachy. It is a long and sometimes challenging read, but always rewarding. I may be biased given the subject matter, but this is the century’s Great Indian Novel—a worthy successor to the likes of Midnight’s Children, A Suitable Boy, and Sacred Games

By Preti Taneja,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We That Are Young as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When a billionaire hotelier and political operator attempts to pit his three daughters against one another, a brutal struggle for primacy begins in this modern-day take on Shakespeare’s King Lear. Set in contemporary India, where rich men are gods while farmers starve and water is fast running out, We That Are Young is a story about power, status, and the love of a megalomaniac father. A searing exploration of human fallibility, Preti Taneja’s remarkable novel reveals the fragility of the human heart—and its inevitable breaking point.


Book cover of Man-Eaters of Kumaon

Keith Somerville Author Of Humans and Lions: Conflict, Conservation and Coexistence

From my list on human-wildlife conflict and sustainable conservation.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since childhood, I have been fascinated by African wildlife. When I worked in Africa as a journalist, I always found ways to view wildlife and to meet those who lived alongside dangerous and charismatic animals and those who conserved them. When I moved into academia, I started researching human-wildlife relations in detail, examining sustainable conservation approaches and how to control the illegal wildlife trade. It is a passion, almost an obsession, and as I finish researching and writing one book, another is already fixed in my brain.

Keith's book list on human-wildlife conflict and sustainable conservation

Keith Somerville Why did Keith love this book?

Published 80 years ago and based on the author’s experiences hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in northern India, I read this book repeatedly. Well and sensitively written, it is not a book of boasting, hunting, and bravado but a nuanced account of efforts to protect local people from the ravages of seriously dangerous wildlife.

Corbett, part of the British occupation machinery in India, projects a love of the people of northern India and the wildlife. He is deeply committed to both and laments the need to kill tigers but accepts that protecting ordinary people is the priority.

He provides a wealth of wildlife information and always explains how and why a tiger became a man-eater–often the result of a bad encounter with a porcupine, the breaking of canines in older tigers, or injuries received hunting or being hunted.

By Jim Corbett,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Man-Eaters of Kumaon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Her tracks now–as she carried away the girl–led into the wilderness of rocks, some acres in extent, where the going was both difficult and dangerous. The cracks and chasms in between the rocks were masked with ferns, blackberry vines, and a false step, which might easily have resulted in a broken limb, would have been fatal. Progress under these conditions was of necessity slow, and the tigress was taking advantage of it to continue her meal. A dozen times I found where she had rested, and after each of these rests, the blood trail became more distinct.

This was her…


Book cover of 8 Hours (Numbers)

Anurag Anand Author Of To Hell and Back: Not all Tragedies are Orchestrated by Fate

From my list on Indian crime fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anurag Anand is a keen observer of humankind. He believes that the diversity of human emotions, motivations, and actions offer him a rich palette of tones to paint his stories with. He is the author of thirteen books across genres like self-help, historical fiction, crime thrillers, and contemporary fiction. Anurag’s works have been lauded for their realism, simplicity, and sharp characterization by readers across the spectrum. Of course, he is an avid reader and likes to remain abreast with the developments in the Indian writing space. He is a familiar face (and voice) in literature festivals, television debates and other related forums across the country.  

Anurag's book list on Indian crime fiction

Anurag Anand Why did Anurag love this book?

Born with a silver spoon, the protagonist of the story, Aratrika Reddy finds herself at the helm of affairs for a multi-million-dollar conglomerate at a very early age. The lack of experience is duly made up for by her enthusiasm and the zeal to leave a mark, until she finds herself at a crossroads where she has precisely eight hours to save her company from certain insolvency. With greed, treachery, and mistrust shaping the unexpected and exciting twists and turns in the plot, this one is a must-read. Especially for those looking for a glimpse into the winding corridors of power and the crafty and sly maneuvers that shape them. 

By Upendra Namburi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 8 Hours (Numbers) as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Please Read Notes: Brand New, International Softcover Edition, Printed in black and white pages, minor self wear on the cover or pages, Sale restriction may be printed on the book, but Book name, contents, and author are exactly same as Hardcover Edition. Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.


Book cover of Out of Darkness, Shining Light
Book cover of The History of Man
Book cover of The Spiral House

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