Fans pick 100 books like Fasting, Feasting

The idea to adapt Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came from my teaching of modern world history every semester. Later in that course, I would have students read Achebe’s novel as a foil or answer to Heart of Darkness. The Congolese in Heart are barely people: they have no names, and they are only really described by parts of their bodies.

This book presents the West African world–the communities, the customs, the emotions, the families–that colonialism destroys. While it is easy to be swept away by the story’s momentum in the last two dozen pages, take some time early in the novel to enjoy the world that Achebe lovingly paints. I think it is among the most human expressions of fiction you can read.  

I am a historian by day. But I have always believed that artists—whether writers, painters, or musicians—capture the human experience of history and, moreover, convey it in an enduring form for future generations far more effectively than historians. 

Historians have to present a single line of analysis or argument, which inevitably and properly makes events of a particular historical period meaningful to the particular moment in time when they are writing. A true artist can transcend both of those times. In my view, Rushdie’s book achieves that for the period, or generation, after Indian independence in 1947.

I have lived in India and written a lot about Indian history myself, including a book about Bombay, where Rushdie was partly raised. So, I have enjoyed and admired many of his earlier books, but this one remains his great achievement as a work of historical art.

As the author no doubt intended, right from the first page, I took a dislike to the protagonist (he makes his weekly visit to a prostitute). It emerges that David is, in fact, a sexual obsessive, and it is not long before he is forced to leave his university professorship after aggressively pursuing and bedding one of his students. 

I was surprised, therefore, when the story took off in a different direction and ended up as a graphic and sad portrayal of the predicament of white families in South Africa recently coming to terms with black rule. The portrait that emerges is a bleak one that includes violence, dislocation, theft, and (I thought this a nice circular touch back to the MeToo opening chapters) the rape of David's daughter by a young black man. I found the book disturbing as well as compelling.

This collection of academic essays gives an incisive overview of the newly emergent field of literature and human rights, which I build upon in my book. Contributors include pioneering scholars like James Dawes, Elizabeth Swanson, and Alexandra S. Moore. They have chapters exploring the relationship between literature and rights, the role of emotions in the process, and more. The collection does not consider disability much, but is a good introduction for someone who wants to learn more about an exciting academic field.

The cover made me buy it, and the writing made me love it. An unexpected amateur sleuth, a mere teenager trying to find his missing sister, is the crux of this story filled with captivating characters and constant go-go-go. The entire plot blew my mind with its twists and tensions and completely unexpected angles. I highly recommend this revered mystery/thriller/suspense novel set during the Age of Aquarius—1968 in Laguna Beach, California. 

I’ve never read anything remotely like this book.

It’s a painfully difficult but beautifully poetic read about an Irish girl from a miserably dysfunctional family with a difficult, abusive, ranting mother and a disabled older brother. After she is sexually abused by her uncle, the girl allows herself to be used by the boys at school and begins a series of loveless encounters, as if determined to prove how worthless she is. At college, she continues her career of joyless, destructive promiscuity.

The book is steeped in guilt and shame, redeemed only by the depictions of pure love she has for her brother. Like a poem or a lyrical poetry performance, the novel does truly incredible things with language.

Molope’s twitter profile features my favourite Toni Morrison quotation (one I want used in my obit, when the day comes), so I had to buy this novel.

Its core is about doing, or not doing, the right thing. I loved the writing, the moral complexity and the exploration of strangeness from the point of view of Naledi, a young teen, living in post-apartheid South Africa. She has moved from the bottom, a place of outhouses and rocks, to the top, a place of fountains and statues, and then discovers her brother is also a stranger. But then she warns us early that the township Marapong is a place you arrive at after "experiencing that unnerving feeling of being lost in a strange country with a strange language.”

You know when you first go to someone else’s house and realise that not every family lives the way yours does?

It’s part of the coming-of-age process and can be both illuminating and destabilising. In Adichie’s story, set in post-colonial Nigeria, 15-year-old Kambili gets the chance to escape her wealthy but religiously-oppressive household and stay with her vibrant, liberal aunt.

I love the way Kambili’s narrative expresses the new freedom she feels there: she has a voice at last and the liberty to experience a sexual awakening. She needs these new strengths as her own family disintegrates into tragedy.  

With a Persepolis meets Maus approach, this graphic novel visually takes us into the daily life that locals live in Kashmir, the most militarized zone in the world. This ground-up storytelling is intimate and powerful, as it takes us behind the propaganda and gives us the insider’s view in explosive, insightful, and humorous ways. Images may be more powerful than words, and this book has haunting images that will linger long after you finish the last page.

As this novel is set in 1970s Islamabad, Pakistan and the ex-pats are mainly American, it’s technically not about the British in India. But the ex-colonial legacy is there to see: Pakistan was a creation of independence from British rule and is still being affected by geo-politics. I was gripped by the description of life in the Pakistani capital; an area where my grandparents had lived and worked and through which I had travelled in the ’70s. This coming-of-age story is told by teenager Aliya, (half-Pakistani and half-Dutch) who attends the American school. Not only are the tensions of identity well portrayed but also the growing unease between the communities after a traffic accident leaves a young boy dead and world events ignite further unrest. Fascinating and unusual historical fiction.