100 books like Fasting, Feasting

This was one of the first novels I read in the late sixties as I began reading African writers and studying the novel form and possibilities. Chinua Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, a warrior in the late 1800s as he tries to resist the British political and religious powers encroaching on his home. Okonkwo is in conflict with his community as they allow the intrusion and succumb to the British.

Through his proverbs, rhythmic prose, and poignant storytelling, Chinua Achebe brings to life this story without polemics and the drier narrative of history books but instead through the passion of a man and his world. As I studied how novels could affect this empathetic magic, I looked to books like Things Fall Apart.

This book was my introduction to magical realism when I studied it as part of my English Literature Degree (more years ago than I care to admit). Salman Rushdie wasn’t so well known in those days, but I fell in love with his trademark wry, dark humour straight away and ended up writing my Honours thesis about it. 

It's a stunning take on the partition of India in 1947. The novel explores those themes that always speak to me: the wielding of power, oppression, justice, and the role of the individual caught in historical forces over which they have no control. 

Nobel-prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee is not known for dodging big questions and moral gravitas, and my pick here is no exception.

The Lives of Animals would seem to be the logical choice (and with it, the novel that eventually emerged from it, Elizabeth Costello of 2003). But I’m going with his earlier novel, Disgrace (published the same year as Lives, 1999), because I think it’s the stronger book, and by that I mean more unsettling, more challenging.

Disgrace captures how the most intense and meaningful episodes in our moral lives can nevertheless be opaque and, in a sense, unfathomable. And few books demonstrate in a “show don’t tell” way just how intertwined race, sexuality, and animality are in our moral drama.

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. 

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.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Richard Crasta when he lived in New York, and his novel was a welcome surprise at a time when I needed it. Not all fictional immigrant journeys about hope are harrowing life-and-death tales. Some are funny, like Crasta’s coming-of-age American-dream novel. It’s been called the Indian Portnoy’s Complaint. I get that some might have a problem with that. But I felt for Vijay Prabhu, our young protagonist. He yearns to be a writer and sleep with American women—a dream that American TV and movies have promised him, a dream that’s taboo in his native Mangalore and in his Catholic family, where writing is not an acceptable profession for a man and sex is definitely not discussed. Witty and honest and devastatingly human.