100 books like How to Pronounce Knife

David Robertson is well known as an author for young readers, with two stunning picture books, a pile of graphic novels, and several amazing middle-grade novels to his name. All of those are also amazing! Yep, all of them. This book is the memoir of his experiences growing up in Canada, all explored through the lens of visiting his father’s trapline. Although a Swampy Cree man, he was initially taught to hide his identity, and what I most love about this work and all of Robertson’s work, is how his sense of identity now roots all of his writing. His message is urgent, necessary, and powerful; his words easy to read yet profound. The raw honesty of this memoir make it a terrific read.

This book pick is a dystopic novel about a young woman in a world that separates between those who are from the Gutter and those who are not. I love the intensity of this coming-of-age story, and the compelling writing and voice, for sure. But most of all I love the main character Elimina. She is smart and passionate, fierce and loving, and I defy any reader not to fall a bit in love with her. The world she’s born into pushes her down, and yet she rises above stigma and subverts society to become a beacon for those around her. Gutter Child is a heart-breaking and haunting book, filled with moments of beauty and brilliance.

Not-so-secretly I wish I lived in a fairy story (maybe other writers feel like this too?) This novel is a fairy story for adults in the bravest and most beautiful way. The book begins with a meteor shower and features a real centaur and a love story at its heart that spirals out and impacts the survivors of the end of the world. At least, it’s the end of one world. The characters in The Centaur’s Wife are vivid and true, and the gorgeous, strange story lingers with me all the time, reminding me to be braver on the page and in the world.

I’d be remiss if I shared books from Canada with you and didn’t point you towards some of the amazing writing coming out of Saskatoon, Treaty 6 Territory, and the Homeland of the Métis. Lisa-Bird Wilson's newest book is a beautiful novel about an Indigenous woman’s search for identity after her adoption. Living in Saskatchewan as Canada wrestles with truth and reconciliation, books like Probably Ruby give me a path to understanding and learning. The voice of this novel is searing and gorgeous, filled with heart and light, and I believe anyone who reads it will feel changed by the experience.

Shiva Naipaul is a truly major Caribbean writer. He captures the volatile essence of that extremely unstable society. One added bonus is his inter-racial perspective, to which his Indian origins contributes decisively. This work ‘views a colonial world sharply with postcolonial perspectives.’ Any reader of West Indies fiction should combine a sense of history with some grasp of contemporary conditions. Although the novel was written in the 1960s, it still has a sense of contemporary relevance. Obviously, readers must keep their eyes open for younger writers in this mode. Naipaul’s works have rightly been integrated into the Educational System.      

I have a weakness for eccentric characters raging at the world while trying to find a place in it. Allie, the protagonist, leaves America for Honduras, where he tries to create an alternate universe, free from what he views as the ills of America. I read this book while living in the Caribbean and Allie’s pronouncements about imperialism and materialism, though clearly paranoid, contained, I felt, a germ of truth. The ebullient characters, the restless energy, and the dark humour, all characteristics of the novelist’s later books, are on full display here.

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. 

This travelogue is so exquisitely written it is possible to admire it simply for its lyricism. But it’s much more than a travelogue. Embedded in the book are familial narratives, personal accounts, musings about other writers – Coetzee, Naipaul, Walcott, Galeano, for instance – all with the intent to chart the black diasporic experience. It’s a deeply personal book, yet studded with brilliant observations on belonging. “Black experience in any modern city or town in the Americas is a haunting. One enters a room and history follows; one enters a room and history precedes. History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives.” This book is best read slowly, savouring its insight. 

Drawing on a wide range of research, Shah counteracts the common assumption that contemporary human and nonhuman migrations represent an unprecedented global crisis.

She reframes migration as a biological and cultural necessity that has been a crucial part of human history and shows how it has been fueled by such factors as economic inequality, politics, nationalism, colonialism, etc. I learned so much from this meticulously researched, yet highly readable book.

I love how it asks readers to consider migration and its history from multiple perspectives and that it can help us think and prepare for an increase of migration due to climate change.

This is a heart-felt but infinitely well-researched book that asks us to go beyond the usual answers one might give to the question of why migrants risk everything and leave their homes (i.e., gang violence, climate change, war, hunger).

Instead, Mehta shows how colonial and neo-colonial forces have and continue to cause migration flows. People migrate, Mehta says, “because the accumulated burdens of history have rendered their homelands less and less habitable.”

As someone who had to leave a country that was thrust into a four-decade-long civil war because of American intervention (the CIA), I appreciate the clear-eye and convincing argument Mehta makes about contemporary migration: it is directly due to American and European political interests (i.e., the Cold War) and their extraction and theft of gold, silver, cash crops, and human beings from the Global South. And it is fueled by black market demands for drugs and arms that… show more.