10 books like The Comedians

As a Russian – and as a scholar of Russian economic and political history – I am always intrigued by Russia’s failure to become a normal European country, free, prosperous, and peaceful.

This fiction book provides many great insights for anyone interested in this particular country. It focuses on the most dramatic and consequential episode of Russian history: the first decades of Soviet Union.

Given the tragic events of this period, fictional are nonfictional accounts of this time are usually too depressing to read. This book, however, finds a very unusual angle of telling this story.

The author does recount the main political developments of the period but manages to do it through the eyes of a (yes, fictional!) narrator who keeps integrity, dignity, and sense of humor. 

A dark, brooding novel by a giant of Latin American fiction, the Peruvian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Vargas Llosa appropriately placed a female protagonist, Urania Cabral, front and center in this book about a dictator who is remembered in part for his abuses of young women. Another storyline involves the men who conspired, with CIA support, to assassinate Trujillo. Vargas Llosa includes real historical characters, like Trujillo’s right-hand man and successor, Joaquín Balaguer, often with fictionalized aspects; and fictional composites bearing witness to the experiences of the Dominican people under their rule.

In the Garden of Beasts follows the story of William E. Dodd, who was sent to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in 1933 as an American ambassador.

The Dodds move into a mansion across the street from Berlin’s public park called the “Tiergarten,” which means “the garden of beasts.” The mansion’s owner, a Jewish banker who lives upstairs, hopes that the American ambassador’s presence will dissuade authorities from breaking in and arresting him.

Along with his family, Dodd experiences the glamour and romance of Germany—until he becomes disturbingly aware of the Third Reich’s oppressive practices and terrifying plans.

It’s fascinating and horrifying to see Germany of 1933 through the eyes of this uniquely well-positioned American family (which included Dodd’s 24-year-old daughter, an adventurous young woman who joins Berlin’s social whirl).

I’ve read all of Ernest Hemingway’s books and although it is many years ago since I read The Old Man of the Sea (when I was a young man of the sea). One man alone in a boat on the wide ocean appeals to me as I have been in that situation myself on several occasions. My boat, a 28-foot motor/sailer, berthed in Fleetwood was my refuge from a troubled world. As a fire officer, I may have been involved with a motorway pile-up, cutting casualties out of wrecked vehicles, or a tragic house fire or simply dealing with bolshie firemen on my station. I would go to my boat, wait for the tide, sail out of the harbour alone, clear the shipping channels, drop the sails, make myself a coffee, sit outside on the deck, and unwind in the solitude of the sea.

A Theatre for Dreamers captures the halcyon days of the 60s artistic community on the Greek Island of Hydra. It focuses on the international bohemian set, including the authors Charmian Clift and George Johnston. Among the artists, poets and hangers-on are a Norwegian couple—Axel Jensen and Marianne Ihlen—and a young, charismatic Canadian by the name of Leonard Cohen. It is narrated by the likable ingenue Erica, a novitiate novelist in her late teens whose mother’s dying wish was for her daughter to go off on an adventure. Erica is like Nick Carraway, mainly on the periphery of events, observing and learning from the more experienced, glamorous people she has fallen in with. Interesting fact: author, Polly Samson, is married to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.

Esmeralda Santiago portrays the 19th-century journey of Ana Cubillas from imperial Spain to colonial outpost Puerto Rico. Cubillas has a complicated relationship with her family, slavery, and Puerto Rico, and the reader never knows quite what to think of her. Like Cubillas, Puerto Rico itself is complicated. I lived in San Juan for two years and grew to love the island, but I never felt like I quite understood it – any outsider who says they do is probably lying.

Set in a fictional town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast during the 1950’s “violencia,” this novella portrays the seemingly mundane life of an anonymous retired military officer and his wife. The aging couple struggles against poverty, government corruption, and an overwhelming feeling of insignificance. As the colonel’s life loses meaning, he eventually realizes that he has nothing left but the rooster that he is readying for a cockfight. I read this novella after training with the Colombian Navy in Cartagena, and it took me only a few pages to realize that García Márquez is a genius.

It’s impossible to understand contemporary Haiti without recognizing the impact of the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country, taking an estimated 300,000 lives and destroying many of the iconic historical sites in the capital city, Port-au-Prince. Chancy’s powerful novel of tragedy and resilience depicts the lead-up to and aftermath of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake via the interlinked stories of ten characters from different walks of life. These stories drive home both how different the experience of Haiti can be depending on socioeconomic class and race; yet also how connected so many Haitian stories are to each other.

The work of this rightfully acclaimed Haitian-American writer spans nonfiction and fiction, weaving historical memory in with present-day Haiti. This 2004 novel, told through related short stories, draws its title from the name of torturers under the regimes of the Duvaliers, father and son: François “Papa Doc” from 1957 to 1971 and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” from 1971 until a popular uprising sent him into exile in 1986. Danticat draws on that period as well as contemporary issues like the ordeals of immigrants; the police killing of Haitian immigrant Patrick Dorismond in New York in 2000; the FRAPH government thugs who terrorized Haitians after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide; the experiences of Haitian women; and the impact of trauma on families and relationships.

The Haitian writer narrates this 1955 novel about the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic via a laborer, Hilarion, who is thrown into prison for petty theft and politically awakened by a fellow inmate (a stand-in for the author). After he is released, he meets his love, Claire-Heureuse. Political upheaval sends them across the Dominican border, where he cuts cane then joins in a strike. When the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo orders an ethnic cleansing, Hilarion is mortally wounded as he tries to return to Haiti across the Massacre River along the northern border.