Here are 100 books that The Dead Wander in the Desert fans have personally recommended if you like
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I barely knew my grandparents who came to this country in 1905 and spoke only Yiddish. Because my mother refused to speak of her life in Odessa I was totally unaware of the persecution she and her family witnessed and experienced. As a psychoanalyst who helps people understand their own family’s history to better understand themselves, my historical novel, Odessa, Odessa helped me piece together what little I knew of my family’s history, and what I gleaned from my research and reading of novels, to render this portrait. Thomas Mann describes, in writing Joseph and His Brothers, putting clothing on the myth. I put the clothing on the history of my mother’s life story. So relevant today!
Thomas Mann, “puts clothing on the myth” of the biblical story of Joseph in this deeply profound and moving novel that reveals aspects of the human condition: love, greed, ruthlessness, forgiveness, jealousy, and ambition. Joseph and His Brothers remains relevant to the 21st-century reader. If I had to choose one novel to take with me to read on an isolated island, this would be the one I chose.
THE BOOK- As Germany dissolved into the nightmare of Nazism, Thomas Mann was at work on this epic recasting of the the great Bible story. Joseph, his brothers and his father Jacob, are at the prototypes of all humanity and their story is the story of life itself. Mann has taken one of the great simple chronicles of literature and filled it with psychological scope and range- its men and women are not remote figures in the Book of Genesis, but founders of states in a fresh, realisic world akin to our own .
Born into a powerfully matrilineal family (my mother chose my name when she was twelve) in small town Appalachia, I believe that we inherit our parents’ unresolved emotional dilemmas as well as their physical characteristics, and that the sensual elements of places our families may have inhabited for generations are “bred in the bone.” I’ve always said that history tells us the facts, but literature tells us the story. I’m a language-conscious writer who began as a poet, so that each line has a beat and a rhythm. Words awaken our memories and the powerful unconscious knowledge we all possess. The reader meets the writer inside the story: it’s a connection of mind and heart.
A nominee for the 2020 Booker Prize, The Shadow King opens at the end of WWII as Italy prepares to invade almost undefended Ethopia, whose communications depend on long-distance runners.
Orphaned Hirut feels her mother’s absence, yet rises from a lowly maid to a position of power as she inspires other women to openly and secretly resist an overwhelming colonial power. This matrilineal story set in a patriarchial society at war has many interwoven tales. I found it captivating, and the focus on relationships between women at war was a fractured mirror of my own concerns as I completed my novel set during America’s Civil War
Set during Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. What follows is a heartrending and unputdownable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
My Amgalant series follows the Secret History of the Mongols, which, though a history of the rise of Chinggis Khan, draws on an oral epic tradition. I always liked epics. Gilgamesh and the Saga of Grettir the Strong are among the fiction that most moves me. I look for historical fiction that owes to epic not only its story but its storytelling. The epic makers, ancient and medieval, knew craft we still can learn from. Quote epic at me, or misquote – homage, but own it. I like epic size and scope, but also intimate epic, with a close-up on the people that is post-19th-century novel. Epic has room for everything.
Another big, ambitious book that tells a war from both sides: here the 16th-century Spanish invasion of Chile. Equal time is given to the cast of Spaniards and the cast of Mapuche – large casts in each case. You’ll learn a battery of Mapuche words, for epics were always educative. What I love most, perhaps, about this book – after the shaman Ñamku, whom you see on the wonderful cover – is its witty style, its wordplay, gambolling in its sentences like a porpoise in the ocean, for sheer exuberance’s sake. Exuberance is a quality of epic. Along with expansiveness, and arguably, the upturn at the end, the grace note in spite of atrocities.
Set in a land of earthquakes and towering volcanoes, weaving history with myth, Arauco tells of war, sorcery ... and a love demonstrating that a man can embrace what he was seeking to destroy.When in 1540 Pedro de Valdivia headed south from Peru to conquer lands and gold, he took with him his beautiful mistress, Inés de Suárez. With him also rode his secretary, Juan de Cardeña, whose hopeless love of Inés stems from the same romances that inspired the Quixote. Having crossed the Atacama Desert, the Spanish encounter the indomitable resistance of the Mapuche people....For the first time, Arauco…
My Amgalant series follows the Secret History of the Mongols, which, though a history of the rise of Chinggis Khan, draws on an oral epic tradition. I always liked epics. Gilgamesh and the Saga of Grettir the Strong are among the fiction that most moves me. I look for historical fiction that owes to epic not only its story but its storytelling. The epic makers, ancient and medieval, knew craft we still can learn from. Quote epic at me, or misquote – homage, but own it. I like epic size and scope, but also intimate epic, with a close-up on the people that is post-19th-century novel. Epic has room for everything.
Out of left field but one of the strongest novels I’ve read in the last few years. Meera’s story of Chetna, the first hangwoman in India in the modern-day, is underlain by hundreds, not to say thousands of years of Chetna’s family history as hangmen.
Chetna has an epic force of character, real but the stuff of legends too. Some of this weight and heft accrues to her from the tales she tells herself and us of the lives of public executioners past, a vast tapestry that feeds into her sense of self. How you feel about Chetna is up to you. As in the case of Achilles, she is extravagant, with the uncomfortable energies of the slightly-more-than-human epic hero.
'A contemporary classic' -Mint The Grddha Mullick family bursts with marvellous tales of hangmen and hangings in which they figure as eyewitnesses to the momentous events that have shaped the history of the subcontinent. When twenty-two-year-old Chetna Grddha Mullick is appointed the first woman executioner in India, assistant and successor to her father, her life explodes under the harsh lights of television cameras. When the day of the execution arrives, will she bring herself to take a life? Meera's spectacular imagination turns the story of Chetna's life into an epic and perverse coming-of-age tale. The lurid pleasures of voyeurism and…
I am a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. My works have been published globally in more than fifteen languages. I hold a PhD from the University of Oxford, served as an officer in the Canadian and British Armies, and have appeared in numerous documentaries, television programs, and podcasts. I am an associate professor of history (and, as a true Canadian, head coach of the hockey team) at Colorado Mesa University.
This book was a pertinent reminder of the prevailing yet misplaced, western-centric historical epicenter by realigning the map toward the East while providing a fresh, cosmopolitan perspective of our shared saga. Frankopan traverses the dynamic Eurasian Steppe and Silk Roads, which, for millennia, have connected and coupled people, products, pathogens, economies, armies, inventions, and ideas that shaped our global village.
The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east
For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture - and is shaping the modern world.
This region, the…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Food is without doubt one of the most insightful windows into any culture. The food we eat is a mirror of who we are and where we come from, a strong trigger for memory, and cooking together or sharing a meal creates an unusually strong bond between people who were previously strangers. In Red Sands, Caroline Eden combines reportage, photography, and recipes to build a rich picture of Central Asia, introducing people and places foreigners would never normally encounter. Her stories are diverse, evocative, and thought-provoking, but they have one thing in common: they make you hungry for adventure and to taste the many ingredients and dishes she describes.
"Caroline Eden is an extraordinarily creative and gifted writer. Red Sands captures the sights, tastes and feel of Central Asia so well that when reading this book I was sometimes convinced I was there in person. A wonderful book from start to finish." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads\
"Caroline Eden, whose book Black Sea was showered with awards, is on the road again, this time travelling through the heart of Asia. It's not your usual cookbook, it's more a travel book with recipes, the recipes acting as postcards which…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.
On New Years' Eve 1938, the writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest based on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution hanging over her. As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of…
When I first visited Central Asia in 2008, little did I know that it would become the focus of my life and work. I now advise the World Bank and national governments on economic development, with a particular focus on tourism, and I’m the Chairman of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. I am Uzbekistan’s Ambassador for Tourism, a co-founder of the Silk Road Literary Festival, and I’ve written and updated guidebooks to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Silk Road.
Alisher Navoiy is regarded as the father of the Uzbek language: he was the first person to use Chagatai (the forerunner of modern Uzbek) as a literary language, and he’s Uzbekistan’s national poet. English romantic poet Andrew Staniland, who has translated many of Navoiy’s poems, wrote A New Diwan after his first visit to Uzbekistan. It’s a collection of 84 short poems written in long couplets, inspired by Navoi’s original writing and by the wonders of the Silk Road cities.
Andrew Staniland's "A New Diwan (h/t Alisher Navoiy)" is a sequence of 84 short poems, written in long, stepped couplets and inspired by the fifteenth century poet, as well as by Uzbekistan's Silk Road cities, its literature and landscapes. It is a contemplative, non-narrative sequence, to be read a few poems at a time.
I spent long days at the beach as a kid, and sharp bits of horseshoe crab shells in my sandcastles were a frequent annoyance. As an adult, I discovered a horseshoe crab lurching its way back to the water and wondered: What's the deal with this weird animal? To find out, I read books, talked with scientists, and assisted with horseshoe crab and shorebird research. What I discovered—about horseshoe crabs, other animals, and the water they live in—was too amazing to keep to myself. I hope my book encourages kids to go out and explore wild places, too!
As a young reader, I would have slipped into this book and lost myself for hours. While it’s not a picture book by most definitions, these gorgeously illustrated pages overflow with facts, stories, and cheerful art. Like its subject matter, Water: A Deep Dive of Discovery covers a lot of territory—from the many ways water affects the lives of all living creatures, to maps and diagrams, to simple experiments you can try at home. A lovely book that will hold up to repeated readings by curious minds.
Immerse yourself in fascinating facts about water! This comprehensive yet accessible exploration of water will help young readers understand many aspects of one of our planet's most precious resources - and how they can protect it. A friendly water droplet character guides children through topics ranging from melting and freezing to the ways in which water literally shapes the Earth. Tales by storytellers from around the world are sprinkled through the book, highlighting the variety of ways in which global cultures value water. The engaging format includes gatefolds and booklets with hands-on activity ideas for learning about and protecting water.…
Visiting journalists regularly misinterpret California. Outside politicians twist it into bizarre caricatures. I know because I have worked as a journalist in all parts of the state. I covered crime for the LA Herald Examiner, spent 27 years at the LA Times, was a columnist and editorial page editor at the Sacramento Bee and, finally, was senior editor of the nonprofit news organization, CalMatters. I’ve covered governors, wildfires, a major earthquake, politics, mass incarceration, mass shootings, an execution, and all manner of policy. There are many great nonfiction books about California, including Jim Newton’s biographies of Earl Warren and Jerry Brown, Randy Shilts’s The Mayor of Castro Street, and Gladwin Hill’s Dancing Bear.
Mark Arax is a lovely writer who tells a riveting story about the place he knows best, California’s Central Valley. He describes the flawed giants who carved up California’s water for their benefit and the workers who toiled to make their dreams happen. Mark makes his hometown of Fresno and the rest of the Valley a compelling character in the drama. His book as essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand California.
A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil—the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought
Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.
