Fans pick 100 books like The Great Escape

By Kati Marton,

Here are 100 books that The Great Escape fans have personally recommended if you like The Great Escape. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of The Postcard

Jayne Anne Phillips Author Of Night Watch

From my list on mothers and daughters and the trauma of war.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Jayne's book list on mothers and daughters and the trauma of war

Jayne Anne Phillips Why did Jayne love this book?

An amazing imaginative blend of nonfiction and reportage, The Postcard sets a mystery in motion.

In 2003, with the rest of the Christmas holiday mail, a postcard arrives at the Paris home of Annie Berest. The card is blank but for the names of her maternal great-grandparents and their two children – all killed at Auschwitz. 

Fifteen years later, Annie and her chain-smoking mother embark on a journey: discovering the fates of the Rabinovitch family who flee the Russian revolution for Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. Annie and her mother discover secrets that shatter the present; mother and daughter question the past and accept a new reality in their own distinct ways. 

I loved both the mystery revealed and the unshakable resolve of these women, who spent years finding the truth.

By Anne Berest, Tina Kover (translator),

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Postcard as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after…


Book cover of Letters Of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss

Anna Müller Author Of An Ordinary Life?: The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996

From my list on melancholy, love, and identity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of modern Poland. I teach, write, and think a lot about Poland and its place in Europe and the world. Regardless of where I live, Poland will always be my first home, where strawberries taste the best, the forest offers the most calming shade in the summer, and the language sounds the sweetest. But Poland is also a conundrum—perhaps similar to anywhere else and unique simultaneously. Its successes and failures, the traumas it caused and experienced, are part of me, and they keep pushing me to search for people and their stories that help us see the complexity of human life and individual choices.

Anna's book list on melancholy, love, and identity

Anna Müller Why did Anna love this book?

It’s a short book with 5 essays on displacement, loss, and ways to find a sense of belonging. The stories are personal; perhaps because of that, they touch on something that I think many of us carry in our hearts–a need to reflect on what it means to lose and rebuild a home.

The essays evoke many different themes–the power of movement and starting anew, but also a sense of alienation that even the voluntary wanderers may never lose. We carry the cultures that shaped us within us; as Eva Hoffman, one of the authors, says, “We are nothing more than the encoded memory of our heritage.” And feeling, even if a blessing, sometimes deepens our sense of alienation.

For many of the authors, it’s the language and writing that make sense of the discomfort and find a ‘home.’ It’s a small but beautifully written book and one that inspires…

By Andre Aciman (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Letters Of Transit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Moving, deeply introspective and honest" (Publishers Weekly) reflections on exile and memory from five award-winning authors. All of the authors in Letters of Transit have written award-winning works on exile, home, and memory, using the written word as a tool for revisiting their old homes or fashioning new ones. Now in paperback are five newly commissioned essays offering moving distillations of their most important thinking on these themes. Andre Aciman traces his migrations and compares his own transience with the uprootedness of many moderns. Eva Hoffman examines the crucial role of language and what happens when your first one is…


Book cover of Lenin on the Train

Erik C. Landis Author Of Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War

From my list on Russia’s Revolution and Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in the United States, completed my undergraduate degree there, and then pursued a doctorate in Modern History at the University of Cambridge. Now, I teach European history at Oxford Brookes University and publish research on Russia and the Soviet Union. I have always been fascinated by revolutions and civil conflicts, especially how people navigate the disruption of stability and normality. How they process fragmentary information, protect themselves, and embrace new ideas to give meaning to their threatened lives is central to my work as a historian. The Russian Revolution and Civil War offer a rich tapestry for exploring these dilemmas.

Erik's book list on Russia’s Revolution and Civil War

Erik C. Landis Why did Erik love this book?

This book narrowly focuses on one of the most famous moments that putatively determined the course of Russian and world history in the 20th century—Lenin’s journey from exile in Zurich, through enemy territory, to Petrograd in April 1917. The journey acquired infamy because it was facilitated by the German Army and government.

Leaving to one side consideration of counterfactuals or “what-ifs,” I loved Merridale’s book because it manages to capture so many worlds—the world of Russian revolutionary politics and exile, of espionage during WWI, and the early weeks of the Revolution of 1917—all while maintaining a focus on the human level of a train journey.

By Catherine Merridale,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Lenin on the Train as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin's trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year

'Splendid ... a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail' David Aaronovitch, The Times

By 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that…


If you love The Great Escape...

Ad

Book cover of American Flygirl

American Flygirl By Susan Tate Ankeny,

The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.

This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…

Book cover of Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky

Donald Rayfield Author Of Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

From my list on Russia and the USSR.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since adolescence, I have been fascinated by Slavonic languages, literature, cultures, and history, and by what can be retrieved from archives all over Eastern Europe. And because so much has been suppressed or distorted in everything from biographies of writers to atrocities by totalitarian governments, there has been much to expose and write about. Studying at Cambridge in the 1960s gave me an opportunity to learn everything from Lithuanian to Slovak: I have been able to write histories of Stalin and of Georgia, biographies of Russians such as Chekhov, Suvorin, and Przhevalsky, and the field is still fresh and open for future work.

Donald's book list on Russia and the USSR

Donald Rayfield Why did Donald love this book?

Patenaude focuses just on the Mexican period, from January 1937 to August 1940, of Trotsky’s exile, although the previous stages of his exile — Kazakhstan in 1928, then Turkey for four years, France for another three, followed by interment in Norway — are dealt with in a series of flashbacks. In fact, the whole book is written as if Trotsky in Coyoacán were recalling his past, from his prosperous farmer’s boyhood to his underground militancy, his Civil War military brilliance, and his blundering incompetence as a Bolshevik power-broker. The danger that Patenaude flirts with is to let Trotsky’s charisma and undoubted genius charm him into overlooking his subject’s monstrous indifference to the suffering and deaths of others, sometimes even of those close to him, as well as his overweening conceit.

By dealing with the last phase of the tragedy, nemesis, Trotsky is seen to pay in fear, resignation, failure, and…

By Bertrand M. Patenaude,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stalin's Nemesis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Leon Trotsky was the charismatic intellectual of the Russian Revolution, a brilliant writer and orator who was also an authoritarian organizer. He might have succeeded Lenin and become the ruler of the Soviet Union. But by the time the Second World War broke out he was in exile, living in Mexico in a villa borrowed from the great artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, guarded only by several naive young Americans in awe of the great theoretician. The household was awash with emotional turmoil - tensions grew between Trotsky and Rivera, as questions arose over his relations with Frida Kahlo.…


Book cover of Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian-American

Anne Irfan Author Of Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System

From my list on Palestinian refugees.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian at University College London, where I examine Palestinian refugee history in both my writing and my teaching. I first visited a Palestinian refugee camp 15 years ago, and I’ve spent much of my life since then researching the subject’s history and politics. As I see it, this topic is really the key to understanding the political dynamics of Israel-Palestine today. While a huge amount has been written on Israel-Palestine, I have always found that the most striking and informative works focus on refugees’ own experiences – and that’s the common thread running through the books I’ve chosen here.

Anne's book list on Palestinian refugees

Anne Irfan Why did Anne love this book?

If you only ever read one Palestinian memoirist, it should be Fawaz Turki.

He published three book-length memoirs, all excellent, but this is his most comprehensive autobiography and as such the must-read of all his works. It covers his early years in Haifa, his family’s displacement to Lebanon in 1948, and his subsequent adolescence in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp; as well as his later studies and career in the US.

Exile’s Return is organized around his first return visit to Palestine in the 1990s, where he comes face-to-face with the realities of the Israeli occupation and continuing Palestinian dispossession. There are now many brilliant memoirs and autobiographies by Palestinian refugees, but Turki remains the memoirist par excellence in this genre. 

By Fawaz Turki,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Exile's Return as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A memoir tells of a Palestinian exile's return to his family's West Bank home after forty years of Western life, his dismay at the rigid conformity of Palestinian society, and his recognition that he has become a Palestinian American


Book cover of The Love-Artist

Jesse Browner Author Of The Uncertain Hour: A Novel

From my list on historical novels of the ancient world.

Why am I passionate about this?

If you want to learn about historical societies and events, read history books. But if you want to understand your own world, and how it has emerged from and been shaped by the eternal, unchanging human psyche, intellect and fragility, read historical fiction. A great historical novel should always be first and foremost about the time in which it is written. That is what first drew me to the story of Petronius in The Uncertain Hour – if it doesn’t have a human heart, no amount of technical historical detail will kindle it in the reader’s imagination.

Jesse's book list on historical novels of the ancient world

Jesse Browner Why did Jesse love this book?

The Roman poet Ovid was one of the most popular writers of his day, but the defining tragedy of his life – his lifelong exile from Rome at the very height of his powers – remains as mysterious today as it was in his own time. In The Love-Artist, Jane Alison provides that tragedy with a back story, when Ovid, on holiday on the shores of the Black Sea, meets and is enchanted by the witch-like Xenia and persuades her to return with him to Rome, with dire consequences. But it’s the book’s dream-like atmosphere – the sense that we are seeing the world through the eyes of a great poet with one foot in the ambitious world of empire and the other in an unstable netherworld of imagination and mythology – that will remain with the reader.

By Jane Alison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Love-Artist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A darkly brilliant first novel imagines a missing chapter in the life of Ovid. Why was Ovid, the most popular author of his day, banished to the edges of the Roman Empire? Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate work, and perhaps his most accomplished? Between the known details of the poets life and these enigmas, Jane Alison has interpolated a haunting drama of passion and psychological manipulation. On holiday in the Black Sea, on the fringes of the Empire, Ovid encounters an almost otherworldly woman who seems to embody the fictitious creations…


If you love Kati Marton...

Ad

Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor By FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…

Book cover of Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora

Anne Irfan Author Of Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System

From my list on Palestinian refugees.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian at University College London, where I examine Palestinian refugee history in both my writing and my teaching. I first visited a Palestinian refugee camp 15 years ago, and I’ve spent much of my life since then researching the subject’s history and politics. As I see it, this topic is really the key to understanding the political dynamics of Israel-Palestine today. While a huge amount has been written on Israel-Palestine, I have always found that the most striking and informative works focus on refugees’ own experiences – and that’s the common thread running through the books I’ve chosen here.

Anne's book list on Palestinian refugees

Anne Irfan Why did Anne love this book?

Being Palestinian is a collection of essays by Palestinians reflecting on their identity and experiences living outside of their homeland.

I’ve chosen it here because few works are so effective in conveying both the commonalities and the diversity of the Palestinian refugee experience. The contributors range from Ivy League professors to activists campaigning for justice in the Middle East today; they include figures who grew up in refugee camps and those raised in some of the wealthiest cities in the world.

In many ways Being Palestinian is the perfect introduction to learning more about the subject, because it is accessible and highly personal without being simplistic. 

By Yasir Suleiman (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Being Palestinian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What does it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora? This collection of 100 personal reflections on being Palestinian is the first book of its kind. Reflecting on Palestinian identity as it is experienced at the individual level, issues of identity, exile, refugee status, nostalgia, belonging and alienation are at the heart of the book. The contributors speak in many voices, exploring the richness and diversity of identity construction among Palestinians in the diaspora. Included are contributions from Palestinians living in the Anglo-Saxon diaspora, mainly the UK and North America. They come from a variety of professional backgrounds: business people,…


Book cover of King of Cuba

John Thorndike Author Of A Hundred Fires in Cuba

From my list on Cuba, the Revolution, and Cuban exiles.

Why am I passionate about this?

Over fifty years ago I joined the Peace Corps in El Salvador. I married a Salvadoran woman, and our child was born during our two-year stay on a backcountry farm in Chile. My interest in Latin America has never faded—and in my latest novel, The World Against Her Skin, which is based on my mother’s life, I give her a pair of years in the Peace Corps. But it is Cuba that remains the most fascinating of all the countries south of our border, and of course I had to write about the giant turn it took in 1959, and the men and women who spurred that revolution.

John's book list on Cuba, the Revolution, and Cuban exiles

John Thorndike Why did John love this book?

Cristina Garcia has become the definitive chronicler of both Cuba and Cuban exiles. King of Cuba tells the story of two men: El Comandante (also called the despot, the tyrant, or El Líder—clearly this is Fidel) and a Miami exile, Goyo Herrera, who is as old and infirm as Castro himself. Garcia’s portrait of the desperation and ignominies these two old guys suffer, and of their hopeless attempts to cleave to past glories, transcends Cuban history and brings us two men I found cantankerous and self-inflating, but irresistible.

By Cristina García,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked King of Cuba as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A “darkly hilarious” (Elle) novel about a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge by the National Book Award finalist Cristina García, this “clever, well-conceived dual portrait shows what connects and divides Cubans inside and outside of the island” (Kirkus Reviews).

Vivid and teeming with life, King of Cuba transports readers to Cuba and Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life men: a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge against the dictator. García’s masterful twinning of these characters combines with a rabble of other Cuban voices to portray…


Book cover of Blindspot

Dory Codington Author Of Beside Turning Water

From my list on realistic historical fiction that makes you swoon.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started the Edge of Empire series which includes Beside Turning Water when I was a Park Guide at Boston’s National Historical Park. As a guide I gave tours on the Freedom Trail which preserves the buildings and stories from the era of the American Revolution. I wanted to create a book like the ones I love full of romance a bit of sex, and with historical accuracy. Books that would help readers fall in love with the characters and understand the history of the events in the Revolution without that dry history-class feeling.

Dory's book list on realistic historical fiction that makes you swoon

Dory Codington Why did Dory love this book?

I studied with Jane Kamensky while I was working on a MA in American History. Little did I know that she had a wicked historical character hidden inside. Learning that inspired me to write good history inside a realistic and sexy historical plot. This is a story of hidden identity and unexpected love. 

The characters are a portrait artist and his apprentice. The apprentice appears to be a young man, as only young men would take such a position in 18th-century Boston, and the artist is surprised at his yearning for him. 

By Jane Kamensky, Jill Lepore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Blindspot as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

BONUS: This edition contains a Blindspot discussion guide.

Stewart Jameson, a Scottish portrait painter fleeing his debtors in Edinburgh, has washed up on the British Empire's far shores—in the city of Boston, lately seized with the spirit of liberty. Eager to begin anew, he advertises for an apprentice, but the lad who comes knocking is no lad at all. Fanny Easton is a fallen woman from Boston's most prominent family who has disguised herself as a boy to become Jameson's defiant and seductive apprentice. 

Written with wit and exuberance by accomplished historians, Blindspot is an affectionate send-up of the best…


If you love The Great Escape...

Ad

Book cover of Love and War in the Jewish Quarter

Love and War in the Jewish Quarter By Dora Levy Mossanen,

A breathtaking journey across Iran where war and superstition, jealousy and betrayal, and passion and loyalty rage behind the impenetrable walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter.

Against the tumultuous background of World War II, Dr. Yaran will find himself caught in the thrall of the…

Book cover of The Emigrants

Zack Rogow Author Of Hugging My Father's Ghost

From my list on cross genres to tell compelling stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love it when a writer breaks the rules of a genre like fiction, nonfiction, or poetry to tell a story that can’t be contained in a typical way. Here are five books that think outside the box to narrate a tale that wants to be told in its own fashion. 

Zack's book list on cross genres to tell compelling stories

Zack Rogow Why did Zack love this book?

In this book, W.G. Sebald tells the stories of four Germans who, like the author, left their native land to live abroad. Sebald mixes family memories with stream-of-consciousness musings on history and culture. He inserts unexpected elements into the text, including a found diary written by his Great-Uncle Adelwarth, a gay man who was out of the closet way before it was safe.

Sebald sprinkles into the narrative black and white period photos that have a sort of deadpan, documentary humor that perfectly matches the tone of his prose.

By W.G. Sebald, Michael Hulse (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Emigrants as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs-the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with…


Book cover of The Postcard
Book cover of Letters Of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss
Book cover of Lenin on the Train

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,586

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in exile, Hungary, and Jewish history?

Exile 23 books
Hungary 40 books
Jewish History 484 books