100 books like The Lowland

This book, with its prose as poetry, made me want to read it again the minute I finished. To absorb Mr. Doerr’s majestic words was to be transformed into a little blind girl with the heart of a lion, the wit of a comic, the determination of a world leader. I became Marie-Laure LeBlanc and felt all the while sublimely grateful that I could see. And then I met Werner Flemming and wept for him. I understood him. I was deeply moved by him. 

I felt it was profoundly destined that these two should meet and fall in love, but my imagination carried me far into the future. I was surprised to find though I should have been disappointed, I was not. You see, this book made me realize that while many people touch our lives, some can change the course of our trajectory even by a single degree. And… show more.

I loved this book because it shows generations of family sacrifice and how the decisions we make in our lifetime can live on for decades after we pass.

I rushed to read this book every evening and had to pull myself away. It was so amazing to me that this author could weave through years and years of family history in a clear, coherent, and powerful way. 

I treasure this book and recently reread it alongside my own teen! It profoundly showcases the courage required to challenge deep-seated prejudices within a community and family.

Witnessing Scout Finch's perspective on her father Atticus' stand against racial injustice amidst moral dilemmas serves as a powerful reminder of the strength needed to confront and transcend the biases we inherit, a journey that resonates with my own experiences of overcoming familial legacies.

I feel almost obligated to begin by noting that I found Thien’s prose absolutely gorgeous. This is both a brave novel—in its representation of the massacre of student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989—and beautifully contextualized by further timelines spanning 1960s China and 1990s Canada.

I felt at once that Thien was showing me not only a snapshot of the infamous military response to student protests in Beijing but helping me understand what this brutal event might mean to those directly affected by it. The emotional and psychological power of the storylines and their exploration of grief and joy left me in awe of the novel and its author’s talent.

I savored every sentence of this book about Ruth, a thirty-something who moves back home to help care for her father with Alzheimer’s. Reading it made me feel like I was in the company of someone delightful: there’s humor and unexpected quirkiness on every page.

The book includes snippets of Ruth’s dad’s diary chronicling moments in her childhood, which are both winning and poignant. Khong is great at choosing moments and helping me see the hilarious or odd in the everyday. 

This is the story of the relationships and legacy of surgeon Kweku Sai, who passes away of a heart attack in his garden in Ghana in the opening pages of this page-turning family drama. The novel explores Kweku’s relationships with each of his four children and how each makes sense of and mourns his death.

While slightly different than the other selections in this list in that it doesn’t focus on a single father-daughter relationship, the novel nonetheless explores the complexity of Kweku’s estranged relationships with each of his children, including his daughters Taiwo and Sadie. 

I think Jamaica Kincaid’s novel is one of the great books of the 20th century. Though it barely breaks 160 pages, it is packed with more voice, personal and national history, political critique, style, humor, and heart than many novels five times its size.

I am a fan of all of Kincaid’s books, but there’s something truly special about this one. It’s a quantum leap forward from her (also very good!) debut novel, Annie John. In addition to re-reading for pleasure, I also reread Lucy every time I teach it, and it never fails to delight and surprise and inspire me as much as it did the first time. 

Talk about teenage angst. This YA novel is like living inside the mind of an anxiety-driven, introverted teenager who constantly finds herself in precarious positions.

I loved the honesty of this book the most. I got so frustrated with the main character because she kept making decisions that I’ve seen people in real life make. I wanted to scream at her so many times throughout the novel, and several times, I put the book down and shook my head in frustration. That’s when you know the novel is a winner. 

The Middleman was first published in 1973. The book recounts the story of Somnath, a young poet who is unemployed despite being middle-class and well-qualified. Frustrated by a fruitless search for a job and expected to become something by his family, Somnath becomes a middleman, a corrupt businessman, and a pimp. His dreams as well as his morality are crushed by the harsh rules of survival in Kolkata. Grim, relentless, and uncompromising, The Middleman discusses India’s too-much-of-everything and in some ways remains as pertinent to life in Indian metros today as it was then.

As a child, I loved—and still love—reading the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and the Hardy Boys.

But my favorite was Feluda, a series of mystery stories or novellas created by ace filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

Ray’s Feluda stories revolve around a fictional detective called Feluda, who travels across India’s vibrant landscapes, from the caves of Ajanta Ellora in the west, to Jaipur in the north, to Chennai in the south, to many more, and outside India too.

Ray’s detective stories are well rooted in Indian culture, very clean, and virtually without any “Adult” content, and only a bit of violence but make for interesting and gripping reading despite it. 

Written originally in Bengali language, it is translated very well. It is eminently suitable for readers of all age groups.