Here are 100 books that The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna fans have personally recommended if you like
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna.
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My twenty novels tend to focus on characters who face great challenges, and I have a particular appreciation for beautiful prose. I don’t read for distraction or entertainment, but to be enlightened, moved, and made more compassionate about different kinds of people in different environments.
It’s a beautiful memoir by a Jewish doctor/painter/political activist who was sent into exile by Mussolini for his anti-fascist political activism. It’s deeply heartfelt and gorgeously written as Levi gets to know the extraordinarily poor peasants of a tiny village in interior southern Italy.
I love all things Italian and so it speaks to me, but I also have a great deal of compassion for the have-nots of this world. Levi describes them with wonderful sympathy and respect (at the same time sharply criticizing the petty bureaucrats and the puffed-up local officials).
'There should be a history of this Italy, a history outside the framework of time, confining itself to that which is changeless and eternal, in other words, a mythology. This Italy has gone its way in darkness and silence, like the earth, in a sequence of recurrent seasons and recurrent misadventures. Every outside influence has broken over it like a wave, without leaving a trace.'
So wrote Carlo Levi - doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of conscience - in describing the land and the people of Lucania, where he was banished in 1935, at the start of the Ethiopian war,…
By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.
Janie Chang is a master writer who weaves the power of myth into her story of a 1937 escape of Chinese university students as Japanese bombs drop on their city. Charged with protecting an irreplaceable trove of ancient books, the students face air raids, a ragged life on the road, and a growing fear of traitors from within. The Library of Legends is an evocative tale of love, war, and survival, beautifully written.
"The Library of Legends is a gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with mist and magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937 - only to discover that danger stalks them from within. Janie Chang pens pure enchantment!" -Kate Quinn, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress
From the author of Three Souls and Dragon Springs Road comes a captivating historical novel-the third in a loosely-connected trilogy-in which a young woman travels across China with a convoy of student refugees, fleeing the…
I’ve loved, I’ve lost, and everything in between! Just like my protagonist, Jenna, in Just Call Me Confidence, life imitated art and I took a page from her “book,” having to begin anew. I’ve been the friend who has entertained all sorts of stories—sex, love, and rock n’ roll (wink, wink)—all without judgment. That role in my life continues, and what I’ve discovered in my “research” is this: Sex is wonderful, but there’s no greater joy than loving someone, even if it’s only for a little while. Read more about my take on sex, love, and rock n’ roll on my blog “Bone Up.”
I expected a love story. The intriguing plot and unique characters impressed me. What I didn’t expect was one of the sexiest love scenes I’ve ever read.
Alongside the sexy stuff is the dark story of a Machiavellian circus entrepreneur and those who are subservient to his violent whims. Marlena, the abused wife/damsel in distress with a badass backbone and the young, compassionate vet, Jacob—there’s no better way to set up a white hot coupling.
While nothing in this book is red-hot erotic, there is no erotic experience greater than tacit lust that has gone unaddressed for too long between two people who not only love each other, but are allies and co-destroyers of a dark, callous personality.
THE INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NOW A FILM STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON AND ROBERT PATTINSON
'Great story, loads of fun; hard to put down.' STEPHEN KING
The Great Depression, 1929. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and utterly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits in the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth: a second-rate travelling circus struggling to survive by making one-night stands in town after endless town. Jacob, a veterinary student now unable to finish his degree, is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. He…
I write about race and technology, and specifically the histories of Black folks as they influence online activities, from memes and community-building to care networks and activist efforts. I use theory, research, and most importantly lived experiences to tell the story of Black digital practices. The books I choose here represent how diverse my thinking is when it comes to this topic: from fiction to non-fiction, these works are as fluid yet meaningful as I think identity is, on and offline.
I bought this book thinking it would be a whimsical read and a fun departure from my non-fiction, academic world. Fast forward a few years, and I have consistently used this book in my teaching of university students in my Digital Cultures classes.
The book might not seem like it’s about the Internet, but the spiritual, inter-generational elements of the story are easily connected to the hopeful stories we see time and again of Black folks online.
'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey
Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully today
Hiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom.
Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a…
I’m a teacher, sailor, kayaker, and environmental-vegan animal lover. I live by the sea among marine wildlife. I grew up sailing, then sailed the Pacific on the tiny wooden boat that was my first marital home. We had no engine, no modern technology. Like the sea beings, we had a wing in the wind and a fin in the sea so we lived in their world, on their terms. Alone, helming under the stars, I dreamed of dolphin culture and mentally made lists of possible dolphin vocations. This helped me create fiction from the dolphin viewpoint. Input from scientists brought authenticity to my marine environmental fantasies and messages.
Richard Adams himself signed my copy of this book when he visited New Zealand long ago. If he hadn’t looked deep into my eyes at the time and promised me it had a happy ending I might never have made it to the end, so harrowing was the story. But I finished it and he was right. The story questions the ethics of human exploitation of animals. To me, Plague Dogs was his greatest work, far more important than Watership Down, and certainly no children’s book. Adams is a true master at presenting the animal's point of view. This book hit me like a sledgehammer and like Watership Down, it beautifully evoked the natural world of its setting.
Two dogs, Snitter and Rowf, escape from a research laboratory in the Lake District where it is wrongly supposed they have been purposely infected with a deadly virus and now pose a dangerous threat to the human population. As the authorities give chase, the two friends make their way through the hills and across the moors, along the way learning to survive on their wits and finding friendship and help from a fox they encounter. They dream of finding their original owners and a safe haven - but the hunt is on.
As an immigration legal scholar and lawyer, I read about immigration a lot. From laws that seem written to confuse to articles in academic journals written for an audience of experts, I’m lucky to love what I do—and so I enjoy most of what I read. But these books are special. They drew me in and wouldn’t let go until the last page. Whether fiction or non-fiction, they are written by storytellers who bring laws and policies to life.
At times, immigration policies are so ludicrous that only fiction can tell a credible story of what’s happening.
In Luiselli’s novel, modern asylum policies in the United States get the storytelling they deserve through the lens of one New York family struggling with the ordinary challenges of life only to learn, bit by bit, just how close their lives are to the migrants attempting to navigate the extraordinary demands of immigration policies along the US-Mexican border.
NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood ... This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences.” —The Washington Post
In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between…
My father was transferred to Southern California from Charlotte, North Carolina when I was fourteen years old. I was excited and my friends were jealous. At that point, all I knew about California was the music of the Beach Boys and the Gidget television series. I thought everyone lived on the beach and knew movie stars. I didn’t know there were neighborhoods like Reseda and Anaheim and Fountain Valley, places where people live lives that have nothing to do with the glamour and celebrity of Hollywood. California has been my home for more than fifty years. I still find it fascinating and puzzling, and I still feel like an outsider.
Flower, Grand, First is a collection of poems about Santa Ana, California and Jalisco, Mexico. The title comes from three streets in Santa Ana, where my husband’s family has lived for more than one hundred years. Hernandez’s poems are about place and displacement and examine what it feels like to be an outsider trying to make sense of life in a strange land, always searching for home. In the wonderful poem “My Father Shows Me Catalina” Hernandez writes: “Smile so you both know it’s okay that you are different. But once-in-a-while, the division is so clean it’ll cut into you.”
Gustavo Hernandez’s debut poetry collection, Flower Grand First, moves through the complex roads of immigration, sexuality, and loss. These poems are points plotted on maps both physical and emotional—the rural landscapes of Jalisco, the glimmering plains of memory, the busy cities of California, and the circular paths of grief. Hernandez’s stunning elegies float along a timeline spanning three decades, honoring family, recording a personal history, and revealing a vulnerable but resilient voice preoccupied with time, place, and what is left behind out of necessity.
I was born in Ghana and migrated to the US, where I have spent most of my adult life. The antipathy in certain circles towards immigrants still surprises me. I have tried to address this in my own way through fiction in the hope that readers can come to see migrants as multi-dimensional people with similar hopes, dreams, and aspirations. As such, I am similarly drawn to books that address the humanity of migrants. It has always been my belief that a better understanding of those we think are different from us will help bridge our various divides. I hope my recommendations help get readers there. One book at a time.
Writing about a Nigerian family’s migration from Nigeria to the US, I appreciated Atta’s ability to masterly cover a wide range of issues without losing focus.
I was totally charmed by the remarkable way in which this novel managed to take me along on a journey that ultimately raises deep appreciation of each character’s point of view in the course of touching on issues such as interracial as well as intra-racial tensions and familial strains exacerbated in a new geographic and cultural environment.
An account of an immigrant family's struggle and the lessons learned about diversity
Writing at the height of her powers, The Bad Immigrant cements Sefi Atta’s place as one of the best storytellers of our time. Through the voice of her first male protagonist, Lukmon, Atta peels away nuanced layers to expose the realities of migration from Nigeria to the USA, such as the strains of adjustment and the stifling pressure to conform without loss of identity.
Covering a wide range of issues, including interracial and intra-racial tensions, and familial strains exacerbated in a new geographic and cultural environment, this…
I’m a language scientist and a writer, but most of all, a person who is smitten with language in all its forms. No doubt my fascination was shaped by my early itinerant life as a child immigrant between Czechoslovakia to Canada, with exposure to numerous languages along the way. I earned a PhD in linguistics and taught linguistics and psychology at Brown University and later, the University of Calgary, but I now spend most of my time writing for non-academic readers, integrating my scientific understanding of language with a love for its aesthetic possibilities.
This is one of the most innovative and intriguing memoirs I have read. Its structure is inspired by the visual image of the line that runs through the Punjab region, partitioning Pakistan from India. The book is separated into halves: one half relates the stories of the author’s parents, who were born on opposite sides of the line, and the other presents the author’s own experiences and observations as a second-generation immigrant. Nothing about the design of the book indicates which half should be read first—a hint that the reader will be invited to consider the resonances running in both directions across the generations.
The theme of fragmentation and division is, paradoxically, the glue that binds the various elements of the book together. The author explores the arbitrary lines, imposed by historical and cultural forces, that divide people from each other and that split their selves into parts. The portrait…
WINNER OF THE 2020 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NONFICTION
“Wondrously and elegantly written in language that astonishes and moves the reader…This is an important book: an emotional and intellectual tour de force.” —Jane Urquhart
An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma, using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present.
We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis.…
I write about family, inspired by the exquisitely flawed one I dwell within. Loving my children is the easiest and hardest thing I have ever done in that it was easy to fall in love with them the moment they came into this world but the accountability to that love can be staggering. The same can be said for my siblings. I hope my novels and stories help readers examine the ways we are all tethered to one another. My writing is where I try to untangle all of that. It’s about the ties that bind and how we choose to wear those bindings, especially in times of crisis.
Siblings tend to circle the wagon around one another. Sure, we squabble amongst ourselves, but when the outside world comes at one of us, it might as well have come for all of us. At least that’s been my experience. But honestly, this constant rescuing can be tiresome and perhaps it asks too much of us—especially if we’re dealing with our own unresolved heartache. This novel is so honest in its portrayal of three sisters, frantic to save a sister and finally forced to share in the grief and blame. I also loved that the main character, a former college professor, turns to literature to help her find her moral way.
A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020 A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine * The New York Times * The Washington Post *Vogue * Bustle * BuzzFeed * Ms. magazine * The Millions * Huffington Post * PopSugar * The Lily * Goodreads * Library Journal * LitHub * Electric Literature
The first adult novel in almost fifteen years by the internationally bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
“A stunning work of art that reminds readers Alvarez is, and always has been, in a class…
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