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Doctor
Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
This famous novel of the Russian revolution and Civil War became a cause
celebre when its publication was cancelled by Soviet authorities and Pasternak
had the manuscript smuggled out of the country for publication. Doctor Zhivago
was cited by the Swedish Academy when it awarded Pasternak the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1958.
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Everything
is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction. With only a yellowing
photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets
out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather
from the Nazis. Lit by passion, fear, guilt, memory, and hope, the characters
in Everything Is Illuminated mine the black holes of history. As the search
moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality
collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.
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Fixer,
Bernard Malamud
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel
tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder
of a young Russian boy.
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The No.
1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
The pantheon of brilliant detectives
with great names -- Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Sam Spade -- has a new
member: Precious Ramotswe. As Botswana’s only female private investigator,
Precious finds herself in some exotic situations -- flirting with wayward
husbands in the Go Go Handsome Man’s Bar one minute, confronting
witch doctors about missing boys the next.
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Out
of Africa, Isak Dinesen
Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914
to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi.
Her account of her African adventures … is that of a master storyteller,
a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant
literary personalities of the century."
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Poisonwood
Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
“Packed with themes of cultural diversity, political morality, and
environmental ethics, [this novel] is set in postcolonial Africa.”
Barnes & Noble Review
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West
with the Night, Beryl Markham
Markham was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to
west. She describes her life growing up in British East Africa and as a
pioneer aviator. Ernest Hemmingway “dubbed the book ‘bloody
wonderful.’” Library Journal
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A Thousand
Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
Set like its predecessor in war-torn Afghanistan, A Thousand Splendid Suns
uses that tumultuous backdrop to render the heroic plight of two women of
different generations married to the same savagely abusive male.
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The Inheritance
of Loss
by Kiran Desai
Desai takes us to the northeastern Himalayas where a rising insurgency challenges
the old way of life. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount
Kanchenjunga lives an embittered old judge who wants to retire in peace
when his orphaned granddaughter Sai arrives on his doorstep.
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Memed, My
Hawk
by Yashar Kemal
An epic story of the Middle East by modern Turkey's greatest novelist. Memed
grows up in a remote and desperately poor mountain village that suffers
under the thumb of the local landlord. Lively and adventurous, young Memed
seeks to escape from a life of grueling toil.
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Snow
by Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (Translator)
Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged
poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing
this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented
by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among
girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school.
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The Space
Between Us
by Thrity Umrigar
Set in modern-day India and witnessed through two compelling and achingly
real women, the novel shows how the lives of the rich and the poor are intrinsically
connected yet vastly removed from each other, and vividly captures how the
bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of class and culture.
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Ali
and Nino, Kurban Said
Ali and Nino has been hailed as one of the enduring romantic novels of the
century. Ali Khan is an Islamic boy from Azerbaijan with his ancestors'
passion for the desert and warrior legends, but his lover Nino, a beautiful
Christian girl from Georgia, is the child with a more European sensibility.
The lovers spend their days in Baku on the edge of the Caspian sea. But
it is here in a city where Orient and Occident collide, that they are inevitably
caught up in the events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution.
Both must confront the divided world that surrounds them as well as their
own deepest needs.
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Gates
of Fire, Stephen Pressfield
Tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when 300 warriors
of Sparta held back an overwhelming number of rampaging soldiers from the
Persian Empire for six days before being wiped out.
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God
of Small Things, Roy Arundhati
Winner of the 1997 Man Booker Prize. Tremendously powerful and lushly romantic,
The God Of Small Things effectively shifts between two time periods: Rahel's
present-day trip home to see her mute, haunted twin brother, and a December
day 20 years before -- the tumultuous day that tears the family apart.
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Kim,
Rudyard Kipling
Kim (1901) is Rudyard Kipling's story of an orphan born in colonial India
and torn between love for his native India and the demands of Imperial loyalty
to his Irish-English heritage and to the British Secret Service.
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Lie
Down with Lions, Ken Follett
A riveting tale of international intrigue-and a dangerous old War love triangle-set
in Afghanistan.
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Passage
to India, E. M. Forster
A classic novel about the misperceptions and misunderstandings that illustrate
the divide between East and West, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India is a
masterpiece of twentieth century English fiction, and an important text
for anyone interested in understanding the British involvement in colonial
India.
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Red
Tent, Anita Diamant
The Red Tent is the story of Jacob's daughter, Dinah, and Jacob's four wives.
As Diamant explores the trials and triumphs of ancient women, she brings
a foreign yet beautiful world to life as seen through the emotional filter
of Dinah's eyes. This lush, evocative tale brings new life to the Old Testament.
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Siddhartha,
Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then,
restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored
and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha
comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true
beginning of life —the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace and,
finally, wisdom.
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The
Distant Land of My Father
by Bo Caldwell
Anna lives in a storybook world: exotic pre- World War II Shanghai, with
handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries,
leads a charmed and secretive life, though his greatest joy is sharing his
beloved city with his only daughter. Yet when Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied
Shanghai to return to California, he stays behind, believing his connections
and a little bit of luck will keep him safe.
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Snow Flower
and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
Set in remote 19th-century China, See details the deeply affecting story
of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and
Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and
their betrayal by pride and love.
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Life
and Death in Shanghai, Cheng Nien
Here is the haunting, inspirational account of Nien Cheng's six-and-a-half
years as a political prisoner during Communist China's Cultural Revolution.
"A moving affirmation of the capacity for human endurance."--Los
Angeles Times.
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Memoirs
of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha,
we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity
is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the
most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion.
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Peony:
a novel of China, Pearl S. Buck
Peony, a valued servant for a wealthy Chinese merchant family, falls in
love with the oldest son.
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Shogun,
James Clavell
A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman
torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in
a mighty saga of a time and place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition,
lust and the struggle for power.
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Waiting,
Ha Jin
Winner of the 1999 National Book Award, Waiting is the poignant story of
Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims
of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields
of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings
of his innermost heart.
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Women
of the Silk, Gail Tsukiyama
A first novel exceptional for its exquisite writing and for its rich portrait
of a woman's life in a China now lost. Her story is rendered with exceptional
grace, with the clear, shining dignity of legend or song; Tsukiyama lends
her voice to figures of women emboldened by their dream of growth and personal
power.
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