10 books from around the world that I want right now!

Hallo everyone!

Long time since I gave you an update on my boring life. *crickets in the background* but  exciting recent events led to this list being compiled and you possibly skimming through it 😛

First things first! Remember a few months ago how I was grumbling about heat waves and fainting episodes?? Well I’m going to whine a bit more in here, but on the opposite end of the scale! Yes, you thought right, Its FLOODING OVER HERE! And not forgetting the landslides! And its turning out to be a major natural disaster for Sri Lankans!  So many of them have been displaced and are unable to get back to their homes for days now including a few of my fellow Lankan bloggers. I hope you keep them in your prayers. ❤

Secondly, if you have not been active on your Twitters recently I must let you know of an exciting event taking place that did, yes, inspire my list. A few nights back a global movement was initiated, seeking diverse bloggers from all around the world, inviting them to introduce themselves using the tag #DiverseBookBloggers. Not only does this movement connect bloggers across the globe but it is also an event to discover literature rooted in other cultures worldwide! This is only one strand of this movement. You can check out the story yourself , find out more on why diversity is important and add to your TBR’s a starter pack to Diverse reading ! 😀

My list here is only the tip of the iceberg, and I’m still a level one reader. I’ve been wanting to read them for so long, I figured its the perfect clime to share the passion. The best part is, there are so many more stories waiting to be discovered! My aim this year is to find a fictional character embodying who I am through and through. I cannot wait to meet her, and also get my hands on the following books ! 🙂

 

Good Enough

by Paula Yoo

How to make your Korean parents happy:

1. Get a perfect score on the SATs.
2. Get into HarvardYalePrinceton.
3. Don’t talk to boys.*

Patti’s parents expect nothing less than the best from their Korean-American daughter. Everything she does affects her chances of getting into an Ivy League school. So winningassistant concertmaster in her All-State violin competition and earning less than 2300 on her SATs is simply not good enough.

But Patti’s discovering that there’s more to life than the Ivy League. To start with, there’s Cute Trumpet Guy. He’s funny, he’s talented, and he looks exactly like the lead singer of Patti’s favorite band. Then, of course, there’s her love of the violin. Not to mention cool rock concerts. And anyway, what if Patti doesn’t want to go to HarvardYalePrinceton after all?

Paula Yoo scores big in her hilarious debut novel about an overachiever who longs to fit in and strives to stand out. The pressure is on!

*Boys will distract you from your studies.    

 

 

Born Confused 

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

Tanuja Desai Hidier’s fantastically acclaimed cross-cultural debut comes to PUSH!

Dimple Lala doesn’t know what to think. Her parents are from India, and she’s spent her whole life resisting their traditions. Then suddenly she gets to high school and everything Indian is trendy. To make matters worse, her parents arrange for her to meet a “suitable boy.” Of course it doesn’t go well — until Dimple goes to a club and finds him spinning a magical web .

Suddenly the suitable boy is suitable because of his sheer unsuitability. Complications ensue. This is a funny, thoughtful story about finding your heart, finding your culture, and finding your place in America.

 

 

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

 

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate.

As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them—in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul—they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.

 

 

 

Onion Tears: A Novel 

by Shubnum Khan

 

Love, loss and life are the themes that weave through this tale of three generations of Muslim women living in suburban South Africa.

Khadeejah Bibi Ballim is a hard-working and stubborn first generation Indian who longs for her beloved homeland and often questions what she is doing on the tip of Africa.

 

 

 

Sister of My Heart 

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family; her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of the family. Sudha is as beautiful, tenderhearted, and serious as Anju is plain, whip-smart, and defiant. yet since the day they were born, Sudha and Anju have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.

The cousins’ bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets.

Then tragedy strikes them both, and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and compelling courage.

 

 

 

Beloved 

by Toni Morrison

 

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Belovedis a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

 

 

 

 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe 

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This Printz Honor Book is a “tender, honest exploration of identity” (Publishers Weekly) that distills lyrical truths about family and friendship.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

 

 

 

 

 

The Story of Zahra 

by Hanan Al-Shaykh, Peter Ford (Translator)

With more than 21,000 copies in print of  Women Of Sand And Myrrh, and more than  15,000 copies of The Story Of  Zahra, Hanan al-Shaykh is the best known and most  admired woman writer of the Arab world.

The paperback  publication of Zahrawill bring  this passionate and courageous novel to a much  larger group of readers. Its haunting story of a  young Lebanese woman who attempts to stem the  violence in Beirut by initiating a sexual liaison with a  sniper has “lifted the corner of a dark  curtain” (Sunday Telegraph )  from a world that fascinates us  all.

 

 

 

Mornings in Jenin

by Susan Abulhawa

A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that could do for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan.

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.

The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch’s bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.

Previously published in a hardcover edition with a limited run under the title The Scar of David, this powerful novel is now available in a fully revised, newly titled paperback edition. The deep and moving humanity of Mornings in Jenin forces us to take a fresh look at one of the defining political conflicts of our lifetimes.

 

 

 

The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy #1-3)

by Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.

 

** Summaries from Goodreads. 

How many of the above have you read? Which were your favourites? Let me know of any similar titles I might enjoy 🙂

Type in #DiverseBookBloggers in twitter to find out more  on the story and similar book recommendations. ❤

 

Happy Reading!