Originally published in German as Gehen, Ging, Gegangen in 2015; translated into English by Susan Bernofsky. Go, Went, Gone tells the story of the European refugee crisis as seen through the eyes of a retired professor who lives in Berlin. (Published by New Directions.) (Fiction)

Winner of the National Book Award and a New York Times top 10 best books of the year, Sing, Unburied, Sing is the story of a young black mother’s road trip to a penitentiary in Mississippi where her white husband has been imprisoned and is about to be released. (Published by Simon & Schuster. Jacket design by Helen Yentus. Jacket illustration by Jaya Miceli.) (Fiction)

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea, addressing questions of identity, human rights and power in a totalitarian state. (Published by Random House. Jacket design by Lynn Buckley.)

Originally published in Italian in 2011 as L’Amica Geniale; translated into English by Ann Goldstein. My Brilliant Friend is the first in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. In 2018 it was adapted as an HBO television series directed by Saverio Costanzo. (Published by Europa Editions.) SEE GUEST REVIEW of Ferrante’s quartet by Christopher Nazzaro in the MUSINGS section.

Winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Home Fire addresses questions of cultural assimilation, terrorism, love, family and sacrifice. Nuanced and powerful, Home Fire is Kamila Shamsie’s seventh novel. (Published by Penguin Random House. Cover art by Ben Denzer. Lettering by Grace Han.)

Orlean tries to solve the mystery of the 1986 fire that destroyed the Los Angeles Central Library and in the process, teaches us about art, architecture, the evolution and significance of libraries, the character of the people who devote their lives and souls to maintaining libraries, and the transformative power of books. (Published by Simon & Schuster. Cover design by Lauren Peters-Collaer.)

Winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, The Friend tells the story of grief and loss, friendship and love. (Published by Riverhead Books. Jacket design by Nicolas Ortega. Cover image [dog} by Michigan Blann/Getty image.)

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Milkman takes place in Northern Ireland amid the chaos and political violence of the 1970s. Burns writes in the unique voice of a young woman who struggles to survive the terror imposed from outside her community as well as the scrutiny and self-policing from within her community. (Published by Graywolf Press. Cover design by Luke Bird. Cover images by Patrick Cullen/Eye Em/Getty; Vintage Tone/Shutterstock.)

Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Overstory is Richard Powers’ twelfth novel. Highlighting the supreme importance of trees for our own survival, Powers presents intersecting stories of individuals who fight to protect the “soul” of the natural world. (Published by W.W. Norton. Cover design by Evan Gaffney. Cover art by Albert Bierstadt/Art Resource.)

Winner of the 2019 Juan E. Méndez Award for Human Rights in Latin America. In What You Have Heard is True, Forché recounts her experiences witnessing the human rights abuses, human suffering and horror imposed on the people by the military in El Salvador in the 1970s. (Published by Penguin Press. Jacket design by Christopher Brian King. Jacket Photograph by Jerry Bauer.)

Originally published as De Urolige (The Troubled) in 2015; translated from the Swedish by Thilo Reinhard. Unquiet is the story of family, memory and loss as the author describes childhood summers spent with her father, the filmmaker Ingmar Bergmann. (Published by W.W. Norton & Company. Jacket design by Yang Kim. Jacket photograph courtesy of the author.)

Colson Whitehead received his second Pulitzer Prize for Literature for The Nickel Boys, making him only one of four novelists to win the prize twice for fiction. (His first was for The Underground Railroad published in 2019.) The Nickel Boys is based on a true story of the abuses experienced by young black boys in a reform school in Florida. The novel highlights courage, perseverance and dignity in the face of cruelty and dehumanization. (Pblished by Doubleday. Jacket design by Oliver Munday; photograph by Neil Libbert.)

Originally published as Prowadź swój plug przez kości umarłych in 2009, and translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Drive Your Plow…is a mystery wrapped around the theme of “crime and punishment.” Dostoevsky would have loved it. Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Published by Penguin Random House. Jacket design by Alex Merto.)

Named one of the 10 best books of the year by the NY Times, and a National Book Award Finalist, Disappearing Earth is Phillips’ first novel. Against the backdrop of the peninsula of Kamchatka—the easternmost (and remotest) part of Russia—is the mystery of the disappearance of two sisters, and its impact on the lives of women. (Published by Alfred A. Knopf. Jacket images: Kamchatka Peninsula at sunrise, Russia, by Ignacio Palacios/Getty Images; (figures) Michael Ormerod/Millennium Images, UK. Jacket design by Janet Hansen.)

Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in The Night Watchman, Erdrich bases her main character (Thomas Washashk), on her grandfather (Patrick Gourneau), a night watchman in a local factory, who played a key role in the fight to protect the land rights of his people (the Chippewa) in North Dakota. The novel follows Washashk to Washington, D.C. and describes the challenges facing Native peoples in the context of the historical pursuit of justice and identity. (Published by HarperCollins. Jacket art by Aza Erdich.)

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Apeirogon tackles one of the most enduring conflicts of all time—the Middle East crisis—focusing on the experiences of two very real and very courageous men, a Palestinian and an Israeli Jew, who have dedicated their lives to finding a solution to the conflict. (Published by Random House. Jacket design by Lucas Heinrich.)

Originally published in 1980 and winner of the Grand Prix Paul Morand from the Académie Francaise; translated from the French by C. Dickson. Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, in Désert, Le Clézio captures the magic of the desert alongside the tragedy and horror of French colonialism in North Africa for its original tribes and their descendants. (Published by Davide R. Godine. Cover photograph courtesy of Dan Heller.)

Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, in The Yellow House Broom tells the story of her family—her twelve siblings and their mother living in New Orleans East. It is the history of marginalization, inequality and neglect—of her neighborhood, community and people. (Published by Grove Press. cover artwork © Alison Forner.)

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Award, Gilead is the first in Robinson’s quartet about the families of a minister and a preacher living in a rural community in Iowa. Gilead is written as a letter from an elderly father to his young son that goes deeply into family history, what it means to be a good person and the search for meaning in life. (Published by Picador Paper. Cover design by Lynn Buckley. Cover photograph ©Sarah Boldgett/Graphistock.)

(Published by Penguin Random House. Jacket design by Jason Booher. Jacket art from Easter Bonnet by Nick Cudworth 2006, oil on canvas/ Photo ©Portal Painters/Bridgeman Images; [couch] Detail from Chicago Condo by Michael Pfleghaar, oil on paper.)

Jack is the fourth in Marilynne Robinson’s quartet about the families of Gilead, Iowa. The story revolves around the troubled son of the Presbyterian minister, who falls in love with a Black schoolteacher from Memphis. (Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Jacket design by Na Kim. Jacket art by Charles E. Burchfield, Nightfall, undated; gouache on paper; gift of the Burchfield Foundation, 1975.)

This is a book every grown-up in the United States must read. It is a deeply researched, evidence-based look at our country’s divisive history. A history that started out engendering and embedding slavery into its very fabric, even before we became a nation. Then protecting the right to enslave others through overt laws and through tacit complicity: “Don’t challenge the institution of slavery or else some states will leave this new-forming union,” we can hear our “founding fathers” saying. Caste is a book where you learn or are reminded that not all veterans, for example, are created equal: some, who are white, return to GI bill benefits, education and housing subsidies; others, who are black, to lynching. (Published by Random House. Jacket designed by Greg Mollica. Cover photo by Bruce Davidson , Random House, August 4.)

Moss’s 6th novel, and named best book of the year by the London Times and The Guardian, Summerwater takes place at the edge of a Scottish loch and tells the story of the families and individuals vacationing there. (Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Jacket design and art by June Park.)

This 2021 debut novel by Robert Jones, Jr., set primarily in antebellum Virginia, takes on weighty subjects: the African cultural heritage of the enslaved, the horrors and indignities of the slave trade and of the enslaveds’ daily life, the struggle against the oppression by White masters, and homosexual love. (Published by Penguin Random House. Cover design by Vi-An Nguyen.)

Award-winning novelist and poet Julia Alvarez portrays the life of a newly retired professor who is forced to confront not only her husband’s death, but also problems with her three sisters and the LatinX immigrant community. (Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing. Jacket design by Jaya Miceli.)

Winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Dalkey Literary Award for “novel of the year.” Hamnet focuses on Shakespeare’s family, especially his wife, Agnes, and their children, while painting an expansive portrait of life during the plague in late 16th century England. (Published by Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House. Cover design by Leti Lambregts. Cover illustration © Cally Conway.)

Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer provides a way of knowing about the natural world that combines science with indigenous knowledge. Based on the notion of reciprocity, this worldview offers us a path to preserving the planet’s richness and diversity. (Published by Milkweed editions. Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker; cover photo © Cindy Hughes.)

Internationally acclaimed author Colm Tóibín explores the inner life of Thomas Mann, the Nobel-prize-winning German author whose life spanned both world wars. We witness not only Mann’s familial life and literary achievements, but also his evolution from a German nationalist to an expatriate voice against Nazi Germany. (Published by Simon & Schuster. Jacket design by Chris Bentham. Jacket photograph by DEA/Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Getty Images.)

Awarded “Book of the Year” by the Book of the Month Club, The Vanishing Half explores questions of identity—primarily, though not exclusively, racial identity and the phenomenon of “passing”—by tracing the diverging trajectories of two young women who are twins. (Published by Riverhead Books. Cover art by Lauren Peters-Collaer.)

Bewilderment, Richard Powers’ thirteenth novel, is an inspiring and devastating novel about the inner and outer sphere of our existence. The story is about a grief-stricken boy and his father after the death of Aly, mother and wife. The two, boy and father, take a journey through the other worlds of planets to experience the potential in the universe and eventually journey to the inner world of neurofeedback treatment for the boy, Robbie, to see if he can learn to control the emotional conflict in his life. Powers weaves a story of love, fear and impending planet devastation. (Published by W.W. Norton & Company. Cover design by Evan Gaffney, Art Director: Ingsu Lui.)

In her fifth novel, best-selling author Lauren Groff transplants her readers back into the late twelfth century with a fictive account of the life of Marie de France, the “first woman poet” of her country.  Though her literary works were well-known in her lifetime, little is known about Marie’s life. Groff depicts her as a noblewoman banished from the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to an isolated English abbey.  We witness Marie’s rise to the position of abbess and her transformation of the abbey into a feminist stronghold of wealth and power. (Published by Riverhead Books. Jacket design by Grace Han; jacket images: [Rays] Billnoll/Getty Images; [Sky] Detail of painting by Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1646. Oil on canvas/photo ©Bridgeman Images.)

Step into new terrain for this author in Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence, where a ghost wrestles humans to the ground. If you’ve been reading our CLS site, you probably enjoy books and will like a central character in this novel: its setting. Much of the action and interaction in The Sentence takes place in a small, in-the-heart-of-town independent bookstore that offers a lot of options and specializes in works by and about Native Americans. Erdrich, in character, masterfully brings us into intimate Native customs and ceremonies—feeding the voyeur-leaning side of us or just the chronically curious one. If all authors incorporate their own biography in some fashion, then Erdrich has known a meaningful, significant relationship in order to write the one at the core of this novel. Step in, take a look and stay to the end. It’s worth it. (Published by HarperCollins. Jacket art by Aza Erdrich. Jacket design by Milan Bozic.)

Originally published in French in 2020 as L’Anomalie (Éditions Gallimard); translated into English by Adriana Hunter. The Anomaly was awarded the Goncourt Prize for its imaginative and engrossing prose. The novel melds mystery, philosophy and doppelgänger to create a captivating and ultramodern read. (Published by Other Press, 2021. Cover design: ©gray318.)

United States Congressman (D-MD)and Constitutional lawyer, Jamie Raskin led the House Impeachment Managers’ team in Trump’s second impeachment trial, days after losing his brilliant son, Tommy Bloom Raskin to suicide. This is his story of the fight to preserve democracy, honoring his commitment to democratic ideals and his son’s compassion for all beings. (Published by HarperCollins; Jacket photographs: ©Lev Radin/Shutterstock [front]; ©Tom Williams/Getty Images [back]).

In her second novel, Yaa Gyasi takes on several issues that our society struggles with as a whole: race, immigration, drug addiction, depression, and the relationship between science and religion. We watch a young girl named Gifty grapple with all of these issues as she grows into womanhood. (Published by Vintage Books, NY. Cover design by Linda Huang; cover illustration ©ezolyzm/Shutterstock)

In The Trayvon Generation, poet and essayist Elizabeth Alexander incorporates the works of Black artists to create a gem of truth and humanity about what it means to be a mother of Black youth in American society where blackness is demeaned and devalued. She identifies the ways in which the experiences of today’s generation of youth as they confront and resist the violence of racism, are different from those of previous generations. (Published by: Grand Central Publishing, NY; Cover design by Albert Tang; cover art by Carrie Mae Weems, Blue Black Boy [detail], 1997. Artwork ©Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.)

This is the first novel by Williams, a British writer and teacher, about compiling a dictionary and the challenges and doldrums that it brings. The novel offers a modern perspective on dictionaries, words and the character of the lexicographers working at the same publishing house in two different time frames: the late 1800's and in the present. Williams brings to the reader an awareness of the difficulties of determining what a valid dictionary entry is. (Published by Doubleday, NY, 2020; Cover design by Emily Mahon; Cover images: [book] cintascotch/RooM/Getty Images; [peacock] ilbusca/DigitalVision/Getty Images).

Memphis is a powerful and moving story about three generations of fiercely resilient and strong Black women coping with the Black men in their families as well as living with the trauma of racism inflicted upon them by the white community. (Published by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, NY; Jacket illustration: Sabrina Khadija; jacket design: Donna Cheng.)

Anuradha Roy’s fifth novel centers around two potters, a master and his student, whose lives diverge when Hindu and Muslim cultures collide in their home town. Both master and student must find their paths forward in life in a place they don’t call home. (Published by HarperVia, NY; Jacket design: gray318)

Alice Elliott Dark, award-winning author of the short story, “In the Gloaming” that was made into a film—twice—and included in Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century, has given us another uniquely insightful work in her second novel. In this long, rewarding story, we meet characters and settings that are almost palpable, eminently knowable, and, for the most part, very likable. The two lead protagonists—lifelong friends, Agnes and Polly—start their ninth decade enhancing their bond and colluding on the important work of trying to restore their inherited Maine peninsula, Fellowship Point, to the Wabanaki people who first inhabited it. (Published by Simon & Schuster: Marysue Rucci Books. Jacket Design: Jaya Miceli; Jacket Photograph: Marysue Rucci.)

O’Farrell, author of Hamnet (2020) winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, follows with another historical novel set in Italy in the 1550s. O’Farrell tells the story of Lucrezia de’Medici, a young and irrepressible bride, struggling in the wake of an oppressive marriage and threatening political times in Renaissance Italy. (Published by Alfred A Knopf. Jacket image: Lucrezia de’Medici (detail) by Agnolo Bronzino, Plazzo Medici ©Alinari Archiuves/Raffaello Bencini/Art Resource, NY; Jacket design by John Gall.)

In his 10th novel, 2021 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah writes about the horrifying and devastating colonial wars in East Africa in the early 1900s. We are introduced to a diverse set of actors in the region—Germans and British who are at war with each other over who will rule the territory; South Asian ex-pats, a number of whom are merchants, bankers and landowners; and native peoples belonging to different cultures and religions and speaking a variety of languages. Gurnah effectively recreates the personalities and psyches of his protagonists, the horrendous conditions of battle and their impact on the afterlives of the people of East Africa.

A young black woman and her white husband travel back and forth in time between California in 1976 and antebellum Maryland in Octavia Butler’s novel, which was first published in 1979. Over forty years later this book’s intimate examination of the institution of slavery is still compelling. (Boston: Beacon Press 1989 [original: Doubleday, 1979]; Cover design and photo illustration: Bob Kosturko; Cover art: Corbis (woman) and Library of Congress (slave quarters).

In Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver faithfully recreates Appalachia—the landscape along with its people who suffer and grieve as they deal with poverty, unemployment, a broken social welfare system, drug abuse and isolation from the rest of the world. The story is told by Demon Copperhead, a boy orphaned at a young age after his teenaged single mom dies of a drug overdose. (NY: HarperCollins Publishers; Jacket design: Robin Bilardello; Jacket images ©Getty Images; ©Shutterstock; ©stockadobe.com)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Writing, The Exceptions tells the story of brilliant women scientists struggling for recognition and equality while also confronting the rigid gender expectations that virtually exclude the possibility of having both a family and career. (Published by Scribner).

Desmond, Pulitzer prize winner of Evicted, Poverty and Property in America (2016), writes another compelling book on the exploitation of the poor in America. In Poverty, Desmond illustrates through research and personal stories, how we have failed those most needy among us because of our own greed and inability to transform our lives to share in the “abundance” of our society. (Published by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin random House LLC, New York. Book Design by Barbara M. Bachman.)

For an excellent podcast discussion on the book and Desmond’s ideas, listen to the Ezra Klein Klein show: Matthew Desmond On America’s Addiction to Poverty https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/matthew-desmond-on-americas-addiction-to-poverty/id1548604447?i=1000610068247

This co-winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (awarded also to Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver; see our review on this site) gives the reader an insider’s look at the lives of an ultra-rich married couple during the time of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Diaz uses multiple characters’ perspectives to expose the ethically questionable machinations that have brought the couple material wealth but emotional poverty. (NY: Riverhead Books; book design by Lucia Benard)

Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel–her only novel–gives us an inside look at the mental breakdown of Esther Greenwood, a talented but troubled young woman. Plath describes Esther’s failed efforts to find her place in the world, her descent into hopelessness, and her subsequent stay at an asylum. (NY: HarperCollins)

In her first novel, The Vagrants, Yiyun Li, an award-winning author, writes a vivid portrayal of the life and struggles of rural life in China in the late 1970s. Li, now living in the U.S., was born in China in 1972 and writes a heart-breaking story of families living in poverty, fear, and violence in the throes of the cultural revolution. The novel continues to show that despite resilience and resistance in this small town, the loss of humanity is ever present in the shadow of authoritarianism. (Published by NY: Random House. Cover design and collage: Royce M Becker; Cover image (silk frogs): ©Masterfile.

A Pulitzer Prize winning first novel by Paul Harding, Tinkers tells the story of three generations of “tinkers” surviving in beautiful but austere rural Maine. (Introduction by Marilynne Robinson. Published by Cornerstone, 10th Anniversary edition).

In The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, McBride weaves an unforgettable tale about race, class, religion, gender and disability that borrows from his mother’s real experiences as the daughter of a Rabbi, growing up in a small town where her family owned a grocery store that catered primarily to the Black population. What is most compelling about this novel is the ingenuity, resourcefulness and resilience of his characters who remain with us long after the story comes to an end. (Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House; Jacket design and illustration: Lauren Peters-Collaer)

McDermott upends the Vietnam story by writing about the early years of war from the perspective of the wives of mostly CIA operatives and embassy staff, who live with their husbands in Vietnam. The war is ever present in the background, as are poverty, hunger and the desperation of the Vietnamese. But the wives carry on, barely conscious of what is really going on.

McBride’s first book—a brilliant memoir both of his early youth and of his mother’s life. She is the daughter of a Polish rabbi who owns a grocery store in Virginia. As a young woman, she runs away from home, ends up in Harlem, marries a Black man with whom she has eight children (James is the eighth), and founds a church. When her first husband dies, Ruth remarries and has 4 more children—all 12 of her children become successful professionals. McBride masterfully recreates her life and, in the process, he uncovers the roots to his own identity—Black, white, Jewish, Christian, artist, musician, teacher, intellectual. (NY: Riverhead Books)

Erasure (2001)- Percival Everett

Published in 2001, Erasure became  the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film American Fiction (2023). The book focuses on the journey of an author, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who, though well published but not "critically acclaimed," now needs to improve his financial situation to help support his aging mother. 

The Buddha in the Attic opens in the early 1900s with Japanese mail-order brides who are traveling to the U.S. to meet the men who are their betrothed husbands, and ends with the internment of Japanese citizens of the United States during WWII. From the very beginning and throughout the novel, Otsuka offers a prism of women’s differentiated experiences that challenge the notion of a monolithic culture. In seemingly simple but rhythmic and often poetic lines, she captures the multifarious experiences and life circumstances of Japanese women living in the U.S. The most salient commonality that seems to bind them is their disillusionment and disappointment in the meaning of American freedom and liberty.

Based on the life of Belle da Costa Greene, a “colored” woman who served as the personal librarian of financier J. Pierpont Morgan, this work of historical fiction details Belle’s many accomplishments, which include acquiring the bulk of the Pierpont Morgan library's rare collections, as well as overseeing its conversion from the private to the public domain. But in order to attain and maintain this position of power, Belle must hide her racial identity, not only from her employer, but also from the society in which she circulates.

While some readers might enjoy this novel for its behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of high society and the world of art acquisition, others may criticize it for its lack of depth, particularly in the depiction of its main character. Readers who want a glimpse into the internal life of Belle da Costa Greene–her feelings about her racial identity, her sacrifices, losses, and triumphs–will be disappointed. (NY: Berkley/Penguin Random House; Book design by Nancy Resnick; Title page photo by Trip/Shutterstock).

(NY: Celadon Press; Jacket Design by Nick Misani; Jacket photograph by Kristin Mosher.)