I am trying to broaden my reading list, it's not necessarily about adding more books to my list but adding more variety.
Like, I recently found that most of my read list are by authors from US/ set in US. I also came across contemporary Irish and Nigerian authors have exciting body of
works. I used to check books from different places but last 3-5 years I haven't done that much.
I still tend to capture the bestselling ones like say Pachinko, but a lot more goes under the radar. And even Pachino is by an American author ( of Korean descent).
No YA,No fantasy
by Antlermonger
8 Comments
Past 2-3 is pretty limiting. But since you said Pachinko, which was published in 2017, I’ll give you *Happiness* by Aminatta Forna, which was published in 2018. A very compelling contemporary work by a Scottish-Sierra Leonean author.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarzcuk was brilliant!
*My Brilliant Friend* by Elena Ferrante (plus the rest of the series)
*Elena Knows* by Claudia Piñeiro
*The God of Small Things* by Arundhati Roy
*What Strange Paradise* by Omar El Akkad
*Convenience Store Woman* by Sayaka Murata
*The Book of Goose* by Yiyun Li
*Stay with Me* by Ayòbámi Adébáyò
The Bee Sting (2023) by Paul Murray (Irish)
I really like Abraham Verghese: Cutting for Stone and The Covenent of Water. Stone is set in Ethiopia and Water in India.
Verghese is an American citizen, but spent his childhood in Ethiopia and is of Indian origin.
A few books by Indigenous authors from Canada, if that’s helpful:
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice (the first came out earlier, the second is within your time frame)
Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott
Some others I’ve read recently:
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina, published in 2017 but translated into English 2023)
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan (Malaysia)
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House – Cherie Jones (Barbados)
Several by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Canadian-Mexican, pretty well known so you’ve probably encountered this)
I really enjoyed Maame by Jessica George (born to Ghanaian parents in London), maybe especially because I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was so good.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. Set in Sri Lanka and absolutely fantastic. Deservedly won the 2022 Booker Prize