I have read and enjoyed so far:
– Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
– The Mountains Sing Nguyen Phan Que Mai
I love well written characters! If I read a book and it gets me attached to the characters, that's what means the most to me while reading.
by Nicole_0818
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Check out the International Man prize winners, I’ve found a lot of good books that way. The International Booker as well.
let me recommend my Africa series:
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria): Things Fall Apart. No one knows why he never got the Nobel Prize in Literature, but it seems widely agreed that he should have.
Kaouther Adimi (Algeria): Our Riches. Kind of a love poem to Algeria. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the plot, but the book just sits in my recollection and aromates.
Mongo Beti (Cameroon): Cruel City, and The Poor Christ of Bomba. The first has a collection of wonderful characters and a fairly typical story. The second is called “satire” but there’s nothing funny about it. Nevertheless it is unforgettable.
NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe): Glory, and We Need New Names. Explains the situation in Zimbabwe under Mugabe and afterwards pretty clearly.
Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique): The First Wife. A HILARIOUS tale about a woman determined to reclaim her man. And about the clash of culture they all go through daily, in that very multicultural society. I’m grinning right now, actually. It was funny.
David Diop (France/Senegal): At Night All Blood is Black. Unforgettable again, but pretty upsetting. I’m glad I read it once, but I wouldn’t read it twice.
Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria): Second Class Citizen. Melodrama and adventure, as our heroine, with wit and grace, manages to get herself to the UK and make a life for herself there.
Nadine Gordimer (South Africa): July’s People, and The Conservationist. Something about Gordimer’s prose attracts the inner gaze like an actor with real stage presence. I can’t explain it, but it’s on my list to read everything she’s ever written.
Sindiwe Magona (South Africa): Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night. A series of interconnected stories about people who go to SA for work, those they find there and those they leave behind.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Uganda): Let’s Tell This Story Properly. Another series of interconnected stories, this time first about those who leave Uganda to go to the UK, then about those who return to Uganda afterwards.
I’ve tried others I haven’t enjoyed; those are the best of the crop, I think. Good luck!
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck really stayed with me. Also, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me.