Highly recommended fiction (with themes comparable to my novel) by other authors:

  • Sarah Cypher, The Skin and Its Girl

  • Megha Majumdar, A Burning

  • Chang-Rae Lee, The Surrendered

  • Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois

  • Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man and Exit West

  • Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope

  • Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

  • Katie Kitamura, Intimacies

  • Pablo Medina, The Cuban Comedy

  • Carolina de Robertis, The President and the Frog & Cantoras

  • Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Velvet Was the Night

  • Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

  • Phil Clay, Missionaries

  • Ravi Howard, Like Trees Walking

  • Steven Gardner, Pieces of Rope Too Short to Keep

  • Javier Marías, Infatuations

  • Henri Bosco, Malicroix

  • Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

  • James McBride, The Good Lord Bird and Deacon King Kong

  • Justin Torres, We the Animals

  • Dawn Turner, Three Girls from Bronzeville

  • Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote

  • Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account

  • Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

  • Hernan Diaz, In the Distance

  • Julia Alvarez, Afterlife

  • Christy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo

  • Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

  • Marilynne Robinson, absolutely everything she’s ever written, starting with Gilead

  • Yangsze Choo, The Night Tiger

  • Amy Waldman, A Door in the Earth

  • Kiese Laymon, Heavy

  • Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted

  • Colum McCann, Apeirogon

  • Mahir Guven, Older Brother

  • Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

  • Tea Obreht, Inland & The Tiger’s Wife

  • Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Fruit of the Drunken Tree

  • Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier

  • Nicole Dennis-Benn, Patsy

  • Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels & The Hummingbird’s Daughter

  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive

In Crime/Mystery Genre:

- Chris Bohjalian, The Double Bind

- Tana French, In the Woods

- Penny Louise, The Madness of Crowds

- James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon’s Bounce

- Jo Nesbo, The Snowman and Midnight Sun

- Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

- Attica Locke, Black Water Rising

Non-Fiction

- Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True