Read Around the World
This October, the Library’s display case will feature books written by authors from—and set in—countries all over the world.
September 29, 2022
Hades, Argentina
Argentina
Daniel Loedel
A medical student in Buenos Aires must decide how far he’s willing to go for his childhood crush and the group of insurgents she’s joined as more and more people like her are disappeared by an oppressive military junta.
On A Night Of A Thousand Stars
Argentina
Andrea Yaryura Clark
After hearing a woman’s cryptic comments to her wealthy diplomat father at their annual summer soiree, Paloma becomes curious about his past, setting in motion a chain of events that cause her to question her family and identity, but also puts her life in danger.
The Lost Man
Australia
Jane Harper
Meeting at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches on an isolated belt of the Australian outback, two brothers navigate the haunting realities of the isolation that ended their third brother’s life.
The Dickens Boy
Australia
Thomas Keneally
The son of England’s most famous author, Edward Dickens, is sent to Australia to make something of himself–or at least fail out of the public eye–where he works hard to prove to his parents and himself that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness.
Dirt Creek
Australia
Hayley Scrivenor
Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels investigates the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl from a small town in rural Australia, who was last seen with a strange man by a schoolfriend who refuses to speak to the police.
The Air You Breathe
Brazil
Frances de Pontes Peebles
An orphaned kitchen maid and the reckless daughter of a sugar baron embark on a volatile friendship marked by their ambitions to escape, their changing fortunes and unexpected fame.
Music Of The Ghosts
Cambodia
Vaddey Ratner
Returning to the Cambodian homeland she fled as a child refugee decades earlier, Teera finds herself in a country of survivors and perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge holocaust before bonding with a mysterious musician who claims to have known her late father.
First They Killed My Father : A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers
Cambodia
Loung Ung
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung’s family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Dark Roads
Canada
Chevy Stevens
Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer.
Three Day Road
Canada
Joseph Boyden
The nephew of a Canadian Oji-Cree who is the last of a line of healers and diviners, Cree reserve student Xavier enlists in the military during World War I, a conflict throughout which he and his friend, Elijah, are marginalized for their appearances, their culturally enhanced marksmanship, and their disparate views of the war.
Falling Leaves
China
Adeline Yen Mah
The daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman describes her very difficult childhood and the psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepmother.
Waiting
China
Ha Jin
An ambitious and dedicated Chinese doctor, Lin Kong finds himself torn between two very different women–the educated and dynamic nurse with whom he has fallen in love and the traditional, meek, and humble woman to whom his family married him when they were both very young.
Heretics
Cuba
Leonardo Padura
When the small Rembrandt portrait of Christ that disappeared seventy years before shows up at a London auction house, the son of Cuban refugees recruits a private detective to trace the path of his family’s lost treasure.
The German Girl
Cuba
Armando Lucas Correa
Stripped of her family’s privileges by the Nazi party in 1939 Berlin, Hannah Rosenthal forges a pact that she will remain true to her best friend, Leo, before embarking on a refugee ship bound for Havana, where rumors of a deadly plot force her to make an impossible choice.
Dreaming In Cuban
Cuba
Cristina Garcia
A vivid and funny first novel about three generations of a Cuban family divided by conflicting loyalties over the Cuban revolution, set in the world of Havana in the 1970s and ’80s and in an emigre neighborhood of Brooklyn. It is a story of immense charm about women and politics, women and witchcraft, women and their men.Three women within a Cuban family struggle to persevere during the Cuban Revolution.
Death Comes In Through The Kitchen
Cuba
Teresa Dovalpage
Arriving in 2003 Havana to marry his fiancee, a San Diego journalist is shattered by her murder and immediately targeted with suspicion by the authorities, prompting the young man’s desperate personal investigation to clear his name and find justice for a woman who may have been hiding the truth about her identity.
The Spanish Daughter
Ecuador
Lorena Hughes
Inheriting a cocoa plantation in Vinces, Ecuador, that someone will kill for, Puri, after her husband is murdered, assumes his identity to search for the truth of her father’s legacy and learn the identity of the enemy who stands in her way of claiming her birthright.
The Shadow King
Ethiopia
Maaza Mengiste
Tending the wounded when her nation is invaded by Mussolini, an orphaned servant in 1935 Ethiopia helps disguise a gentle peasant as their exiled emperor to rally her fellow women in the fight against fascism.
How To Read The Air
Ethiopia
Dinaw Mengestu
Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, sets out to retrace his mother and father’s trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents’ youth to his life in the America of today.
The Yellow Eyes Of Crocodiles
France
Katherine Pancol
After her husband runs off with his mistress to open a crocodile farm in Kenya, Josephine agrees to ghost-write the romance novel her sister Iris owes a famous publisher, and is shocked when the book becomes a runaway best-seller.
A Secret Kept
France
Tatiana de Rosnay
When traumatic memories about a disturbing event from a childhood summer holiday cause his sister to suffer a debilitating car accident, Antoine befriends a street-wise mortician who helps him to manage painful family truths.
Cooking For Picasso
France
Camille Aubray
A tale inspired by a little-known interlude follows the 1936 culinary affair between a reclusive Picasso at a crossroads in his life and a rebellious teen from the French Riviera, a relationship that shapes the life of the girl’s granddaughter in New York more than half a century later.
The Heart
France
Maylis de Kerangal
A tale told over the twenty-four-hour period surrounding a fatal accident and resulting heart transplant traces the experiences of a teenage victim, a woman who receives a chance to survive, and their stricken loved ones.
Flame Tree Road
India
Shona Patel
After witnessing how his widowed mother was treated in the caste system of his homeland, Biren Roy gets a law degree and tries to incite change through academic equality for girls and falls madly in love with the local teacher’s daughter.
The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness
India
Arundhati Roy
A provocative love story by the award-winning author of The God of Small Things meanders through a spectrum of powerful emotions experienced by diverse protagonists, including a grieving father who writes a letter profiling the people who came to his 5-year-old daughter’s funeral and two longtime friends at a guest house who sleep wrapped around each other like newlyweds.
Sea Of Poppies
India
Amitav Ghosh
Preparing to fight China’s nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers, including a bankrupt rajah, a widowed tribeswoman, and a free-spirited French orphan, comes to experience family-like ties that eventually span continents, races, and generations.
Honor
India
Thrity Umrigar
An Indian American journalist returns home to cover the story of a Hindi woman attacked by her own family for marrying a Muslim and deals with a society that places more weight on tradition than one’s heart.
Man Of My Time
Iran
Dalia Sofer
After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. Tucked in his pocket throughout the trip, the ashes propel him into a first-person excavation—full of mordant wit and bitter memory—of a lifetime of betrayal and prompt him to trace his own evolution from a perceptive boy in love with marbles to a man who, on seeing his own reflection, is startled to encounter ‘a beautiful, indignant thug.’ As he reconnects with his brother and others living in exile, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past, with the insidious nature of violence, and with his entrenchment in a system that, for decades, ensnared him.
The Stationery Shop
Iran
Marjan Kamali
A young couple who meet and fall in love at a neighborhood stationery shop in 1953 Tehran are separated by a violent coup d’etat on the eve of their marriage and reunite by chance after more than half a century.
Song Of A Captive Bird
Iran
Jasmin Darznik
Reimagines the life of rebel poet Forugh Farrokzhad, a passionate young writer in search of freedom and independence from the restrictions imposed on women in mid-twentieth-century Iran.
The Lying Life Of Adults
Italy
Elena Ferrante
Italian teenager Giovanna searches for a sense of identity and clear perspectives when she finds herself torn between the refinements and excesses of a divided Naples.
Baudolino
Italy
Umberto Eco
Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino, a young man with a gift for languages and a talent for lying, narrates the story of his life, from his meeting with and adoption by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, his education in Paris, his and his companions’ search for the legendary priest-king Prester John, and his arrival in Constantinople during the turmoil of the Fourth Crusade.
The Shape Of Water
Italy
Andrea Camilleri
Early one morning, Silvio Lupanello, a big shot in the village of Vigata, is found dead in his car with his pants around his knees. The car happens to be parked in a rough part of town frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers, and as the news of his death spreads, the rumors begin. Enter Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Vigata’s most respected detective. With his characteristic mix of humor, cynicism, compassion, and love of good food, Montalbano goes into battle against the powerful and the corrupt who are determined to block his path to the real killer.
The Daughter Of Doctor Moreau
Mexico
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
When the arrival of Eduardo Lizalde sets in motion a dangerous chain of events, Carlota Moreau finds her carefully constructed world falling down around her as passion is ignited in the sweltering heat of the jungle where a motley group of monstrosities await.
Into The Beautiful North
Mexico
Luis Alberto Urrea
Working in a Mexican taco shop while dreaming of the father who left their family to work in the United States, nineteen-year-old Nayeli struggles with a realization that most of the men in her village have left to pursue work in the north.
Pierced By The Sun
Mexico
Laura Esquivel
Lupita’s hard-knock life has gotten the better of her time and time again. A childhood robbed of innocence set off a chain of events that she still has not managed to control, no matter how hard she tries. Every time she thinks she has a handle on things, unexpected turns make her question everything, including herself.
This House Is Not For Sale
Nigeria
E C Osondu
A young member of an extraordinary African American family observes the larger-than-life people who shape his house’s vibrant history, from his contradictory grandfather to the longtime rival owners of competing convenience stores.Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Americanah
Nigeria
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. By the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
My Sister, The Serial Killer
Nigeria
Oyinkan Braithwaite
Realizing that her beautiful, beloved younger sister has murdered yet another boyfriend, an embittered Nigerian woman works to direct suspicion away from the family, until a handsome doctor she fancies asks for her sister’s number.
The Girl With The Louding Voice
Nigeria
Abi Dare
Adunni, a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who longs for an education, must find a way for her voice to be heard loud and clear in a world where she and other girls like her are taught to believe, through words and deeds, that they are nothing.
When The Devil Holds The Candle
Norway
Karin Fossum
In the aftermath of a purse-snatching that resulted in the death of an infant, Inspector Konrad Sejer and his colleague, Jacob Skarre, investigate a connection between the case and the disappearance of a local delinquent, whose fate unfolds within the house of an elderly woman he was trying to rob.
Men In My Situation
Norway
Per Petterson
Unable to process the grief of losing his parents and brothers in a tragic ferry accident, Arvid Jansen, now divorced and living dangerously, is forced to come to terms with the fact that someone still needs him when his daughter reaches out to him for help.
The Morning Star
Norway
Karl Ove Knausgard
One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Their friend Egil has his own place nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a night shift when one of her patients escapes. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky. It brings with it a mysterious sense of foreboding.
Absurdistan
Russia
Gary Shteyngart
Hoping to get out of Russia and return to his adopted home in the U.S., Misha Vainberg, the obese son of a wealthy Russian, makes his way to Absurdsvani, a small unstable country on the brink of civil war, where he becomes embroiled in the ridiculous conflict, risks his life, and falls in love, all the while plotting to somehow get to America.
The Orchard
Russia
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, this novel follows four teenagers who grow inseparable as the Soviet Empire collapses, resulting in a tragedy still felt years later by Anna, who returns to Russia from America to finally face her past.
The Witch And The Tsar
Russia
Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
When Anastasia, the wife of the tsar, desperately needs her protection, immortal witch Baba Yaga realizes the fate of all Russia is tied to Anastasia’s and must step out of the shadows to protect the land she loves from powers far older and more fearsome than anyone can imagine.
The Promise
South Africa
Damon Galgut
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
If You Want To Make God Laugh
South Africa
Bianca Marais
A pregnant teen, a grieving socialite, and a disgraced former nun bond over their troubles in rural post-apartheid South Africa, where an abandoned newborn helps them discover the transcendent power of love.
If I Had Your Face
South Korea
Frances Cha
In Seoul, South Korea, four young women make their way in a world defined by impossibly high standards of beauty, secret salons catering to wealthy men, strict social hierarchies and K-pop fan mania.
Love In The Big City
South Korea
Sang Young Park
When his female best friend and roommate, Jaehee, leaves him to settle down, Young, a cynical gay man living in the lonely city of Seoul, tries to make sense of his life and his relationships as he finds himself torn between two very different men.
Lemon
South Korea
Yo-son Kwon
In the summer of 2002, when Korea is abuzz over hosting the FIFA World Cup, eighteen-year-old Kim Hae-on is killed in what becomes known as the High School Beauty Murder. Seventeen years pass without any resolution for those close to Hae-on, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she’s lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.
A Passage North
Sri Lanka
Anuk Arudpragasam
After learning of his grandmother’s caretaker’s supposedly accidental death after falling down a well, Krishan makes the journey from Columbo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral in this fictional account of Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war.
What Lies Between Us
Sri Lanka
Nayomi Munaweera
When her past collides with the present, a woman, who immigrated to America from Sri Lanka when she was a girl, finds her hold on reality becoming more and more tenuous, which prompts her to commit her unforgivable final act.
The Winners
Sweden
Fredrik Backman
As simmering tensions between the towns of Beartown and Hed turn into acts of intimidation and then violence, a 14-year-old boy, increasingly alienated from this hockey-obsessed community, puts in motion a plan to avenge his beloved sister’s death that will leave Beartown with an unimaginable loss.
After The Fire
Sweden
Henning Mankell
A final novel by the late award-winning author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries traces the experiences of an aging man whose quiet, solitary life on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden is turned upside-down when his house catches fire.
A Strangeness In My Mind
Turkey
Orhan Pamuk
Selling Turkish spirits on the street and dreaming of becoming rich in a rapidly developing Istanbul, street youth Melvut Karatas elopes with the wrong woman and builds a family over decades marked by a series of dead-end jobs and an enduring sense of his unique destiny.
Three Daughters Of Eve
Turkey
Elif Shafak
A tale set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul follows Peri, a married, wealthy Turkish woman, as she navigates cultural, religious, and economic tensions during a seaside mansion dinner party while enduring painful memories of friendships during her Oxford years.
Serenade For Nadia
Turkey
Zulfu Livaneli
Based on the real-life sinking of a refugee ship during World War II, this heartbreaking Turkish novel follows a single mother who is tasked by her employer to look after an elderly German-born Harvard professor visiting the city who reveals the tragic circumstances that brought him to Istanbul 60 years before.