Pigott Memorial Library

Reading Recommendations

Other Countries and Cultures - Fiction Recommendations

The lives of Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy, Olanna, the mistress of the professor the boy works for, and Richard, a Englishman in love with the woman's sister, are endangered during the political unrest resulting from the forming of the independent nation of Biafra in Nigeria.

In a small Ontario town in the 1960s, a young girl's life is forever changed after she learns a dark family secret and learns the power of forgiveness.

Half brothers Tan and Shento grow up in different parts of China without knowing about the existence of the other, until their desires and love for the same woman bring them together.

Fifteen-year-old Patty Ho, half Taiwanese and half white, feels she never fits in, but when her overly-strict mother ships her off to math camp at Stanford, instead being miserable, Patty starts to become comfortable with her true self.

Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official.

Thomas Railles, an American expatriate who at one time did small jobs for the CIA, is devastated when his French wife, Florette, is murdered after she is injured while out walking and found by four Moroccans who, believing her to be American, chose to kill rather than help her.

A young man born of Indian parents in America struggles with issues of identity from his teens to his thirties.

Offers a fictionalized account of the 1975 slaying of forty-nine giraffes at a zoo in a small Chechoslovakian town, following the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their mysterious deaths.

A novel in vignettes, in which Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old girl from Nepal, is sold into prostitution in India.

Story of Peekay, an English boy, living in South Africa during World War II whose dream is to become a winner.

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself mysteriously 'handcuffed to history' by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent - and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts - inner ear and wildly sensitive sense of smell - we are drawn into a fascinating family saga set against the vast, colourful background of the India of the 20th century.

Offers a fictionalized account of the life of Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux who travels across Europe performing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

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