Books like 'River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze'
Readers who enjoyed River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCentered around the 1986 attempt on the life of Augusto Pinochet, an event that changed Chile forever, My Tender Matador is one of the most explosive, controversial, and popular novels to have been published in that country in decades. It is spring 1986 in the city of Santiago, and Augusto Pinochet is losing his grip on power... -
![Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah]()
Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSpanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948. Through the lives of Mahmud, chief elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled’s grandson Naji, we enter the life of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another... -
![Memories Of My Future by Ammar Habib, Anil Sinha]()
Memories Of My Future by Ammar Habib, Anil Sinha
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWinner of the 2017 Independent Press Award!Look into the past and you can change the future. In Memories Of My Future, Dr. Avinash Singh is the type of surgeon that other physicians envy, and has the world in his hands. That is until tragedy strikes—and it’s a tragedy that puts him on the ropes, forcing him to revisit his greatest nightmares... -
![The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War by Ammar Habib]()
The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War by Ammar Habib
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratings#1 Bestseller in Asian-American Literature!Available in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited!Winner of the 2019 Independent Press Award From the ashes of the Syrian Civil War comes this story of hope, love, and courage... After standing for over 7,000 years, Aleppo's ruin came overnight... -
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![Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda]()
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsA sensual, tender collection to be cherished by lovers new and oldPablo Neruda was probably the greatest and certainly the most prolific of twentieth-century Latin American poets. This, his third collection, Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada, or, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was first published in 1924 and attracted international acclaim... -
![Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA haunting tale of power, corruption, and the complex search for identity, Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel Apolinario Odría Amoretti... -
![An Invincible Memory by João Ubaldo Ribeiro]()
An Invincible Memory by João Ubaldo Ribeiro
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA family saga spanning nearly 400 years, this absorbing epic novel lays bare the soul of the Brazilian nation. Whaling, war, macumba, slavery, murder, cannibalism and Brazil's struggle for independence add momentum to Ribeiro's lyrical, effusive, sonorous, serpentine prose laced with a touch of magic realism, something of a cross between Melville and Gabriel Garcia Marquez... -
![Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani]()
Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPolitics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. Fadl al-Naqib has reflected that Kanafani wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century...Categorized as:
politics university fiction historical-fiction classics historical 20th-century colonization -
![Pereira Declares: A Testimony by Antonio Tabucchi]()
Pereira Declares: A Testimony by Antonio Tabucchi
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsDr. Pereira is an aging, overweightjournalist who has failed to noticethe menacing cloud of fascism overSalazarist Portugal, until one day hemeets an aspiring young writer andanti-fascist. Breaking out of his apolitical torpor, Pereira reluctantly rises to heroism...Categorized as:
journalism journey politics university 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani]()
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse..Categorized as:
journey politics university 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook -
![Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Tina A. Kover]()
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Tina A. Kover
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsKimia Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimia is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves... -
![Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik]()
Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing poet Forugh Farrokhzhad, who defied Iranian society to find her voice and her destiny “Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”—Forugh Farrokhzad All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh is told that Iranian daughters should be quiet and modest... -
![My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi]()
My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA teenage boy makes the mistake of falling in love with the much-protected daughter of his uncle, mischievously nicknamed after his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, the curmudgeonly self-appointed patriarch of a large and extended Iranian family in 1940s Tehran... -
![Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi]()
Mama Hissa's Mice by Saud Alsanousi
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the author of The Bamboo Stalk and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world... -
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![And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson]()
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnd the Land Lay Still is the sweeping Scottish epic by James RobertsonAnd the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change... -
![Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop]()
Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In Murambi, The Book of Bones, Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy... -
![Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović]()
Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war...Categorized as:
journey politics university 20th-century action-adventure anthologies children-books classics -
![Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado]()
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne bright spring day in 1925, Gabriela arrives from the poverty-stricken backwoods of Brazil to the lively seaside port of Ilhéus amid a flock of filthy migrant workers. Though wearing rags and covered in dirt, she attracts the attention of Nacib, a cafe owner, who is in desperate need of a new cook. So dire is his situation that he hires the disheveled girl... -
![Em by Kim Thúy]()
Em by Kim Thúy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKim Thúy's Em is a mesmerizing novel of profound power and tenderness, and an affirmation of the greatest act of resistance: love. In the midst of war, an ordinary miracle: an abandoned baby tenderly cared for by a young boy living on the streets of Saigon. The boy is Louis, the child of a long-gone American soldier. Louis calls the baby em Hồng, em meaning little sister, or beloved... -
![Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz]()
Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFinally in English, Island of Shattered Dreams is the first ever novel by an indigenous Tahitian writer. In a lyrical and immensely moving style, this book combines a family saga and a doomed love story, set against the background of French Polynesia in the period leading up to the first nuclear tests...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc historical-fiction fiction 20th-century indigenous-mc colonization historical -
![Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko]()
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwo extraordinary Indigenous stories set five generations apart. When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc historical-fiction fiction historical family poc-author literary-fiction -
![Les Caprices d'un astre by Antoine Laurain]()
Les Caprices d'un astre by Antoine Laurain
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsXavier Lemercier, agent immobilier, trouve au hasard d'une visite d'appartement un mystérieux télescope ayant appartenu à un célèbre astronome. Voilà bientôt qu'il cadre dans l'instrument, depuis son balcon, une femme derrière une fenêtre, sans oser, bien sûr, l'aborder. Divorcé et esseulé, avec pour seules joies ses week-ends avec son jeune fils, il commence à tomber amoureux de l'inconnue...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc romance fiction historical-fiction audiobook historical literary-fiction -
![Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton]()
Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis astonishingly proficient and gripping first novel should be required reading for anyone who calls him or herself a responsible citizen. Not only is it masterfully written, with images as sharp as shards of broken glass, but it also carries a message so potent it burns into the conscience... -
![The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami]()
The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn international bestseller available in English for the first time,a story of forbidden love set against the background of Arabic culture and endless feuds between clansA dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul s Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered... -
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![How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina R. Friedman, Allen Say]()
How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina R. Friedman, Allen Say
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn American sailor courts a young Japanese woman and each tries, in secret, to learn the other's way of eating... -
![The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat]()
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season... -
![The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias]()
The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGuatemalan diplomat and writer Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974) began this award-winning work while still a law student. It is a story of a ruthless dictator and his schemes to dispose of a political adversary in an unnamed Latin American country usually identified as Guatemala. The book has been acclaimed for portraying both a totalitarian government and its damaging psychological effects... -
![Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai]()
Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA marvelous first novel, about growing up gay in Sri Lanka...from a brilliant new writer whose next book cannot arrive here quickly enough (Kirkus Reviews)... -
![The Sorrow Of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bảo Ninh]()
The Sorrow Of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bảo Ninh
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there... -
![Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa]()
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it.Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz... -
![A Dry White Season by André P. Brink]()
A Dry White Season by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid... -
![White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse]()
White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story... -
![A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang]()
A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post-Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one's dreams and the lives we leave behindTang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family's rural village in China...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc fiction historical-fiction literary-fiction historical audiobook family -
![The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis]()
The Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOn the first day of the century, a small town gathers to witness a miracle and unravel its portents: the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita. Later, as a young woman in the capital city—Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise—Pajarita begins a lineage of independent women... -
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![Space Invaders by Nona Fernández, Luciano Funetta]()
Space Invaders by Nona Fernández, Luciano Funetta
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s ChileSpace Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen... -
![Sofia Petrovna by Aline Werth, Lydia Chukovskaya]()
Sofia Petrovna by Aline Werth, Lydia Chukovskaya
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSofia Petrovna is Lydia Chukovskaya's fictional account of the Great Purge. Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news... -
![The Orchid Tree by Siobhan Daiko]()
The Orchid Tree by Siobhan Daiko
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFifteen-year-old Kate lives a rarefied life of wealth and privilege in the expatriate community. But when the Japanese take over Hong Kong in December 1941, she’s interned in squalid Stanley Camp with her parents... -
![Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters by Maria José Silveira]()
Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters by Maria José Silveira
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHer Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters tells the story of Brazil through the histories of a twenty women. It opens with Inaia being born in 1500, at the moment when the Portuguese arrive in Brazil and continues through to the present, tracing this fascinating lineage of women against the historical backdrop of Brazil's ups and downs, challenges and triumphs...Categorized as:
politics poc-mc journey historical-fiction fiction family indigenous-mc literary-fiction -
![The Disappeared by Rebecca J. Sanford]()
The Disappeared by Rebecca J. Sanford
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsInspired by the real mothers and grandmothers who spoke out against Argentina’s military dictatorship, The Disappeared is an award-winning debut about identity, family secrets, and those who endured decades of hardship to expose the truth.In 1976 Buenos Aires, Lorena Ledesma is a housewife with dangerous secrets living under Argentina’s rising military dictatorship...Categorized as:
poc-mc journey historical-fiction fiction historical audiobook action-adventure book -
![Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh]()
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAt the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan... -
![The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh]()
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsSet in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest... -
![The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh]()
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOff the easternmost corner of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans, where settlers live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers... -
![The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston]()
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA mystery and a love story spanning five decades, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an epic portrait of passion and ambition, set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland... -
![God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène]()
God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn 1947-8 the workers on the Dakar-Niger Railway came out on strike. Sembène Ousmane, in this vivid and moving novel, evinces all of the colour, passion and tragedy of those decisive years in the history of West Africa.'Ever since they left Thiès, the women had not stopped singing...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc politics university 20th-century action-adventure adult bildungsroman -
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![Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams by Elias Khoury]()
Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams by Elias Khoury
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDrawing on the stories he gathered from refugee camps over the course of many years, Elias Khoury's epic novel Gate of the Sun has been called the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga.Yunes, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. Keeping vigil at the old man's bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness... -
![The Venetian Mask by Rosalind Laker]()
The Venetian Mask by Rosalind Laker
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEnduring friendships and long-held vendettas come alive against the splendor and decadence of eighteenth-century Venice. In 1775 Venice–known to outsiders as “the brothel of Europe”–the tradition of mask-wearing has allowed adultery and debauchery to flourish... -
![To Keep the Sun Alive: A Novel by Rabeah Ghaffari]()
To Keep the Sun Alive: A Novel by Rabeah Ghaffari
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA cinematic debut about an Iranian family and their fruit orchard, caught up in the Revolution of 1979The year is 1979. The Islamic Revolution is just around the corner, as is a massive solar eclipse...Categorized as:
journey poc-mc politics historical-fiction fiction historical literary-fiction audiobook -
![Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh]()
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratings“In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier... -
![The Syrian Virgin by Zack Love]()
The Syrian Virgin by Zack Love
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAmazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/TSVpaperback (Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/TSVpaperback-UK) Anissa is traumatized by the most brutal conflict of the 21st Century: the Syrian Civil War. In 2012, Islamists in Homs terrorize a Syrian-Christian community and destroy everything that a young woman holds dear. Narrowly escaping death, Anissa restarts her devastated life as a college student in NY... -
![Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry]()
Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSet in Jaffa in 1947-51, this fable-like novel is a heartbreaking tale of young love during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people. At times darkly humorous and ironic but also profoundly moving, this novel based on a true story, follows the lives of a gifted 15-year-old mechanic, Subhi, and 13-year-old Shams, a peasant girl he hopes to marry one day...
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