Books like 'The Secret River'
Readers who enjoyed The Secret River by Kate Grenville also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical action / adventure historical-fiction literary-fiction journey family colonization drama indigenous-mc classics
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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...Categorized as:
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Time of Parting by Anton Donchev
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the 17th century, a Bulgarian Christian region is selected by the Ottoman rulers to serve as an example of conversion to Islam. A Janissary who was taken from the village as a boy is sent to force the reluctant inhabitants to convert. The local Turkish governor seeks a peaceful solution, but ultimately torture, violence, and rebellion break out... -
They Burn Thistles by Yaşar Kemal
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the story of a bitter war between the poor Turkish peasants of the Taurus Mountains and the Aghas who covet their land. Ali Safa is determined to take possession of the village of Vayvay but its inhabitants will not sell. Then one villager weakens, prepared to part with his land in return for the Agha's best stallion...Categorized as:
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Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsRichard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of and which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to a collection of thirty of Chekhov’s best tales from the major periods of his creative life...Categorized as:
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Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis, Elizabeth Hardwick
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsYou can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here. Bento Santiago, the wildly unreliable narrator of Dom Casmurro, believes that he has been cuckolded—he suspects that his wife has cheated on him with his best friend and that her child is not his...Categorized as:
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Le Comte de Monte-Cristo - tome 1 by Alexandre Dumas
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas completed in 1844. It is one of the author's more popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet...Categorized as:
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Centennial by James A. Michener
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 31 ratings"Michener is America's best writer, and he proves it once again in CENTENNIAL."THE PITTSBURGH PRESSA stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener could bring to stunning life...Categorized as:
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The Rent Collector by Camron Wright
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsSurvival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working...Categorized as:
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Child of All Nations by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Child of All Nations, the reader is immediately swept up by a story that is profoundly feminist, devastatingly anticolonialist—and full of heartbreak, suspense, love, and fury. Pramoedya immerses the reader in a world that is astonishing in its vividness: the cultural whirlpool that was the Dutch East Indies of the 1890s... -
Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the world moves into the twentieth century, Minke, one of the few European-educated Javanese, optimistically starts a new life in a new town: Betawi. With his enrollment in medical school and the opportunity to meet new people, there is every reason to believe that he can leave behind the tragedies of the past...Categorized as:
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Data Tutashkhia by Chabua Amirejibi
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe novel tells the story of a Georgian outlaw at the time of the tsars (1854 onwards). It combines thriller elements with Dostoyevskian themes of personal fate and national identity. Above all, though, it defends the right to personal freedom and critical expression in the face of a repressive political system...Categorized as:
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The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Feels revolutionary in its freshness." --Entertainment Weekly"The Arsonists' City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan's hands, one family's tale becomes the story of a nation--Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It's the kind of book we are lucky to have...Categorized as:
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Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe sensual and provocative second volume in the Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities...Categorized as:
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La pierre et le sabre by Eiji Yoshikawa
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDans le Japon du XVIIe siècle, le jeune Takezó devient le samouraï Miyamoto Musashi et n'a plus qu'un seul but : tendre à la perfection. Dépasser ses sentiments et persévérer pour s'améliorer, se perfectionner et parvenir à comprendre le sens profond de la vie en développant son art, l'art du combat. Duel après duel, il crée son propre style... -
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Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus. Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends...Categorized as:
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Green City in the Sun by Barbara Wood
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA magnificent saga of two proud and powerful families—one British, one African—and their battle over Kenya’s destiny in the twentieth century.In 1917, Dr. Grace Treverton arrives in Kenya, determined to bring modern medicine to the African natives. Her brother, Sir Valentine Treverton, has his own dream for the British protectorate: to establish an agricultural empire to rival any in England...Categorized as:
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Tuareg by Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Tuaregs are the true sons of the desert. They can survive in the harshest of conditions like nobody else. The noble inmouchar Gacel Sayah, is the master of a large extension of the desert. One day, two fugitives arrive from the north and Gacel, following his ancient and sacred hospitality laws, gives them shelter...Categorized as:
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The Reign Of Greed by José Rizal
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"El Filibusterismo" ("The Subversive") is the second novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), national hero of the Philippines. Like its predecessor, the better-known "Noli Me Tangere", the "Fili" was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages...Categorized as:
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The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du, Alexander Barton Woodside
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSince its publication in the early nineteenth century, this long narrative poem has stood unchallenged as the supreme masterpiece of Vietnamese literature... -
Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis classic novel follows the career of Major Rogers, whose incredible exploits during the French and Indian Wars are told through Langdon Towne, an artist and Harvard student who flees trouble to join the army...Categorized as:
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The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Diviners is the culmination and completion of Margaret Laurence's Manawaka cycle.This is the powerful story of an independent woman who refuses to abandon her search for love. For Morag Gunn, growing up in a small Canadian prairie town is a toughening process – putting distance between herself and a world that wanted no part of her...Categorized as:
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The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsConsidered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels...Categorized as:
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The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNnu Ego is a woman who gives all her energy, money and everything she has to raising her children - leaving her little time to make friends...Categorized as:
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Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOn her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after twenty-four years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife...Categorized as:
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Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsEugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women...Categorized as:
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Across the Great Sparkling Water (The Peacemaker Series) by Zoe Saadia
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTo live in captivity, adopted by the enemies of her people, or to break the law and tradition by running away? That question did not occur to Onheda until after she fled Little Falls on the spur of the moment, against any better judgment. If she was to die in the woods, making her way back to her people, accused, even by them, of breaking the ancient custom, it was still the better choice... -
Wildwood by Elinor Florence
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA single mother. An abandoned farmhouse. An epic battle with the northern wilderness.Broke and desperate, Molly Bannister accepts the ironclad condition laid down in her great-aunt’s will: to receive her inheritance, Molly must spend one year in an abandoned, off-the-grid farmhouse in the remote backwoods of northern Alberta...Categorized as:
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Walk in My Soul by Lucia St. Clair Robson
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee...Categorized as:
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An Instant in the Wind by André P. Brink
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas's final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master's vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother's funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death...Categorized as:
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Dusk by F. Sionil José
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWith Dusk (originally published in the Philippines as Po-on), F. Sionil Jose begins his five-novel Rosales Saga, which the poet and critic Ricaredo Demetillo called "the first great Filipino novels written in English." Set in the 1880s, Dusk records the exile of a tenant family from its village and the new life it attempts to make in the small town of Rosales...Categorized as:
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The President's Gardens by Muohsin Ramlai, Luke Leafgren
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn this extraordinary novel by heralded Iraqi author Muhsin Al-Ramli, One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner against the backdrop of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "A profoundly moving investigation of love, death, and injustice." --The Guardian"A standard in contemporary Middle Eastern literature." --Booklist "A stunning achievement...Categorized as:
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Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA spellbinding story of forbidden love, spanning three continents and three decades. Set against the Independence struggles of two British colonies, Of Marriageable Age is ultimately a story of personal triumph against a brutal fate, brought to life by a multicultural cast of characters:Savitri, intuitive and charismatic, grows up among the servants of a pre-war English household in the Raj...Categorized as:
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Leaving Ireland by Ann Moore
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAfter crossing an ocean from her beloved Ireland and traversing thousands of miles of frontier and canyon, Gracelin O'Malley finds a new home for her family, halfway around the world from her old one. She's haunted by echoes of the past, even when a man she misjudged proves himself worthy and her children soon acclimate. All this-and a wish Grace thought would never come true...Categorized as:
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Encounter by Jane Yolen
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Christopher Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador in 1492, what he discovered were the Taino Indians. Told from a young Taino boy’s point of view, this is a story of how the boy tried to warn his people against welcoming the strangers, who seemed more interested in golden ornaments than friendship...Categorized as:
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Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsUganda’s history reimagined through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan in an award-winning debut.In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations...Categorized as:
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Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGundagai, 1852The powerful Murrumbidgee River surges through town leaving death and destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder that while the river can give life, it can just as easily take it away.Wagadhaany is one of the lucky ones. She survives...Categorized as:
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Winnetou by Karl May
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMore copies of this German tale of the American West have been printed than any other novel in German publishing history. This lively English translation of the daring adventures of Old Shatterhand and the Apache Chief Winnetou puts the best-known work by Karl May 1842-1912 into the hands of an American audience for the first time in paperback...Categorized as:
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The White Ship by Chingiz Aitmatov
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsDeserted by his parents, a young boy finds himself alone in the often grotesque world or relatives who do not want to raise him. As daily events become more and more intolerable, the boy clings to the legends and religious traditions of the area for relief...Categorized as:
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Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the tradition of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, a celebrated classic and heart-wrenching story of a family torn apart by the forces of history, by one of Latin America’s most celebrated writersSpringtime in a Broken Mirror revolves around Santiago, a political prisoner in Uruguay, who was jailed after a brutal military coup that saw many of his comrades flee elsewhere...Categorized as:
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The Girl from the Coast by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPramoedya's The Girl from the Coast tells the story of a beautiful young woman from a fishing village who finds herself in an arranged marriage with a wealthy aristocrat. Forced to leave her parents and home behind, she moves to the city to become the 'lady' of her husband's house...Categorized as:
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The Scavenger's Daughters by Kay Bratt
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsHaving survived torture and imprisonment during China’s Cultural Revolution, Benfu escaped to find love with his compassionate and beautiful Calla Lily. Together they build a fulfilling life around the most menial of jobs—Benfu’s work collecting trash. As he sorts through the discards of others, he regularly discovers abandoned children...Categorized as:
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Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA haunting novel about identity, love, and loss by the author of Three Day RoadWill Bird is a legendary Cree bush pilot, now lying in a coma in a hospital in his hometown of Moose Factory, Ontario. His niece Annie Bird, beautiful and self-reliant, has returned from her own perilous journey to sit beside his bed...Categorized as:
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Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of Yellow Crocus comes a heart-wrenching story about finding strength in a new world. Southern China, 1923. Desperate to secure her future, Mei Ling’s parents arrange a marriage to a widower in California. To enter the country, she must pretend to be her husband’s first wife—a paper wife.On the perilous voyage, Mei Ling takes an orphan girl named Siew under her wing...Categorized as:
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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:
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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:
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Lone Warrior by Bobbi Smith
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsReady for adventure in the rugged West, Marissa Williams quickly learns how untamed the frontier is when a party of raiding Comanche spirits her away to their village. Placed in a tipi to await her fate, Marissa fears the worst when virile warrior Wind Ryder enters. His green eyes calm her fears, but his searing kiss enflames a passion that sets her shaking all over again...Categorized as:
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Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIt is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret...Categorized as:
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The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is an intoxicating tale of love and wonder, mothers and daughters, spiritual values and the grim legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Here long-suffering Telumee tells her life story and tells us about the proud line of Lougandor women she continues to draw strength from...Categorized as:
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The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone - and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back...Categorized as:
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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:
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