Books like 'Butterfly Burning'
Readers who enjoyed Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics colonization drama university black-mc
-
The Fortress by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA novel on 18th century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule, featuring a soldier returned from the wars. A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail... -
The Secrets of the Tea Garden by Janet MacLeod Trotter
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsShe’s gone in search of happy memories. But was her idyllic childhood in India an illusion? After the Second World War, Libby Robson leaves chilly England for India, and the childhood home where she left her heart—and her beloved father, James—fourteen years ago. At first Libby is intoxicated by India’s vibrant beauty: the bustle of Calcutta, the lush tea gardens of Assam... -
The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne of his best-known works, Hughes wrote The Ways of White Folks while living in Carmel, California. In it, he shares acrid and poignant stories of blacks colliding--sometimes humorously, but often tragically--with whites throughout the 1920s and 1930s...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics 20th-century adult anthologies -
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLangston Hughes's first book of poetry, including the following classic, poignant and moving Proem, The Weary Blues, Jazzonia, Negro Dancers, The Cat And The Saxophone (2 A.M...Categorized as:
literary-fiction university poc-mc black-mc classics fiction 20th-century poc-author -
-
Żelazny kaganek by Димитър Талев
Rated: 4.37 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsPowieść przedstawia losy macedońskiego rodu Głauszewów. Akcja powieści rozpoczyna się w połowie lat 30. XIX w. Stojan Głauszew, zabiwszy psa, który należał do lokalnego wielmoży tureckiego, w obawie przed jego gniewem decyduje się na ucieczkę ze wsi. Osiada w pobliskim mieście Prespa, gdzie poznaje Sułtanę, kobietę zaradną, silną i energiczną...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book classics -
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...Categorized as:
colonization drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult -
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:
black-mc colonization drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics 20th-century -
A Royal Visit to Victory Street by Pam Howes
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom Amazon charts bestseller Pam Howes comes an emotional and uplifting saga about the power of family and a community trying to rebuild their lives after the terrible war that nearly destroyed everything…1956, Liverpool. With the shadow of the war looming over them and bomb craters littering the surrounding streets, hope feels far away for the residents of Victory Street... -
Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsKinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics literary-fiction fiction classics historical family 20th-century -
A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition of: 9780976395096Set on the eve of World War II, A Mind at Peace captures the anxieties of a Turkish family facing the difficult reality entrenched in the early republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book classics fiction -
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings“The civil rights struggle,” said The New York Times Book Review, “found eloquent expression in [Baldwin’s] novels. His historical importance is indisputable.” Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin’s reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence... -
Midnight by Beverly Jenkins
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn a time of peril, she fears nothing—except the forbidden passions of her heart. In Boston, revolution is in the wind—yet none would ever suspect Faith Kingston of treason. But under cover of darkness, the beautiful daughter of a Tory tavern owner becomes the notorious spy “Lady Midnight,” passing valuable secrets to the rebels...Categorized as:
black-mc colonization historical-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
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:
historical-fiction politics university colonization fiction classics historical 20th-century -
A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott, Richard Brown
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAgainst the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, this volume sketches one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India...Categorized as:
colonization historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult audiobook book -
-
مرگ یزدگرد by Bahram Beyzaie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsبهرام بیضایی (زاده ۵ دی ماه ۱۳۱۷ در تهران) کارگردان سینما، تئاتر، نمایشنامهنویس، فیلمنامهنویس و پژوهشگر ایرانی است. بیضایی علاوه بر کارگردانی و نمایشنامهنویسی در سینما عرصههای دیگری چون تدوین، ساخت عنوانبندی و تهیهکنندگی را هم تجربه کرده است. وی کارگردان برخی از بهترین و ماندگارترین آثار سینمای تاریخ ایران است... -
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiane McKinney-Whetstone's lyrical first novel, Tumbling, vividly captures a tightly knit African-American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the forties and fifties. Its central characters, Herbie and Noon, are a loving but unconventional couple whose marriage remains unconsummated for many years as Noon struggles to repossess her sexuality after a brutal attack in her past...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult audiobook -
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:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
Duet for Three Hands by Tess Thompson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA story of forbidden love, lost dreams, and family turmoil. The first book in a new historical series from bestselling author Tess Thompson, Duet for Three Hands is equal parts epic love story, sweeping family saga, and portrait of days gone by. Set against the backdrop of the American South between 1928 and 1934, four voices blend to tell a tale of prejudice, fear, and love...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult book female-author -
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway, John Hemingway
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTHE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc university 20th-century action-adventure -
Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth by Thomas Wolfe
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe sequel to Thomas Wolfe's remarkable first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River is one of the great classics of American literature. The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from small-town North Carolina to the wider world of Harvard University, New York City, and Europe... -
Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom French literary talent and Prix Goncourt winner Jean-Baptiste Andrea, a “sprawling fresco and star-crossed love story” (The New York Times) following a dwarf and skilled sculptor as he recounts the moments in his life that inspired his mysteriously powerful masterpiece—perfect for readers of Martyr! and The Covenant of Water.In an Italian monastery, a sculptor named Mimo lays on his deathbed... -
Assassins by Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEvoking a fraternity of political assassins and would-be assassins across a hundred years of our history, Sondheim and Weidman daringly examine success, failure and the questionable drive for power and celebrity in American society. "Dark, demented humor, as horrifying as it is hilarious... -
A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in a mythical backwater Southern town, A Different Drummer is the extraordinary story of Tucker Caliban, a quiet, determined descendant of an African chief who for no apparent reason destroys his farm and heads for parts unknown--setting off a mass exodus of the state's entire Black population...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics 20th-century adult -
1921: The Great Novel of the Irish Civil War by Morgan Llywelyn
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Irish fight for independence is one of the most captivating tales of the twentieth century. Morgan Llywelyn, the acclaimed historical writer of books like Lion of Ireland, Bard and The Horse Goddess , is the writer born to bring this epic battle to life...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics literary-fiction fiction historical war 20th-century audiobook -
-
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Young Lions is a vivid and classic novel that portrays the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting World War II. Told from the points of view of a perceptive young Nazi, a jaded American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy just married to the love of his life, Shaw conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics 20th-century action-adventure -
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century by M.H. Abrams, Stephen Greenblatt
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFirmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies--thorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possible--The Norton Anthology of English Literature has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century adult anthologies classics -
Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPerhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this starkly beautiful novel examines the trials of an impoverished woman and her children living in a remote village in Iran, after the unexplained disappearance of her husband, Soluch.Lyrical yet unsparing, the novel examines her life as she contends with the political corruption, authoritarianism, and poverty of the village...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction -
The Major Plays by Anton Chekhov, Rosamund Bartlett
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAnton ChekhovThe Major PlaysIvanov * The Sea Gull * Uncle Vanya * The Three Sisters * The Cherry Orchard“Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life,” Chekhov once declared. “For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction university 20th-century adult anthologies classics -
The Immigrants by Howard Fast
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn a passionate, multigenerational novel set against the backdrop of San Francisco, the son of an Italian fisherman struggles from the rubble of the great earthquake to build a shipping empire. Reprint... -
Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTrans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as "predators," "destroyers," and "zombies"...Categorized as:
colonization historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“In a time when religious liberty is on trial, This Is How It Begins is an extraordinarily pertinent novel dripping in suspense and powerful scenes of political discourse . . . a must read . . .” —Foreword (starred review)A woman bearing a thorny secret. A man fighting for religious freedom. A battle neither saw coming. Massachusetts, 2009. Ludka Zeilonka is relishing her emeritus status... -
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:
colonization drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Spirit Level: Poems by Seamus Heaney
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Spirit Level was the first book of poems Heaney published after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Reviewing this book in The New York Times Book Review, Richard Tillinghast noted that Heaney "has been and is here for good . . . [His poems] will last. Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing... -
Manto: Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings...Categorized as:
drama literary-fiction politics fiction classics anthologies 20th-century historical -
-
Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“No one except perhaps Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker“A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material... -
Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSet in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the postslavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy...Categorized as:
black-mc historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics university 20th-century adult -
A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJulius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome. Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather’s ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures... -
The Essential Plays by Anton Chekhov
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBecause Chekhov’s plays convey the universally recognizable, sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic, frustrations of decent people trying to make sense of their lives, they remain as fresh and vigorous as when they were written a century ago... -
The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNo set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule--"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, " The Raj Quartet." "The Jewel in the Crown" opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence...Categorized as:
colonization drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics university 20th-century -
The Third Life Of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlice Walker's first book recounts the lives of three generations growing up in Georgia, where the author herself grew up. Grange Copeland is a black tenant farmer who is forced to leave his land and family in search of a better future. He heads North but discovers that the racism and poverty he experienced in the South are, in fact, everywhere...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics university 20th-century -
The Short Stories by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963--the most comprehensive available--showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected...Categorized as:
literary-fiction black-mc poc-mc fiction classics anthologies 20th-century historical -
News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOne of the acknowledged masterpieces of Mexican literature, Fernando del Paso's News from the Empire is a powerful and encyclopedic novel of the tragic lives of Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, the short-lived Emperor and Empress of Mexico...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics fiction historical 20th-century book adult -
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin, Evgheni Vodolazkin
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsFrom award-winning author Eugene Vodolazkin comes this poignant story of memory, love, and loss spanning twentieth-century Russia.A man wakes up in a hospital bed, with no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The only information the doctor shares with his patient is his name: Innokenty Petrovich Platonov...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult audiobook book -
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBeginning in the late 1950s, this novel tells the story of Marietta Cook, a tall girl growing up in Pine Gardens, a Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina. When Marietta's mother dies, she heads to Charleston in search of her uncle - only to find a lover and return pregnant with twins two years later... -
-
A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn airline captain crafts a riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the remarkable true life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads... -
Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Where the Air Is Clear," Carlos Fuentes's first novel, is an unsparing portrayal of Mexico City's upper class. Departing from a traditional linear narrative, Fuentes overlays Mexican myths onto contemporary settings, showing that even the rich and powerful must succumb to the indomitable spirit of Mexico, which undermines all institutions and shapes all destinies...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book classics fiction -
The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA visionary cast of characters weave together their past and present in a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales.It is the story of the dispossessed and displaced, of peoples whose history is ancient and whose future is yet to come...Categorized as:
black-mc drama historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics 20th-century adult -
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... -
Zayni Barakat by Gamal al-Ghitani, جمال الغيطاني
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOne of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, the Red Cavalry cycle retains today the shocking freshness that made Babel's reputation when the stories were first published in the 1920s...Categorized as:
drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics university 20th-century adult anthologies
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.