Books like 'Second Class Citizen'
Readers who enjoyed Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century action / adventure classics historical-fiction journey university social-commentary coming-of-age literary-fiction
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Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsAvailable in English for the first time, this best-selling Turkish classic of love and alienation in a changing world captures the vibrancy of interwar Berlin. A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin... -
![Pather Panchali: Song of the Road by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay]()
Pather Panchali: Song of the Road by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPather Panchali deals with the life of the Roy family, consisting of Harihar, Sarbajaya, Apu and Durga, both in their ancestral village Nishchindipur in rural Bengal and later when they move to Varanasi in search of a better life, as well as the anguish and loss they face during their travels... -
![Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal]()
Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA tale of high adventure and lyrical celebration, tenderness and violence, generosity and ruthlessness, Memed, My Hawk is the defining achievement of one of the greatest and most beloved of living writers, Yashar Kemal. It is reissued here with a new introduction by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![They Burn Thistles by Yaşar Kemal]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
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![Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer]()
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMinke is a young Javanese student of great intelligence and ambition. Living equally among the colonists and colonized of 19th-century Java, he battles against the confines of colonial strictures. It is his love for Annelies that enables him to find the strength to embrace his world... -
![Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar]()
Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAn aspiring photographer follows her dreams and faces her fears in a poignant novel about finding beauty, promise, and love amid the chaos of war-torn Kurdistan.It’s 1979. Olivia Murray, a secretary at a Los Angeles newspaper, is determined to become a photojournalist and make a difference with her work... -
![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... -
![The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov]()
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in the vast windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis]()
Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe inhabitants of a Greek village, ruled by the Turks, plan to enact the life of Christ in a mystery play but are overwhelmed by their task. A group of refugees, fleeing from the ruins of their plundered homes, arrive asking for protection - and suddenly the drama of the Passion becomes reality...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel]()
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis stirring, poignant novel, based on real historical events that made of actual people true heroes, unfolds the tragedy that befell the Armenian people in the dark year of 1915. The Great War is raging through Europe, and in the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea the Turks have begun systematically to exterminate their Christian subjects...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![War Girl Ursula by Marion Kummerow]()
War Girl Ursula by Marion Kummerow
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBerlin 1943: Compassion is a crime. A prisoner escapes. A guard looks the other way. Why does Ursula Hermann risk her life and brave the Gestapo to save a man she barely knows? Ursula has always lived the law, never broken the rules in her life. That is until the day she finds escapee British airman Tom Westlake and all the right she’s worked so hard to maintain goes wrong.. -
![The Kites by Romain Gary]()
The Kites by Romain Gary
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a small farm in Normandy, as Hitler rises to power in Germany, young Ludo comes of age in the care of his Uncle Ambrose, an eccentric mailman, kite-maker, and pacifist. Ludo’s quiet existence changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family who own the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo instantly falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, remains elusive...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
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![They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor]()
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPainting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec]()
Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andrić, Joseph Hitrec
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleanic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtley, Tolstoyan. In its portray of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![The Third Wedding by Costas Taktsis, Κώστας Ταχτσής]()
The Third Wedding by Costas Taktsis, Κώστας Ταχτσής
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe German Occupation, the Civil War and life itself seen through the eyes of two Athenian women...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey 20th-century action-adventure adult book fiction -
![The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood]()
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... -
![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... -
![The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta]()
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... -
![Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham]()
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBased on the life of Paul Gauguin, The Moon and Sixpence is W. Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art... -
![Rapsodie der eenzaamheid by Agnar Mykle, Maurice Michael]()
Rapsodie der eenzaamheid by Agnar Mykle, Maurice Michael
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDutch translation of Lasso rundt fru Luna... -
![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... -
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![The Call of the Wild/White Fang/To Build a Fire by Jack London]()
The Call of the Wild/White Fang/To Build a Fire by Jack London
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsThe Call of the Wild—Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timeTo this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world," E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London's greatest achievement, The Call of the Wild brought him international acclaim when it was published in 1903... -
![The White Ship by Chingiz Aitmatov]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey 20th-century action-adventure book children-books drama -
![The Bracelet of Garnets and Other Stories by Aleksandr Kuprin, Leo Pasvolsky]()
The Bracelet of Garnets and Other Stories by Aleksandr Kuprin, Leo Pasvolsky
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages... -
![Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim]()
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... -
![A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein]()
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan and Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge]()
Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan and Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages...Categorized as:
classics university literary-fiction fiction action-adventure gothic horror 20th-century -
![The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland]()
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:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. Somerset Maugham]()
Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsW. Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing... -
![Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Arshi Pipa]()
Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare, Arshi Pipa
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMasterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city... -
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![The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig]()
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort... -
![The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth]()
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe Radetzky March charts the history of the Trotta family through three generations spanning the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through the Battle of Solferino, to the entombment of the last Hapsburg emperor, Roth's intelligent compassionate narrative illuminates the crumbling of a way of life...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Fatelessness by Imre Kertész]()
Fatelessness by Imre Kertész
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAt the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew... -
![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... -
![Tandia by Bryce Courtenay]()
Tandia by Bryce Courtenay
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsTandia sat waiting anxiously for the fight to begin between the man she loved the most in the world and the man she hated the most in the world.Tandia is a child of Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only sixteen when she is first brutalised by the police. Her fear of the white man leads her to join the black resistance movement, where she trains as a terrorist... -
![The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, Mikolaj Dutsch]()
The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, Mikolaj Dutsch
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsThe Street of Crocodiles in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic... -
![The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw]()
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsEthan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of Steinbeck’s last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Island’s aristocratic class, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide... -
![The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa]()
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Leopard is a story of a decadent and dying aristocracy threatened by the forces of revolution and democracy. Set against the political upheavals of Italy in the 1860s, it focuses on Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince of immense sensual appetites, wealth, and great personal magnetism...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![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...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway]()
The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Nick Adams Stories show a memorable character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer & parent--a sequence closely paralleling events of Hemingway's life.The 1st section, called Northern Woods, includes "Three Shots", "Indian Camp", "The Doctor & the Doctor's Wife", "Ten Indians" & "The Indians Moved Away"... -
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![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)... -
![Broken April by Ismail Kadare]()
Broken April by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the moment that Gjorg's brother is killed by a neighbour, his own life is forfeit: for the code of Kanun requires Gjorg to kill his brother's murderer and then in turn be hunted down. After shooting his brother's killer, young Gjorg is entitled to thirty days' grace - not enough to see out the month of April.Then a visiting honeymoon couple cross the path of the fugitive...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare]()
The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the story of an Italian general, accompanied by his chaplain, charged with the mission of scouring Albania in search of the bones of their fallen countrymen, killed twenty years earlier during World War II...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![Henna House by Nomi Eve]()
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn evocative and stirring novel about a young woman living in the fascinating and rarely portrayed community of Yemenite Jews of the mid-twentieth century, from the acclaimed author of The Family Orchard.In the tradition of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, Henna House is the enthralling story of a woman, her family, their community, and the rituals that bind them... -
![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...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Raised from the Ground by José Saramago]()
Raised from the Ground by José Saramago
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA multigenerational family saga that paints a sweeping portrait of twentieth-century PortugalFirst published in 1980, the City of Lisbon Prize–winning Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book
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