Books like 'Ways of Going Home'
Readers who enjoyed Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra & Megan McDowell also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsThe seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy...Categorized as:
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Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsLiving by their wits in the steamy slums of Bahia, a gang of orphans and runaways, led by fifteen-year-old "Bullet," spend their time stealing from Brazil's rich and privileged until public outcry demands their capture...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children -
Islandborn by Junot Díaz
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsEvery kid in Lola's school was from somewhere else. Hers was a school of faraway places. So when Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember The Island—she left when she was just a baby...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey latinx-mc poc-mc action-adventure audiobook book children -
The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRecalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction war contemporary audiobook 21st-century -
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Road to Love by Nicole Falls
Rated: 4.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEmerson Parker is a walking ball of stress. Still reeling from the untimely demise of a relationship that she thought would last forever, work strain, & longstanding family drama, she is in dire need of respite. A freak occurrence coupled with a little bit of desperation to get away from it all leads her on an adventure—a cross-country road trip back to her hometown of Ragston, MI... -
The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi, سعود السنعوسي
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsDaring and bold, The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the universal struggles of identity, race, and class as they intersect between two disparate societies: Kuwait and the Philippines. Josephine comes to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, a spoiled but kind-hearted only son...Categorized as:
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The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsPublished in Indonesia in 2005, "The Rainbow Troops," Andrea Hirata's closely autobiographical debut novel, sold more than five million copies, shattering records. Now it promises to captivate audiences around the globe.Ikal is a student at the poorest village school on the Indonesian island of Belitong, where graduating from sixth grade is considered a remarkable achievement...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction poc-mc action-adventure bildungsroman book children -
End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems...Categorized as:
journey latinx-mc literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Letters of Freedom : The Carmel Sheehan Story - Book 1 by Jean Grainger
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSomewhere between the light and the shadow, the cared for and the unloved, stands Carmel Sheehan. Cast off as a ward of the Irish state, Carmel enters adulthood a broken woman. Yearning for a sense of belonging and in desperation to find her place in the world, Carmel agrees to a marriage of convenience, and resigns herself to a quiet and unfulfilled life...Categorized as:
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Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph... -
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsHoracio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club... -
Captured by Mr. Wild by Elle Nicoll
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThere are men. And then there’s Blake Anderson.He was my best friend.Until I left.Ten years apart have turned him into a handsome, rugged, tattooed wall of muscle.He even has his own fan club, following the success of his smash-hit TV survival show.They call him Mr. Wild.One night he shows me just how wild.For a moment, I almost believe in magic again.Almost... -
Beyond the Badge: Rez by Jeanne St. James
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSometimes an opportunity comes along that you just can’t resist… As a member of the Tri-State Federal Drug Task Force, Antonio Alvarez seizes the opportunity to go undercover with the Deadly Demons MC when it unexpectedly arises...Categorized as:
poc-mc literary-fiction romance biker fiction law-enforcement action-adventure contemporary -
Hourglass by Danilo Kiš
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDanilo Kiš was one of the most artful and eloquent writers of postwar Europe. Of all his books, Hourglass, the account of the final months in one man's life before he is sent to a concentration camp, is considered to be his masterpiece...Categorized as:
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The Truce by Mario Benedetti
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.' Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary, and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people generally do...Categorized as:
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The Havoc of Choice by Wanjiru Koinange
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings2007, KenyaLong held captive by her father’s shadow of corruption, Kavata has spent her life suffocated by political machinations. When her husband decides to run in the next election, these shadows threaten to consume her home. Unable to bear this darkness,Kavata plots to escape. As her family falls apart, so too does her country...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction fiction politics contemporary corruption family -
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFirst published in Spanish in 1998, The Savage Detectives was immediately hailed as a critical success, wining the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize. But with the 2007 English-language translation the book became more than a bestseller -- it began the global sensation of Bolanomania. New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City...Categorized as:
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OUR TREES STILL GROW IN DEHRA by Ruskin Bond
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFourteen engaging stories from one of India's master story-tellers Semi-autobiographical in nature, these stories span the period from the author's childhood to the present. We are introduced, in a series of beautifully imagined and crafted cameos, to the author's family, friends, and various other people who left a lasting impression on him...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc action-adventure anthologies children-books contemporary fiction -
East of the West by Miroslav Penkov
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA brilliant debut from a rising talent praised by Salman Rushdie, among others.A grandson tries to buy the corpse of Lenin on eBay for his Communist grandfather. A failed wunderkind steals a golden cross from an orthodox church. A boy meets his cousin (the love of his life) once every five years in the waters of the river that divides their village into East and West... -
Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsFour gems, with new introductions, mark acclaimed Indian writer R. K. Narayan’s centennialIntroducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story... -
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA major classic of 1930s literature, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (Utas és Holdvilág) is the fantastically moving and darkly funny story of a bourgeois businessman torn between duty and desire.'On the train, everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice ...'Mihály has dreamt of Italy all his life...Categorized as:
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The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSet among a community of cadets in a Lima military school, it is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives. The novel was so accurate in its portraiture of the academy that the academy's authorities burned one thousand copies and condemned the book as a plan by Ecuador to denigrate Peru... -
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA young man leaves behind more than he realizes to follow his passions in this major, luminous novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return.The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream...Categorized as:
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From Afar by Frank Scozzari
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor centuries, poets have argued that unrequited love is love in its strongest form. From Afar is a timeless tale of Morgan Stanfield’s search for love in the far northern city of Saint Petersburg, Russia...Categorized as:
journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult book coming-of-age contemporary fiction -
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Buckeye and the Babe by Olivia Gaines
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsCabrina Roberts flew to Las Vegas to have a face to face conversation and get a possible lead on her friend, Aisha Miller’s disappearance. What she finds instead is Gabriel Neary, codename Buckeye, a CIA Agent that is too handsome for his own good. Add in two free tickets to a hypnotist show, a bottle of cheap champagne and the pair wakes up the next morning to find themselves married... -
Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings49-year-old safety inspector-turned-beekeeper Sergey Sergeich, wants little more than to help his bees collect their pollen in peace.But Sergey lives in Ukraine, where a lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda has been dragging on for years... -
The Disoriented by Amin Maalouf
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAfter 25 years in exile, Adam travels from France to his homeland in the Middle East to bid farewell to his dying childhood friend.One night, a phone rings in Paris. Adam learns that Mourad, once his closest friend, is dying. He quickly throws some clothes in a suitcase and takes the first flight out, to the homeland he fled twenty-five years ago...Categorized as:
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The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe first of his family to go to college, Anil Patel, the golden son, carries the weight of tradition and his family’s expectations when he leaves his tiny Indian village to begin a medical residency in Dallas, Texas, at one of the busiest and most competitive hospitals in America...Categorized as:
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All Your Children, Scattered by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWINNER OF THE PRIX ETHIOPHILE, THE PRIX DES RACINES ET DES MOTS, AND THE PRIX DES CINQ CONTINENTS DE LA FRANCOPHONIEBeata Umubyeyi Mairesse's debut novel follows three generations torn apart by the Rwandan genocide, as they try to reconnect with one another, rebuild broken links, and find their place in today's world...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc journey africa eastern-africa rwanda france -
An Unlasting Home: A Novel by Mai Al-Nakib
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"So fresh and unsettling that it will enchant you from the first page and linger for days after reading...Its epic family saga style echoes that of Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and The Arsonists’ City , Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies , and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko...Categorized as:
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Cent millions d'années et un jour by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings‘On the mountain, the only monsters are the ones you take with you.’Summer 1954. Stan has been hunting for fossils since the age of six. Now, having made a career out of studying the remains of tiny lifeforms, he hears a story he cannot forget: the skeleton of a huge creature, a veritable dragon, lies deep in an Alpine glacier. And he is determined to find it...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction fiction drama action-adventure contemporary fantasy book -
Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratings6 hrs. 10 min.Nigerian author Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi makes her American debut with this dazzling novel which explores her homeland's past, present, and possible future through the interconnected stories of four fearless globe-trotting women...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc journey fiction contemporary audiobook female-author -
Abuela by Arthur Dorros, Elisa Kleven
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhile riding on a bus with her grandmother, a little girl imagines that they are carried up into the sky and fly over the sights of New York City... -
We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings1960s Uganda. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see a way forward, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.Present-day London. Sameer, a young high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey poc-mc fiction contemporary audiobook romantic-love -
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Yugoslavia, My Fatherland by Goran Vojnović
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Vladan Borojević googles the name of his father Nedelko, a former officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army, supposedly killed in the civil war after the decay of Yugoslavia, he unexpectedly discovers a dark family secret...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction contemporary audiobook war 21st-century -
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl by Nanda Reddy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layer upon layer of secrets, until one morning years later when she is forced to reckon with her past."This debut is a beautiful, if sometimes harrowing, exploration of one woman’s journey. . . to a life built by her own grit and determination." -Library Journal, Starred Review... -
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe English translation of the prize-winning international bestseller Winner of the Gunter Grass PrizeNowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes–a gambler notorious for never winning—dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him...Categorized as:
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Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNear to the Wild Heart is Clarice Lispector's first novel, written from March to November 1942 and published around her twenty-third birthday...Categorized as:
journey latinx-mc literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
In the Country by Mia Alvar
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThese nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again...Categorized as:
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The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBy National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman’s journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos islandMina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO... -
Red Crosses by Sasha Filipenko
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSasha Filipenko traces the arc of Russian history from Stalin's terror to the present day, in a novel full of heart and humanity.One struggles not to forget, while the other would like nothing better. Tatiana Alexeyevna is an old woman, over ninety, rich in lived experience, and suffering from Alzheimer's. Every day, she loses a few more of her irreplaceable memories...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction contemporary politics audiobook war -
Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGeorge Gastin is a Bay Area tow-truck operator who wrecks cars as part of an insurance scam. One of the cars he is hired to demolish is a snow-white Cadillac that was supposed to be a present for the Big Bopper, who died in the Iowa plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Gastin has a change of heart and takes off in the car, heading for Texas where the Bopper is buried...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey literary-fiction action-adventure adult book contemporary dark-humor -
Jess by Mary Casanova
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen ten-year-old Jess McConnell meets a new friend on her trip to the ancient Maya ruins in Belize, she is invited on an eco-adventure and makes some real discoveries--about the dangers in the Belizean jungle, about the people who have lived there since long ago, and about herself...Categorized as:
historical-fiction latinx-mc poc-mc fiction middle-grade children-books contemporary realistic -
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The Means That Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHome is where your people are. But who are your people?Adelaide has lived her whole life in rural Ethiopia, where she and her family are the only white people she knows. Then her family moves to South Carolina, in 1964.Adelaide promises she'll return to Ethiopia and become part of the village for good...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey poc-mc fiction young-adult christian coming-of-age contemporary -
All the Walls of Belfast by Sarah Carlson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFiona and Danny were born in the same hospital. Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood...Categorized as:
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Undercover Billionaire: A forbidden Cinderella cruise ship romance by Amy Andrews
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA forbidden Cinderella cruise ship romanceNobody can discover the truth about this sexy, forbidden fling. Brooding billionaire Ari Callisthenes, heir to a Greek shipping line, goes undercover as a regular Joe passenger on one of his own cruise ships to find out why it's underperforming...Categorized as:
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The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Fortunes of WangrinAmadou Hampâté BâTranslated by Aina Pavolini Taylor with an Introduction by F. Abiola IreleWinner of the Grand Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noire"I think this is perhaps the best African novel on colonialism and it draws very richly on various modes of oral literature...Categorized as:
historical-fiction journey poc-mc fiction 20th-century contemporary action-adventure black-mc -
Leaves of the Banyan Tree by Albert Wendt
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction journey fiction 20th-century classics male-author family -
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes all suffering bearable; Molina believes in the magic of love which makes all else endurable...Categorized as:
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