Books like 'Monkey Boy'
Readers who enjoyed Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical military, war & conflict literary-fiction politics latinx-mc war poc-mc
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My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCentered around the 1986 attempt on the life of Augusto Pinochet, an event that changed Chile forever, My Tender Matador is one of the most explosive, controversial, and popular novels to have been published in that country in decades. It is spring 1986 in the city of Santiago, and Augusto Pinochet is losing his grip on power...Categorized as:
latinx-mc literary-fiction poc-mc politics war 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel by Radwa Ashour
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsPalestine. For most of us, the word brings to mind a series of confused images and disjointed associations-massacres, refugee camps, UN resolutions, settlements, terrorist attacks, war, occupation, checkered kouffiyehs and suicide bombers, a seemingly endless cycle of death and destruction... -
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA sweeping and lyrical novel that follows a young Palestinian refugee as she slowly becomes radicalized while searching for a better life for her family throughout the Middle East, for readers of international literary bestsellers including Washington Black, My Sister, The Serial Killer, and Her Body and Other Parties... -
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsHaunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million people...Categorized as:
latinx-mc literary-fiction poc-mc politics war 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
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Retrospective by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn epic yet intimate novel about a Colombian man caught up in the sweep of global historical and ideological revolutions. The Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera, is in Barcelona for a retrospective of his work...Categorized as:
literary-fiction politics war latinx-mc poc-mc fiction historical-fiction historical -
The Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsParis, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini - amateur photographer and compulsive reader - is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world - of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War... -
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka.Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence...Categorized as:
literary-fiction war politics poc-mc historical-fiction fiction historical audiobook -
Γκιακ by Δημοσθένης Παπαμάρκος
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsΟι ήρωες των διηγημάτων του Γκιακ, στρατιώτες που πολέμησαν στη Μικρασιατική Εκστρατεία, έρχονται αντιμέτωποι με τους ρόλους που τους επιβάλλουν οι παραδοσιακοί κανόνες και το βίωμα του πολέμου. Συγκρούονται, υποτάσσονται, ζουν εν κρυπτώ ή φεύγουν. Το γκιακ είναι το αίμα, ο συγγενικός δεσμός και ο νόμος του αίματος που σκιάζει τις ζωές τους...Categorized as:
war literary-fiction fiction historical-fiction 21st-century historical drama violent-conflict -
Colombiano by Rusty Young
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBlending fact and fiction, Colombiano is a heart-thumping journey into the violent and unpredictable world of post-Escobar Colombia. For four years Rusty Young, author of the international bestseller Marching Powder, worked secretly for the US government in Colombia. During this time he was shocked by the stories of child soldiers he encountered... -
Freedom or Death by Nikos Kazantzakis
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFreedom or Death by Nikos Kazantzakis is a novel on the heroic or epic scale about the rebellion of the Greek Christians against the Turks on the island of Crete, where Kazantzakis was from... -
The Fire Dream by Franklin Allen Leib
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn epic military novel of soldier's combat in Vietnam This is a sweeping, gut-wrenching portrait of soldiers at war from a man who fought, and saw friends die, in Vietnam. It is a saga of men from all walks of life, thrown together by the arbitrary nature of unrelenting combat of Vietnam, each man in the team is put to the ultimate test-combat... -
The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis is Jean Larteguy's most famous book that garnered international acclaim and sold millions of copies. It was also the basis for the movie, The Lost Command, starring Anthony Quinn. In his autobiography, Larteguy writes that he got the name of the book from when he was traveling with the Foreign Legion in the Sahara and came across an old Roman column at an oasis... -
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... -
The Wife Who Risked Everything by Ellie Midwood
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBerlin, 1943: “Where’s your husband?” the SS man demanded.“There’s no one home,” Margot said before they started tearing the place apart. “I’m alone here.” In his eyes was nothing but ice and death, and it occurred to Margot that only she stood between her husband and the soldier’s machine gun.In Nazi Germany, Margot refuses to buckle under the weight of Hitler’s tyranny... -
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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... -
War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe poems gathered here, which trace the course of the First World War, are an extraordinary testimony to the almost unimaginable experiences of a combatant in that bitter conflict. Moving from the patriotic optimism of the first few poems (...fighting for our freedom, we are free) to the anguish and anger of the later work (where hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists / Flounders in mud.. -
You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn extraordinary debut that explores legacies of abuse, redemption, and the strength of the human spirit--from the Boer Wars in South Africa to brutal wilderness camps for teenage boys. South Africa, 1901. It is the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm... -
The Bogside Boys by Eoin Dempsey
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the Amazon Top Ten Overall Bestselling author of Finding RebeccaThe war will force him to choose between his community, his family, or the woman he loves. The city of Derry, Northern Ireland, 1972The Bogside is an area in open revolt, cordoned off from the rest of the city of Derry, patrolled by masked IRA men atop burnt out barricades... -
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:
war politics literary-fiction historical-fiction fiction historical 20th-century audiobook -
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, Tina A. Kover
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsKimia Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimia is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves... -
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... -
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... -
Children Of The Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in 1934, Children of the Arbat presents a masterful and chilling psychological portrait of Stalin and details the beginning of his reign of terror and its impact on a generation - represented by a circle of young friends living in Moscow's intellectual and artistic center, the Arbat... -
A Prophet Without Honor: A Novel of Alternative History by Joseph Wurtenbaugh
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratings‘A Prophet Without Honor’ is that rare novel that provides a rich, entertaining and fully immersive reading experience, along with a resonant, thought-provoking subtext. Written in epistolary style and populated with interesting, fully-realized characters, the multi-general narrative is a seamless blend of authentic fact and sound speculation... -
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The Cake Tree in the Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIntensely moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death... -
Hereward: End of Days by James Wilde
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEngland, 1071. Five years have passed since the crushing Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings. The country reels under the savage rule of the new king, the one they call 'the Bastard.' The North has been left a wasteland villages razed, innocents put to the sword, land stolen. It seems no atrocity is too great to ensure William's grip upon the crown... -
Valley of the Shadow by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMama had been gone for several years, now, but Gen could still hear her voice. Someday someone is going to call you a stupid squaw. When they do, you must remember who you are. You are the daughter of a French nobleman. Your father speaks four languages. He has studied at schools most whites could never hope to enter... -
1776 by Peter Stone, Sherman Edwards
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratings1776 is an inspiring and imaginative re-creation of the events from May 8 to July 4 in Philadelphia, when the second Continental Congress argued about, voted on, and signed the Declaration of Independence. From John Adams's opening diatribe to the signing of the document, 1776 is a classic musical play of mounting tension and triumph... -
The Stars Look Down by A.J. Cronin
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Stars Look Down was A.J. Cronin's fourth novel, published in 1935, and this tale of a North country mining family was a great favourite with his readers. Robert Fenwick is a miner, and so are his three sons. His wife is proud that all her four men go down the mines... -
Javanese Gentry by Umar Kayam
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"In my mind rose a misty picture of a little girl in a floral dress. As for her face: nothing. I could only hope that she had been pretty. I sat overcome. What a procession of developments in one day! Only that morning I had left Madiun; at midday I was wobbling on a buggy past an ocean of rice fields; tonight, suddenly, I had been renamed by my parents and handed a wife... -
Em by Kim Thúy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKim Thúy's Em is a mesmerizing novel of profound power and tenderness, and an affirmation of the greatest act of resistance: love. In the midst of war, an ordinary miracle: an abandoned baby tenderly cared for by a young boy living on the streets of Saigon. The boy is Louis, the child of a long-gone American soldier. Louis calls the baby em Hồng, em meaning little sister, or beloved... -
Ports of Call by Amin Maalouf, Alberto Manguel
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA graceful story of love across an insuperable gulf and a powerful allegory for the conflict that has beset the Middle East for the last half century. To call your son Ossyane is like calling him Rebellion. For Ossyane’s father it is a gesture of protest by an excited Ottoman prince, for Ossyane himself it is a burdensome responsibility... -
The Incredible Story of Henry N. Brown by Anne Helene Bubenzer
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHenry N. Brown came into this world on July 16, 1921. He had to wait until his second eye was sewn before he could see, but from that moment his life was never dull. Henry N. Brown is the story of the twentieth century, as witnessed by a little bear... -
Until the Sun Falls by Cecelia Holland
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsIn the thirteenth century the Mongol hordes swept out of Mongolia to over-run half the world. This novel follows Psin, a Mongol general, through the military campaigns in Russia and Europe, among his own family and in his own heart... -
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The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the U.S... -
The Emperor's General (4 Cassettes) by James Webb, David Dukes
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratings1997. Jay Marsh, Wall Street millionaire and grand old man of the diplomatic corps, takes a sentimental journey to the scene of his first triumphs and agonies, Manila, where as a brash young captain during World War II he served as aide-de-camp and confidant to General Douglas MacArthur. Marsh sees beyond the glittery capital of today to the horrifying days of 1945... -
Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsUnavailable for twenty years, this harrowing allegory of obedience to authority is esteemed as “one of the defining literary texts of the post-Stalin period... -
Passage West by Rishi Reddi
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA Recommended Book from BookRiot, Bustle, The Millions and Teen Vogue A Los Angeles Times BEST CALIFORNIA BOOK of 2020 * A New England Independent Booksellers' 2020 NEW ENGLAND BOOK AWARD FINALISTA sweeping, vibrant first novel following a family of Indian sharecroppers at the onset of World War I, revealing a little-known part of California history1914: Ram Singh arrives in the Imperial Valley... -
Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis astonishingly proficient and gripping first novel should be required reading for anyone who calls him or herself a responsible citizen. Not only is it masterfully written, with images as sharp as shards of broken glass, but it also carries a message so potent it burns into the conscience...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc politics war 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn international bestseller available in English for the first time,a story of forbidden love set against the background of Arabic culture and endless feuds between clansA dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul s Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered... -
The Voyage: A Historical Novel set during the Holocaust, Inspired by real events by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOn May 13th 1939, five strangers boarded the MS St. Louis, Promised a future of safety away from Nazi Germany and Hitler’s third Reich unbeknownst to them they were about to embark upon a voyage built on secrets, lies, and treachery. Sacrifice, love, life, and death hung in the balance as each fought against fate but the voyage was just the beginning... -
All We Left Behind by Danielle R. Graham
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz‘Heart-wrenching. Emotional. A powerful story of wartime love and devotion’ Glynis Peters, author of The Secret OrphanA powerful and incredibly moving historical novel inspired by an untold story of the Second World War.Vancouver 1941As the war rages around the world, Hitler’s fury is yet to be felt on the peaceful shores of Mayne Island... -
Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future. Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France... -
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsImperial Woman is the fictionalized biography of the last Empress in China, Ci-xi, who began as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor and on his death became the de facto head of the Qing Dynasty until her death in 1908.Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rulers during a time of intense turbulence.Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty... -
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I'm Staying Here by Marco Balzano
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCuròn, 1920.In a small village in South Tyrol, Trina longs for a different life. She dedicates herself to becoming a teacher, but the year that she qualifies Mussolini's regime abolishes the use of German as a teaching language.In this new climate of fear and uncertainty Trina works for a clandestine network of schools in the valley, always with the risk of capture.Curòn, 1939... -
The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author of Mornings in Jenin, a novel about four generations of powerful Palestinian women in Gaza.Violently pushed from their ancient farming village of Beit Daras, a Palestinian family tries to reconstitute itself in a refugee camp in Gaza... -
The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba by Chanel Cleeton
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAt the end of the nineteenth century, three revolutionary women fight for freedom in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s captivating new novel inspired by real-life events and the true story of a legendary Cuban woman–Evangelina Cisneros–who changed the course of history.A feud rages in Gilded Age New York City between newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer... -
Soul by Andrei Platonov, Robert Chandler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsA New York Review Books OriginalThe Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov’s vision have become ever more clear... -
Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMatilda, daughter of Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England's queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival Stephen do not know the iron will that drives her.Adeliza, Henry's widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, is now married to a warrior who fights to keep Matilda off the throne... -
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it.Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz...
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