Identity & Belonging

Explorations of self, belonging, and what it means to find your place.

All countries Argentina Chile Czech Republic India Ireland Nigeria Sudan Turkey United States

Season of Migration to the North

A Sudanese man returns home after years of study in England and meets Mustafa Sa'eed, a man who seduced and destroyed European women in London as an act of colonial revenge. A masterpiece of postcolonial literature.

The Satanic Verses

Two Indian actors survive a plane explosion over the English Channel and undergo fantastical transformations in London. The novel's dream sequences involving a prophet-like figure led to Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Rushdie.

Midnight's Children

Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of Indian independence in 1947, discovers he is telepathically linked to the 1,000 other children born in that hour. Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel — later awarded the "Booker of Bookers" — is a magical-realist history of postcolonial India.

A miniaturist is murdered in Istanbul in 1591, and his killer lurks among the illustrators working on a secret manuscript for the Sultan. Pamuk uses multiple narrators — including a dog, a tree, and a coin — to explore art, identity, and East-West tension.

The illegitimate daughter of an Indian servant and a dying Italian scientist becomes a storyteller whose tales shape reality. One of Allende's most exuberant novels, a celebration of narrative and female resilience.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nigerian Ifemelu moves to the United States to study and writes a popular blog about race in America, while her first love Obinze attempts to emigrate to Britain. A sharp, funny, and incisive novel about race, identity, and the African immigrant experience.

Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo, a respected warrior in the Igbo village of Umuofia, sees his world dismantled by the arrival of European missionaries and colonial administrators. The novel has sold over 20 million copies and is taught in schools across the world.

The Metamorphosis

Travelling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes one morning transformed into a giant insect. His family's reaction — from shock to resentment to relief at his death — makes the novella a devastating study of alienation within the family unit.

Czech Republic 1915

Julio Cortázar

A novel that can be read in two ways — straight through, or in a "hopscotch" order indicated by the author — following Argentine intellectual Horacio Oliveira in Paris and Buenos Aires. A landmark of the Latin American Boom.

Jorge Luis Borges

Seventeen short stories — many taking the form of reviews of imaginary books — that invent libraries, labyrinths, and encyclopaedias of non-existent worlds. The collection that established Borges as a world literary figure.

Song of Solomon

Macon "Milkman" Dead III sets off to find a cache of gold and instead discovers his family's history and his African American heritage. The novel that brought Morrison wide recognition and is considered among her finest achievements.

United States 1977

One day in Dublin — 16 June 1904 — narrated through the parallel journeys of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness, myth, and linguistic experiment transformed what the novel could be.

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Books: 12
Countries: 9

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