Identity & Belonging

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

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The Renovation

Dilara, a Turkish exile living in a small Italian town, is struggling to care for her father, whose memories are gradually disappearing as dementia takes hold. Preparing to welcome him into her home, she commissions a renovation to make the apartment more comfortable. But when the builders finish, she discovers that her new bathroom has been transformed into a Turkish prison cell, complete with guards and prisoners. What initially seems like an absurd mistake soon becomes a mysterious connection to the homeland Dilara left behind. Through the cell, she encounters echoes of Istanbul, her family’s painful past, and the political violence that forced them into exile. As her domestic life begins to unravel, the prison becomes an unexpected gateway to memories she can neither fully recover nor escape. Blending surrealism, dark humour, and political allegory, The Renovation explores exile, belonging, family, and the ways political oppression and personal grief can imprison us long after we have crossed borders.

My Only Boy

Rosa Rankin-Gee

In a near-future England gripped by political extremism, rising inequality, and oppressive heat, Elle has built her career around anticipating disasters. As communications director for a technology company, she must navigate a society increasingly shaped by authoritarian politics while protecting her own financial security. But her carefully managed life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Ed, a celebrated gay novelist preparing to publish his first book. Although Elle has always been attracted to women, an inexplicable connection develops between them, challenging everything they believe about themselves. As the political climate deteriorates, their relationship becomes entangled with questions of identity, desire, morality, and complicity. Blending an unconventional love story with dystopian satire and political thriller elements, My Only Boy examines what happens when private lives collide with public crises. It asks whether people can remain faithful to their principles when survival demands compromise—and whether love can transform the identities we thought were fixed.

United Kingdom 2026

The Girl with Seven Lives

The Girl with Seven Lives

Twenty-five-year-old Devi has spent her life learning how to survive in a world that offers her few chances and even fewer protections. Growing up in the slums of Delhi, she has become a resourceful fighter, but her past has also earned her dangerous enemies. Now kidnapped and held at gunpoint, Devi faces a terrifying ordeal: her captor is auctioning her life online and demands that she confess to the crimes he believes she has committed. To stay alive, she must recount the extraordinary story of her seven lives, revealing secrets and unexpected truths as the night unfolds. Moving across India, from Delhi and Punjab to Kerala, Goa, and Mumbai, the novel combines suspense, dark humour, and social observation. Through Devi’s shifting identities and remarkable resilience, Swarup explores survival, inequality, and a woman’s struggle to reclaim control over her own destiny.

Tangerinn

Emanuela Anechoum

Tangerinn follows Mina, a thirty-year-old woman who has built a carefully controlled life in London in an attempt to escape her past. When her Moroccan-born father, Omar, dies unexpectedly, she returns to her childhood home in Calabria, southern Italy, intending to attend his funeral. Instead, she finds herself staying longer than planned, drawn back into the family and community she once left behind. Omar ran a small beach bar called the Tangerinn, a gathering place for migrants and outsiders who struggled to find acceptance in their new home. As Mina reconnects with the people who knew her father, she begins to uncover the complexities of his past and question how well she truly understood him. Her journey becomes an exploration of the parallels between their lives: both left home in search of something better, yet neither could entirely escape the pull of their origins. Moving between Italy, Morocco, and London, Anechoum explores migration, family inheritance, cultural identity, and the elusive meaning of belonging. The novel asks whether we can ever fully escape our past or whether understanding where we come from is essential to discovering who we are.

Ever Land

Set in Israel and Palestine in 2000, Ever Land follows two teenage girls whose lives become intertwined across time. Dinah, a Jewish teenager from London, moves to Israel with her family after the death of her beloved father. Struggling to adjust to her new surroundings, she feels increasingly disconnected from the life she has been forced to leave behind. Meanwhile, Safa, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian girl killed during the Six-Day War in 1967, remains trapped in a mysterious limbo she calls the In-Between. Unable to move on without discovering what happened to her younger sister, Nur, Safa watches Dinah settle into the very house where she once lived. When an opportunity to find Nur emerges decades after Safa’s death, she realizes that Dinah may be the key to uncovering the truth. Moving between past and present, Abdelnoor explores displacement, historical memory, belonging, and the human connections that cross political and cultural divisions. Through the contrasting experiences of two young women, the novel examines how history shapes identity and how confronting the past can open possibilities for understanding and compassion.

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter

Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter

In this darkly humorous and deeply personal memoir, Katya Suvorova recounts her childhood as an undocumented Russian immigrant in Houston, Texas, after her mother brought her to the United States in search of a better life. Arriving at just three years old, Katya grows up amid instability, poverty, and a succession of her mother’s husbands. Instead of experiencing a carefree childhood, she learns to navigate a world of uncertainty while taking on responsibilities far beyond her age, including caring for her younger sister. At seventeen, Katya discovers her mother’s advertisement in a mail-order bride catalogue from the 1990s, prompting her to reconsider her family’s history and the sacrifices behind their immigration. As she grows older, she confronts painful questions about motherhood, obligation, and whether a child’s future must be repayment for a parent’s sacrifices. Combining sharp humour with an unflinching account of family trauma, Suvorova explores immigration, generational conflict, and the complicated relationship between gratitude and personal freedom.

United States 2026

Bread on Uncle Milad's Table

Bread on Uncle Milad's Table

Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table follows Milad al-Usta, a sensitive young man growing up in a Libyan village where masculinity is defined by rigid social expectations. Raised in a family of bakers, Milad learns to love the craft of making bread, but his father continually reminds him that he must become a man according to society’s standards. Despite his efforts to conform, Milad struggles to embody the toughness and authority expected of him. After marrying his childhood sweetheart, Zainab, Milad finally embraces a different way of living. He takes responsibility for the household and domestic chores while Zainab becomes the family’s breadwinner. Although the arrangement brings them happiness, their unconventional roles attract ridicule and disapproval from the community. Set against the social and political realities of modern Libya, the novel explores masculinity, gender roles, love, and the pressure to conform. Through Milad’s story, Alnaas questions the social conventions that determine how men and women should live, celebrating the individual’s struggle to define a meaningful life on their own terms. The novel won the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Dream Count

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin Omelogor is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s searing, unforgettable story of these four women—a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself.

She Who Remains

She Who Remains

Set in a remote village in the Albanian mountains, She Who Remains follows Bekija, a young woman facing an arranged marriage under the strict traditional laws of the Kanun. In a society where family honour and patriarchal customs govern women’s lives, she makes a radical decision: to become a sworn virgin, taking a vow of chastity that allows her to live as a man under the name Matija. Her transformation has devastating consequences, separating her from Dhana, the woman she loves, and setting off a chain of violence that tears her family apart. Years later, Matija recounts their story to a visiting journalist, gradually revealing buried secrets and painful memories. Written in a lyrical, nonlinear style, Karabash’s novel explores gender, sexuality, belonging, and the cost of freedom in a community shaped by rigid social expectations. It asks what remains of a person’s identity when survival requires abandoning the role society has assigned them.

They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful

They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful

Raised in a Palestinian Christian family in San Francisco, Elena Dudum grows up surrounded by her father’s stories of a homeland her grandparents were forced to leave. For years, she resists this inheritance, trying to fit into American life and escape the weight of a history she struggles to claim. But a visit to Palestine brings the realities of occupation, displacement, and her family’s past into sharp focus. Weaving together family memories, archival discoveries, and political reflection, this intimate memoir traces one woman’s journey from estrangement to belonging—and her determination to reclaim a heritage that cannot be erased.

Palestine United States 2027

A Domestication

A Domestication

Camila Sosa Villada

A celebrated trans actress has everything she once dreamed of: a successful career, a wealthy lawyer husband, a beautiful home, and an adopted son she fiercely loves. Yet beneath the polished surface of domestic happiness, she feels trapped between the freedom she has fought for and the expectations of conventional family life. When a visit to her rural hometown forces her to confront the prejudice and pain of her past, the life she has carefully constructed begins to fracture. Provocative, darkly funny, and emotionally raw, A Domestication explores desire, gender, class, and the uneasy price of belonging.

A Dark and Narrow House

A Dark and Narrow House

When a mysterious, deadly plague sweeps across the world, a group of friends seeks refuge in a luxurious countryside mansion near the Pakistan–India border. But the haveli conceals an ancient darkness, and when they uncover a sealed chest hidden in a nearby cave, they unleash a primordial force that turns their sanctuary into a nightmare. Trapped inside the sprawling estate, the friends begin to unravel under the influence of its sinister magic, confronting buried traumas, personal demons, and the stories they tell themselves to survive. Drawing on South Asian and Middle Eastern folklore, this atmospheric dark fantasy explores memory, fear, and the terrifying power of the past.

India Pakistan 2027

About this theme

Books: 196
Countries: 72

Countries with this theme

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Congo, Democratic Republic

Dominican Republic

North Macedonia