Identity & Belonging

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

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Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Carmen Maria Machado

In this electric and provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella 'Especially Heinous,' Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show naively assumeded had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

United States 2017

A Place for Us

Fatima Farheen Mirza

A Place for Us explores the complicated bonds of an Indian-American Muslim family as its members navigate the tensions between cultural heritage, religious expectations, and personal freedom. The story begins at the wedding of Hadia, the eldest daughter of Rafiq and Layla, whose decision to marry for love rather than tradition reflects her determination to live on her own terms. The occasion also brings home her estranged younger brother, Amar, who returns to the family after three years of separation. Through shifting perspectives and memories, Mirza gradually reveals the events that fractured the family. Rafiq and Layla emigrated from India to the United States hoping to give their children better opportunities while preserving their cultural and religious traditions. Yet their children’s experiences of growing up between two cultures create tensions that neither generation knows how to resolve. Hadia seeks independence, Huda follows her sister’s example, and Amar struggles with questions of faith, belonging, and his father’s expectations. With tenderness and psychological insight, Mirza examines how love can coexist with disappointment, how silence can deepen family wounds, and how difficult it can be to understand those closest to us. The novel offers a nuanced portrait of the immigrant experience, exploring the challenge of building an identity that honours one’s heritage without sacrificing individuality. Ultimately, it asks whether a family can find its way back to one another after years of hurt and misunderstanding.

United States 2018

The Runaways

Three young people from vastly different backgrounds find themselves drawn toward radicalism in a world where the promise of belonging can become a dangerous obsession. Anita Rose grows up in one of Karachi’s poorest neighbourhoods, dreaming of escaping poverty and discovering a world beyond the limits of her circumstances. When an elderly neighbour introduces her to literature and political ideas, she begins imagining a different future for herself. Monty Ahmed, the privileged son of a wealthy Pakistani businessman, has everything money can buy but struggles to find meaning in his comfortable existence. Meanwhile, Sunny Jamil grows up in Portsmouth, England, feeling alienated from both British society and his family’s expectations. When his charismatic cousin Oz returns from Syria, Sunny discovers a sense of purpose that he has long been missing. As their lives converge, each protagonist is drawn into the orbit of an extremist movement operating across national borders. Their individual searches for identity, love, and belonging lead them toward choices with devastating consequences. Moving between Karachi, London, Portsmouth, and the deserts of Iraq, The Runaways explores youth radicalization, social inequality, cultural alienation, and the powerful human desire to feel part of something larger than oneself.

Ædnan: An Epic

Ædnan: An Epic

Linnea Axelsson

Spanning a century of Sámi history, Ædnan tells the story of two Indigenous families whose lives are transformed by colonialism, forced assimilation, and the struggle to preserve their cultural identity. In the early twentieth century, new national borders disrupt traditional reindeer-herding routes, tearing families away from the land and ways of life that have sustained them for generations. Decades later, their descendants confront the consequences of discrimination and cultural erasure, searching for ways to reclaim their language, heritage, and belonging. Written in haunting, lyrical verse, Axelsson’s epic weaves together intimate family memories and the broader history of a people whose existence has been threatened but never extinguished. The title, Ædnan, means land or earth in Northern Sámi, reflecting the profound connection between territory, ancestry, and identity. This is a powerful story of dispossession, resistance, and the enduring bond between a people and their homeland.

Last Days of Café Leila

Last Days of Café Leila

The Last Days of Café Leila follows Noor, an Iranian-American woman who returns to Tehran with her young daughter, Lily, after years of living in the United States. She comes back to the family café, a beloved gathering place run by her father, Zod, whose cooking and hospitality have long brought people together. Although Noor hopes to find comfort and reconnect with her roots, returning home forces her to confront painful memories, unresolved family tensions, and the choices that led her to leave Iran. As Noor and her father attempt to rebuild their relationship, the café becomes a symbol of belonging, cultural memory, and the traditions that bind generations together. Through food, family stories, and the changing atmosphere of Tehran, Donia Bijan explores the complexities of immigration, identity, and the meaning of home. The novel also examines the tensions between personal freedom and cultural expectations, revealing how family bonds can endure despite distance and disappointment. Warm and reflective, it celebrates the power of shared meals and inherited traditions to reconnect people with their past.

Scenes from a Childhood

Scenes from a Childhood

Scenes from a Childhood brings together a series of short prose pieces by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, offering glimpses into the memories, experiences, and inner life of a boy growing up in rural Norway. Through seemingly ordinary moments—family encounters, childhood fears, religious experiences, and observations of the surrounding landscape—Fosse reveals how early experiences shape a person’s understanding of the world. Written in his characteristic minimalist style, the collection relies on repetition, silence, and subtle shifts in perspective rather than conventional storytelling. Memories appear fragmented and sometimes dreamlike, reflecting the uncertain nature of recollection and the persistence of childhood emotions into adulthood. Beneath the quiet surface, the stories explore family relationships, loneliness, spirituality, and the tension between belonging and isolation. Fosse transforms small, everyday events into moments of profound significance, suggesting that the foundations of identity are often formed through experiences that seem insignificant at the time but remain with us long after childhood has passed.

How to Love a Jamaican

How to Love a Jamaican

How to Love a Jamaican is a collection of short stories exploring love, family, migration, and the complexities of Jamaican identity. Moving between Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora in the United States, Alexia Arthurs portrays characters navigating the tensions between cultural heritage and the desire for a different life. Her stories follow young people confronting sexuality and social expectations, immigrants struggling to belong in unfamiliar places, and families negotiating the emotional distance created by migration. Through intimate relationships and everyday encounters, Arthurs examines how race, class, religion, and national identity shape the ways people understand themselves and one another. Blending humor, tenderness, and emotional honesty, the collection offers a nuanced portrait of Jamaican life across borders, revealing the complicated meanings of home, belonging, and love.

Swanfolk

Kristín Ómarsdóttir

Set in a strange, unsettling future, Swanfolk follows Elísabet Eva, a young intelligence agent whose life begins to unravel after a traumatic assignment in Paris. Seeking solitude, she takes long walks beside a lake, where she encounters mysterious creatures that are half-woman and half-swan. Fascinated by these beings, she gradually enters their hidden world and becomes entangled in their obsessive, sometimes violent struggle to exist alongside humans. As her involvement deepens, Elísabet begins to question her own perceptions and the reliability of her memories. Blending surrealism, dark fantasy, and psychological fiction, Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s novel explores the fragile boundaries between reality and imagination, belonging and alienation, and the human desire to escape one’s past. Strange, lyrical, and unsettling, Swanfolk uses its mythical creatures to examine the complexities of identity and the difficulty of understanding oneself.

Of Strangers and Bees

Of Strangers and Bees

In Of Strangers and Bees, Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov weaves together the experiences of a contemporary exile and the extraordinary life of Avicenna, the celebrated medieval philosopher, physician, and polymath. The novel follows Sheikhov, an Uzbek writer living far from his homeland, who awakens from a troubling dream convinced that Avicenna continues to wander the world in different incarnations. Their journeys echo one another across centuries and cultures, moving through Ottoman Turkey, medieval Germany, and Renaissance Italy. Blending historical fiction, philosophical reflection, traditional storytelling, and Sufi mysticism, Ismailov explores the meaning of belonging and the loneliness of life in exile. The novel also draws on Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a landmark work of medieval Islamic philosophy concerned with knowledge, reason, and spiritual awakening. Through layered narratives and allegorical episodes, Ismailov considers how people search for truth and wisdom while negotiating the boundaries between cultures, histories, and identities. The result is an imaginative meditation on displacement, intellectual freedom, and the enduring human quest for understanding.

Uzbekistan 2019

Three Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve follows Peri, a wealthy Turkish woman whose apparently comfortable life in Istanbul conceals unresolved questions about faith, identity, and personal responsibility. During a dinner party years after her university studies at Oxford, a photograph unexpectedly brings back memories of her time there in the 1990s. As a student, Peri became involved with a charismatic professor who encouraged his pupils to debate religion and belief. Her friendships with two fellow students—one deeply religious and the other firmly atheist—exposed her to conflicting ideas about spirituality, feminism, and freedom. Their relationships eventually culminated in an incident that Peri has struggled to understand ever since. Shafak explores the tension between faith and doubt, the influence of family and culture, and the difficulty of forming an independent worldview in a politically divided society.

The Namesake

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family as they move from Calcutta to the United States in search of a new life. Their son, Gogol, grows up caught between his Bengali heritage and the American culture in which he was raised. Named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol for personal reasons connected to his father’s past, he comes to resent the unusual name that distinguishes him from his peers. As he grows older, Gogol struggles with romantic relationships, family expectations, and the challenge of defining himself independently of his parents’ experiences. Following the family’s journey across several decades, Lahiri explores migration, cultural adaptation, and the complicated relationship between parents and children. The novel examines how names, memories, and inherited traditions shape identity, revealing that belonging is rarely a simple choice between two cultures.

Interpreter of Maladies

Interpreter of Maladies

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories exploring the lives of Indian and Indian American characters navigating love, cultural displacement, family obligations, and loneliness. In the title story, an Indian tour guide who works as an interpreter for a doctor becomes the confidant of an American woman of Indian origin, whose personal revelations challenge his understanding of intimacy and connection. Other stories portray arranged marriages, strained relationships between parents and children, and the emotional difficulties of living between cultures. Lahiri pays close attention to ordinary moments when misunderstandings, unspoken desires, and private disappointments reveal deeper struggles. Her characters often appear caught between the expectations of their heritage and the realities of their present lives. The collection explores belonging, communication, and the quiet emotional distances that can separate people who seem intimately connected.

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About this theme

Books: 196
Countries: 72

Countries with this theme

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Congo, Democratic Republic

Dominican Republic

North Macedonia