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Tips for Selecting a Good Variety for IR

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Tips for Selecting a Good Variety for IR

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- Must be fiction
- You have not read it before
- Not YA
- Must have literary merit (see Overview)

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Tracing the Portrayal of Mental Disorders in Literature Over Time

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Tracing the Portrayal of Mental Disorders in Literature Over Time

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Madness lies at the dark heart of some of the greatest and most popular novels in the world, reflecting its power to drive a narrative; readers are deeply intrigued. We are reeled in by our dread of the unknown, by the unexplored darkness out there that it represents as well as the unnerving possibility that it is also inside us

Madness is of course an outdated shorthand term encompassing a variety of mental disorders and illnesses; the knowledge that so many of us are on a spectrum that ranges from mild anxiety to severe psychosis makes the literary portraits of the mentally unwell compelling as well as disconcerting.

The five books I describe reflect the age in which they were written; if mental illness is diagnosed by doctors it is also defined by society because society decides what makes behaviour unusual, undesirable or even 'mad.'

For background: in the mid-eighteenth century the mentally ill were incarcerated in asylums, great warehouses that could each house a hundred thousand; these were more like prisons than hospitals though ironically asylum, a Greek word, means place of safety or refuge. Treatments were inhumane and could involve shackling, near drowning, removal of body parts, or deliberate infection with malaria. Mortality rates were unsurprisingly high.

As the decades passed the wardens were replaced by psychiatrists, the guards by nurses and the asylums by hospitals.

By the 1970's a complete reversal had taken place; there were those who doubted the very existence of mental illness, psychiatrists were blamed for inappropriate labels and care was outsourced to the community whether or not resources were present and for many the refuge was now a park benches or under a bridge. Even today there is a high proportion of mentally unwell people among the homeless population

The causes of such illnesses are tightly interwoven but can be separated into three broad categories: genetic, environmental and societal, the latter include poverty ,war, violence and homelessness

Mental illness and suicide are on the rise and so is stigma; stories that let us inside the mind of sufferers are key to the creation of empathy and understanding.

One of the main protagonists in my latest book, The Patient, suffers from manic depression. I wanted to represent this patient as a very normal if not high achieving member of society as such patients often are, with a compelling personality, both attractive and articulate, to show that though significant, his mental disorder is not who he is. The book also gave the separate chance to view depression in young men as the dangerous and sometimes overlooked condition it is. The view point is refracted through Rachel, a married GP who falls in love with the patient of the title; their passionate affair kickstarting a cascade of events that culminate in murder.

The following books are some of the world's best known; they deal with mental illness in ways that reflect the age in which they were written
"Macbeth," by William Shakespeare (1623)
Shakespeare's tragic play, set in the eleventh century, concerns Macbeth, a Scottish general whose greed and lust for power lead to his ultimate downfall. The story opens when he has defeated an army of invaders; he is promised a range of honours by three witches, which culminate in the Crown. His wife encourages him to fulfill the prophesy and kill the king. Further bloody acts follow before he dies in combat after his wife has committed suicide

Lady Macbeth is among much else, a study in the unravelling of a woman who early on in the play already shows signs of a serious mental illness exhibited in grandiose ideas (conviction on flimsy evidence that Macbeth should be king and she the rightful queen) Classic thought disorder and flight of ideas, also symptoms of psychosis, are present in her monologue on receiving Macbeth's letter:

'Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou'ld'st have, great Glamis, That which cries, "Thus thou must do," if thou have it, And that which rather thou dost fear to do, Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned withall'

Later there are hallucinations and delusions when she cannot get rid of the smell and stains of blood on her hands; later still, ignored by he husband, she becomes deeply depressed and suicidal.

Lady Macbeth has been read and acted as a compelling force of ambition and evil who deserves her fate, reflecting the mores of the age in which it is written. A more nuanced if not compassionate interpretation might now be of an unstable, psychotic woman driven to suicide by depression secondary to guilt and worry and the neglect by a beloved husband.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte published in 1848
The story, set in the Victorian era, concerns Jane Eyre, an orphan sent by relatives to live in an orphanage which she leaves as a young woman when she finds employment as a governess to the ward of the Mr Rochester at Thornfield Hall, a place of mystery that appears haunted. Against this ghostly drop back, Jane and Edward Rochester fall in love but on the point of marriage to Mr Rochester, he is is revealed to have a mad wife, Bertha living under lock and key at Thornfield Hall. Jane leaves, returning at the end of the story to find Mr Rochester alone and blinded after a vain attempt to save Bertha as she was in the act of burning down the hall. The two marry.

Madness as embodied in the form of Bertha, the first wife, contributes narratively crucial elements of gothic suspense and intrigue; the reader is made aware, as Jane is, of laughter and footsteps in Thornfield, culminating in danger and horror. This gives the story its power and is key to the narrative arc, being the reason for the mystery and why Jane cannot marry and has to escape.

However, there are unsettling elements to this enduring story: the mad woman is described as animal-like, with wild hair and disheveled appearance, locked in a windowless room. To modern sensibilities this is a sensationalist and stereotypical portrait of a woman with a mental illness, whose punishment was essentially a social construct; those who were considered mad were indeed locked up without any documentation. Insanity was portrayed as bad and certainly dangerous. However, by the time Jane Eyre was actually published, this view was already out of step with current attitudes of the day as political awareness was changing and a commission had been set up by the government to look into the treatment of mentally ill with the finding that it was important change the environments in which they were held.
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1925)
This novel, set in the interwar period examines one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an upper class middle-aged woman married to a Westminster MP. The action takes places within the characters conscience and unfolds through the interwoven stories of Clarissa as she prepares for and hosts a party and that of Warren Septimius Scott, a first World War veteran .

Septimius is suffering from shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder and waits with his wife to see the psychiatrist Sir Willian Bradshaw; on being told he will have to go to a psychiatric hospital he throws himself out of the window rather than face incarceration and treatment against his will and is impaled on the railings.

Clarissa is told what has happened by William Bradshaw's wife who are guests at her party; she identifies with how he feels and recognises that unlike her, he has chosen not to compromise his integrity.

The symptoms from which Septimius suffers as described by Woolf are those of classic psychosis as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder; he thinks everyone is looking at him, that an aeroplane is signalling to him, he sees flames and faces on cars and hears voices calling him horrible names. He hallucinates a vision of his dead friend Evans, killed in the trenches, as walking towards him in a London street.

Although the doctor and psychiatrist fail to understand him, unlike Bronte seventy five years earlier, Virginia Woolf writes of an altered mental state with clarity and tenderness. She, as well as Sylvia Plath, the author of the next book, are fellow sufferers of severe mental illness. Woolf's personal insight and clarity give force and poignancy to the novel; she herself tragically committed suicide in 1941.
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath (1963)
The Bell Jar starts in the summer of 1953 when Esther Greenwood, a bright college student wins a competition to work as a guest editor in a New York magazine with eleven others; she oscillates in friendships between two women, Doreen a rule breaker and wholesome Betsy, and reflects on a troubled relationship with Buddy Willard, a handsome medical student who confesses to an affair when she ends their relationship.

Esther's background mental illness amplifies into suicidal depression and she is given treatment, initially some poorly administered electroconvulsive therapy but after a combination of analysis, insulin therapy and more careful electroconvulsive therapy, she improves and although a lesbian college friend and fellow sufferer hangs herself, Esther returns to college knowing the stifling bell jar of depression could descend any time.

An iconic image in the book is a fig tree full of figs, all Esther needs to do is to reach up and pluck one. However there are so many, she is unable to choose, the figs become overripe and fall to on the ground, a chilling metaphor for the stuck-ness of depression .

Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar as an extension to, and parallel of, her own life. Plath was a model student and won many prizes and scholarships as Esther did; the book mirrors the events of her own life in 1953. Esther's mental breakdown is catalogued by her systematically in an organised fashion and Plath herself sticks to her writing routine even in the last moments of her life, before she commits suicide.

The authenticity of the book is the result of Plath's willingness to portray her own experience of depression in a realistic and open way; the first person view point allows the reader right inside the mind of someone suffering from a serious mental illness, unlike the previous portrayals, removing any judgment in contrast to the third person assessment of for example, Bertha in Jane Eyre.

However the misogynistic social mores of the 1950s, well in advance of the feminist movement of 1970s trapped both Esther and Plath in the cultural expectations of their time, preventing both from accessing the support and understanding that would have been available to young women in later decades, such as the protagonist in Sorrow and Bliss.
Sorrow and Bliss, by Meg Mason (2021)
Martha Friel is forty, married to Patrick and close to her sister Ingrid.

Martha is clever, compassionate, sharp eyed and sharp tongued especially when identifying the failings of those she loves. She is also crushed by the recurring illness she has had since aged seventeen.

Her particular condition isn't named but she makes us see how mental illness carves its shape deeply into the sufferers' lives and also into those of their families. The author has said her decision not to name her illness was a creative one that worked to serve a broader narrative: it is not the schizophrenic book or the bipolar book or the borderline personality disorder book, it's a book about what it's like to have x illness, to look after someone with x illness and what it does to the extended family and the marriage. The illness is less important than how Martha lives and how she relates to others

This avoids the medicalisation of an individual; what is ultimately important is Martha's ability to understand herself and see herself for who she really is; she determines to try again with her relationship. The ending is hopeful and demonstrates among many other truths how far the wheel of attitudes to mentally ill people, as reflected in literature, has turned, through successive ages since the days of sufferers being blamed and locked away to the patient rather than the illness being allowed to flourish, centre stage.
-Featured image: Lady Macbeth, Gabriel von Max (1885)
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Tracing the Portrayal of Mental Disorders in Literature Over Time, Through Five Books

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Madness lies at the dark heart of some of the greatest and most popular novels in the world, reflecting its power to drive a narrative; readers are deeply intrigued.

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Ms.Hackney’s (another AP teacher) fav Literary Fiction books (which are all AP books)

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Ms.Hackney’s (another AP teacher) fav Literary Fiction books (which are all AP books)

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Hackney’s fav Literary Fiction books (which are all AP books)

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It is choice reading, so the choice is up to you, so long as it fulfills the category of “Literary Merit” per the College Board.  Literary merit doesn’t mean “dead white guy” or “classic”; in fact, many contemporary, high interest texts have appeared on recent years' tests.  Of course, if you are interested in reading one of the classics, feel free!  Unfortunately, YA Novels do not fall under the category of literary merit.  Consider choosing the same book as a fellow classmate or friend; this will allow for discussion and deeper engagement in the text.

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Open a world of reading. Try Sora, the new reading app for students, by OverDrive.

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Milwaukee Public Library - City of Milwaukee · MPL

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The Milwaukee Public Library: inspiration starts here - we help people read, learn, and connect.

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Another Teacher’s List of books that are AP level but good ‘summer reads’

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Another Teacher’s List of books that are AP level but good ‘summer reads’

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Looking to explore a specific country? Page 2 of this doc has ideas for you!

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Looking to explore a specific country? Page 2 of this doc has ideas for you!

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YA or Children's books would not be AP. 

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YA or Children's books would not be AP. 

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Every September the American Library Association celebrates the freedom to read with Banned Books Week, happening now, conveniently timed with our next category for the 2018 MMD Reading Challenge: "a book that was banned at some point."

First off, what do we mean by "banned?" We're talking a book that was removed from circulation at a library or school because somebody complained about it.

For this category, I've chosen twenty books that have been banned at some point for your TBR consideration. As you can see, these books have been banned-and continue to be removed from the shelves-for a wide variety of reasons. The American Library Association compiles these each year, and the accumulated stats make for very interesting reading.

The ALA isn't saying these books are for everyone, or that everyone should read them. They are saying readers and their families should have the opportunity to decide for themselves.

Scan the list, load up your TBR, and tell us what you are reading for this category in comments.

John Green's 2005 novel and Printz Award winner was the most challenged book of 2015; according to the American Library Association, the most frequently cited reasons for the requests to remove it from a school or library were "offensive language and "sexually explicit descriptions." John Green responded, "What usually happens with Looking for Alaska is that a parent chooses one page of the novel to send to an administrator and then the book gets banned without anyone who objects to it having read more than that one particular page." More info →

This classic 1961 war novel was banned for "indecent" language. This is the story of a WWII bomber named Yossarian who is desperate to evade the war but trapped by the military rule from which the novel takes its title: a pilot is believed to be insane if he continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he requests to be excused because they're dangerous then he's obviously sane enough to fly. This title frequently appears on "best of the century" reading lists. More info →

Salinger's 1951 novel introduced us to Holden Caulfield, who has served as the prime symbol of adolescent angst ever since. In 1960, a Tulsa high school teacher was fired for assigning the work: his job was reinstated, but the book stayed off the reading list. This American classic has remained on the American Library Association's "most challenged works" list for years. The work has been banned for a variety of reasons, including sexual content, language, inappropriate slang, moral issues, and references to occult practices. More info →

This novel, originally published-and banned-in 1932, has been banned repeatedly over the years, right up to the present time, for sexual content, offensive language, and insensitivity. Irony alert: the problem with banning a dystopian novel that envisions a totalitarian future world where literary content is strictly regulated is that it provides even more Brave New World discussion fodder delighted English teachers. While it's been removed from many libraries and reading lists, it still makes frequent appearances on others. More info →

Irony alert: The author who brought us the term "thought police" has had multiple books of his own find their way onto banned books lists. Animal Farm is his satirical allegory of the Russian revolution as told through the eyes of farm animals. But some of the text of the animals' manifestos got Orwell himself labled as a communist. More info →

Any surprises on this list? Which banned book are YOU choosing for your reading challenge?

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20 books worth your reading time that have been banned at some point - Modern Mrs. Darcy

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Every September the American Library Association celebrates the freedom to read with Banned Books Week, happening now, conveniently timed with our next category for the 2018 MMD Reading Challenge: "a book that was banned at some point." First off, what do we mean by "banned?"

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Some on this list are children's books which would not be AP level, but they are still considered 'classics'. 

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Some on this list are children's books which would not be AP level, but they are still considered 'classics'. 

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40 Classic Books & Why You Should Read Them

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A list of 40 classic books, both fiction and non-fiction, and why you should read them.

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12 Engaging and Rigorous Books for Reluctant Readers

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If AP* English Literature is going to become a course where all learners are welcome, then some of us may need to find more engaging and rigorous books. As of now, here are the most frequently-cited books on the AP® English Lit exam:

1. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (published 1952, Lexile level 950L)

2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (published 1860, Lexile level 1150L)

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (published 1847, Lexile level 880L)

4. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (published 1902, Lexile level 890L)

5. King Lear by William Shakespeare (published 1606)

6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostevski (published 1866, Lexile level 990L)

7. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (published 1916, Lexile level 1060L)

8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (published 1847, Lexile level 890L)

9. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (published 1884, Lexile level 990L)

10. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (published 1851, Lexile level 1230L)

*AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website.

Now obviously most AP® Lit teachers branch way out from this list. But if one studied the most frequently cited titles only, they would run into several problems:

Only 1 out o f 10 is by an author who is not white

None of these works were published within the last 50 years.

Only 1 was published in the last 100 years.

Another consideration is a book’s Lexile level. It is difficult to compare a Lexile score (which rates a text’s difficulty) with a student’s reading score (which tests their reading abilities). But test data supports the trend that our students’ reading scores are dropping every year. Therefore, many of these books could be too complicated for incoming AP® Lit students.

Consider Rigor + Engagement

For this reason, AP® Lit teachers are challenged to find books that are healthy mix of engaging and rigorous. If a book is too rigorous and not engaging, the students won’t become emotionally invested in the story and may stop reading it altogether. If a book is too engaging and not rigorous enough, discussion becomes plot focused and students will struggle with deep analysis.

Here is a list of 12 books that you can use to breathe some fresh air into your AP® Lit curriculum. I mostly use these books as independent reading suggestions, but some have even used them as whole-class reads. They certainly break the mold as “works of literary merit,” but perhaps that is just what we need right now.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I personally use and love, or think my readers will find useful.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

What started as a spunky young adult book is rapidly becoming a favorite among adults as well. In fact, Angie Thomas’ debut novel is becoming a common fixture in AP® English Lit, even as a whole class read.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com)

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Engagement

Thomas’ poignant story of 16-year-old Starr Carter is more relevant today than ever. Your students won’t be able to put it down because the story is gripping, heartfelt, and so important.

Rigor

Complexity lies in her challenges as she constantly has to choose between her worlds of white versus black, hate versus love, and action versus inaction. THUG uses a system of themes and symbols as well.

Drawbacks

The Hate U Give‘s Lexile level is 590, which is very low for AP® Lit. AP® teachers who wish to integrate THUG as a whole class text should, to use a phrase I recently learned from teacher and author Jim Burke, “teach up.” This means to add complexity by supplementing it with other texts and current events. It may be a better fit as an independent read for a reluctant readers.

Room by Emma Donaghue

This is probably my most popular independent read. It’s so popular that I’ve bought at least three copies and I still don’t think any remain in my possession. You’ve probably heard of the movie starring Brie Larson (which earned her an Oscar in 2016), but the book is much more complex.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com)

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world…. Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough … not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Engagement

The book is fast-moving and heartfelt, drawing readers in quickly. The climax falls in the middle of the book rather than near the end, so it becomes so unputdownable. Many of my students admit to reading it in a mere matter of days.

Rigor

The book employs a unique vocabulary as well as Jacob doesn’t refer to things such as “our bed” or “the plate.” Instead, he calls them “Bed” and “Plate.” This reminded me of how the reader had to understand Orwell’s system of Newspeak in 1984. There are dozens of AP-level® writing prompts that pair with this book and it touches on many universal conflicts and themes as well.

Drawbacks

The only drawback to consider is that it was made into a fairly successful movie, so watch out for students who “substitute” the movie for the book. The movie is not from Jack’s point of view, which loses its biggest level of complexity. However, that makes it pretty easy to spot who skipped the reading.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

If you’re looking to infuse your curriculum with some nonfiction, Trevor Noah’s memoir is exactly what you’re looking for. I literally cannot stop recommending this book.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com)

The memoir of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

Engagement

Noah’s quick wit and natural storytelling abilities make this a rare uplifting book for AP®. Furthermore, many students do not know nearly enough about South Africa’s system of apartheid. Therefore, natural curiosity can spur them on as well. The book has a shocking and heartfelt ending, which will ensure students won’t fall away as they read.

Rigor

Born a Crime encompasses many universal themes and conflicts, especially feelings of oppression and loneliness. Noah’s discussion of the different languages in South Africa add complexity, as well as his non-chronological storytelling methods.

Drawbacks

Some teachers shy away from nonfiction in AP® Lit. However, the new CED description specifies that nonfiction is permissible as an AP® Lit text, so I don’t think it should deter teachers.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Murder mystery. Coming-of-age story. Romance novel. Biological study. Where the Crawdads Sing offers so much in its pages that it can engage even the most reluctant reader.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Engagement:

Owens’ novel begins with the discovery of a dead body, then flips back and forth between the beginning and end of the novel. The suspense drives the plot, resulting in a quick read.

Rigor:

This is a rare book where the setting functions as a character of its own, adding depth and complexity. The dual story-telling structure adds complexity as well.

Drawbacks:

The romance factor might make it a slightly more popular pick with girls than guys, but I’ve had success with both.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

This is a newer read for me, as I just read it this past June. I immediately sent messages out to my previous AP® class, letting them know that it was a book many of them would enjoy.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn’t much to save. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets; she’s fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt, while brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child’s play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that comprise the novel’s framework yield to the final day and Hurricane Katrina, the unforgettable family at the novel’s heart—motherless children sacrificing for each other as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce—pulls itself up to struggle for another day. A wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, “Salvage the Bones” is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.

Engagement:

The rising suspense of the approaching hurricane plus the deterioration of Esch’s family makes the book interesting and hard to put down. The perspective into Esch’s psyche is especially inviting for young female readers.

Rigor:

While the story can seem plot-focused, Ward actually integrates a number of literary symbols into the narrative. The strong narrative point of view, literary symbols, and Ward’s use of figurative language throughout make the novel plenty rigorous.

Drawbacks:

The novel does depict some sexual acts in somewhat graphic terms, so those with conservative school boards or parents may want to consider that.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wells

I’ve had a lot of success with assigning The Glass Castle for students who struggle with finding things to analyze. It’s definitely one of my most popular independent reads.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn’t stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an “excitement addict.” Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.

Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town — and the family — Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents’ betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

Engagement:

Walls’ story is so extraordinary that it verges on unbelievable. Could any two parents really be this…unique? Since it is very much a true story, readers want to continue to see how Walls gets out, a detail that they know going into the story.

Rigor:

This memoir relies heavily on symbolism and themes to characterize Wells’ feelings throughout the whole experience. My students have found many opportunities for writing about it, using analysis of themes, figurative language, symbolism, and other literary elements.

Drawbacks:

Once again, this is a memoir. I don’t believe that a text is any “lesser” just because it’s nonfiction, but some school’s may require fiction only in AP® Lit.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

I’ll admit a bias on this one, as this is my all time favorite book. I’ve never read a book that made me laugh and cry at the same time on numerous occasions. While I read it for pleasure, I’ve found several writing prompts that would work for Ove. It is a great selection for students who struggle with symbols and figurative language.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

Engagement:

I mean, come on. It’s like Up, but instead of a dog it’s a cat. And, you know, no balloons. It’s precious and wonderful. Furthermore, it works for any gender. I’ve never had a student not enjoy this book.

Rigor:

The book moves in and out of time, making it one you’ll need to construct to get the full story. Some dislike Backman’s style of writing, using clipped, almost clichéd phrases to open and close his short chapters. However, if you consider those as thematic or symbolic statements (which they are), they contribute to the book’s rigor.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

I’m a big fan of Sandra Cisneros’ short stories. I use both “My Name” and “Eleven” in my classes for short fiction or supplements. Her book The House on Mango Street has been recommended as a Q3 text, which is a unique choice considering its structure of compiled vignettes.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.

Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.

Engagement:

Because each chapter is a vignette, little background knowledge is necessary to understand each tale. The text feels more approachable and gets to the point quickly. Students can easily read it as one vignette per day as well, for students who need a lot of structure.

Rigor:

On the flip side, a short text still requires a sharp eye. It can become a challenge to write about since you have to piece the vignettes all together. The book’s unique structure and plot design makes it rigorous.

Drawbacks:

As I said, it’s a book of vignettes, so it can be a hard one to write about. I tend to rely on it more to supplement long texts as a short fiction work.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Some people consider this book too “pop fiction” for AP® Lit, and that’s debatable. I wouldn’t choose this one for an in-class read, but I would definitely recommend it for independent reading.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .the only way to survive is to open your heart.

Engagement:

Eleanor’s quirky personality and Honeyman’s dark humor blend into an interesting story. It’s unlikely that students have never read a story featuring a protagonist as damaged as Eleanor. Plus, the book has a huge plot twist at the end!

Rigor:

This book employs a very unreliable narrator (which is part of the plot twist). That complication makes the plot harder to construct and relies more on inferences when analyzing.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

I read both The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys recently and would recommend both for AP® Lit. But what I noticed about The Underground Railroad more than Nickel Boys was its sensitivity and approachability. This would be a great work to push cautious or sheltered readers into upper level titles. It presents real-life conflicts but avoids graphic violence, language, or sexuality.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

Engagement:

Students are drawn in to learn what happened to Cora’s mother, then will continue reading to see if Cora really escapes. The tragic part of this narrative is that no one who escapes slavery ever really feels free, so the threat of being discovered propels the suspense.

Rigor:

I love this book for exposing struggling readers to the concept of magical realism. While I wouldn’t classify this book in that genre necessarily, there are elements of just enough fantasy that can help them grapple with that difficult genre.

Drawbacks:

I know some teachers are looking for books that discuss systematic racism but aren’t slave narratives. If you already teach Beloved, The Underground Railroad may be just too similar to pair with it. Consider Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys if you want a gritty story that isn’t a slave narrative. Racism and systematic racial oppression are still major conflicts in The Nickel Boys.

Misery by Stephen King

I know I just lost the respect of a lot of you, but hear me out. Last year, I had a very strong reader struggling to engage with Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See for independent reading. However, she was moving through Stephen King’s books very quickly in her spare time. She approached me and asked if she could read one of his books instead. Being a huge Stephen King fan myself, we took the gamble and she read Misery. She ended up writing a high-scoring analysis on Annie’s methods of deception for her writing assessment, solidifying my opinion that Stephen King can exist in an AP® classroom.

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Best-selling novelist Paul Sheldon thinks he’s finally free of Misery Chastain. In a controversial career move, he’s just killed off the popular protagonist of his beloved romance series in favor of expanding his creative horizons. But such a change doesn’t come without consequences. After a near-fatal car accident in rural Colorado leaves his body broken, Paul finds himself at the mercy of the terrifying rescuer who’s nursing him back to health – his self-proclaimed number one fan, Annie Wilkes.

Annie is very upset over what Paul did to Misery and demands that he find a way to bring her back by writing a new novel – his best yet, and one that’s all for her. After all, Paul has all the time in the world to do so as a prisoner in her isolated house…and Annie has some very persuasive and violent methods to get exactly what she wants…

Engagement:

Stephen King has never struggled with engaging readers. This story is gripping and Annie Wilkes is truly terrifying. Even if students are familiar with the excellent movie adaptation, things actually get so much worse in the book.

Rigor:

This is is probably the least rigorous of all of these books, so much so that I wouldn’t recommend for the lowest-level readers. Instead, it’s a great choice for those hard to please students, who tend to find everything so boring. Like the deception prompt from 2016, there are several writing tasks that can yield good analysis.

The Metamorphosis is my go-to when I need a 1-2 week unit for AP® Lit. In the past, I’ve used with my seniors when the juniors go on their class trip in the fall. This year, I’m actually reserving the unit in case I fall ill or need to be out for 1-2 weeks.

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.”

With its startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.”

Engagement:

I love this book for engaging reluctant readers. One, it’s so short. Two, it’s so weird. Three, there are several interpretations and applications of Kafka’s text, which can pique curious readers’ imaginations.

Rigor:

Because there is no “one” interpretation, students will love discussing why Samsa is an insect. The book’s existential themes complicate the rigor of this novella.

Further Reading

As always, I’m constantly reading and exploring new texts to add to my AP® Lit classroom library. I love having suggestions of engaging and rigorous titles to suggest to my students. To learn how I use independent reading in class check out this blog post, or this resource on Teachers Pay Teachers for ready-made resources. To see how I build engagement and rigor in the first few weeks of AP® Lit, check out this blog post!

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AP & Accessibility: Reducing Heavy Student Workloads - AP Lit & More

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12 Engaging and Rigorous Books for Reluctant Readers

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This list of engaging and rigorous titles will get even your most reluctant reader interested in reading, resulting in stronger analysis.

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With a couple thousand years of literary history behind us, it's only natural for even the most voracious reader to find they've missed one or two grand old books. For the list below, I've picked out 15 overlooked classics you've probably waited too long to read. Get on it, book nerds, because there's no time like the present.

The books on the list below cover a few hundred years of literature, right up to the 1960s, and hail from nations all across the globe, from China to Mexico and everywhere in-between. You may recognize some of the authors on this list as your favorite novelists of yesteryear, such as Virginia Woolf and George Sand, but don't be surprised to find a name you've never heard before lurking among the 15 writers below.

As you might expect, this list is incredibly diverse, both in genre and representation. Among the 15 titles I've picked out for you, you'll find feminist essays, experimental fiction, fairy tales, short stories, and more. There are books in translation as well as titles from beloved English-language authors, and novels from writers of all walks of life.

Check out the 15 overlooked classics I've picked out for you below:

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15 Classic Novels You've Probably Overlooked - But Definitely Need To Read

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With a couple thousand years of literary history behind us, it's only natural for even the most voracious reader to find they've missed one or two grand old books. For the list below, I've picked out 15 overlooked classics you've probably waited too...

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Readers, today I'm sharing a long list of books in one of my favorite (and completely made-up) sub-genres: compulsively readable literary fiction.

Genre distinctions are tricky (or downright odious, to some authors), so let me explain what I mean. (Cue my high school German teacher, who began every explanation of European culture by saying, "This is a generalization, and all generalizations are false. However ...")

First, the literary. I love a good literary novel, the kind of "serious" novels that probe human nature (and especially human shortcomings), focus on the interior lives of their characters, and generally focus on meaning over entertainment.

This is the kind of work coming out of Iowa, especially, and Boston and New York. These are the titles bandied about by committees awarding Pulitzers, Man Booker Prizes, National Book Awards. Many of these are called "quiet" books. "Lighthearted" and "fun" are not words typically used to describe literary fiction, and they're rarely called page-turners.

Second, compulsively readable. What can I say? I want what the literary crowd too often tells me I can't have, not with their work: I want a page-turner. I mean a book that is strong not only on interior characterization but also on plot, one that tempts me to keep reading way past my bedtime, one that makes me want to know what happens next.

Today I'm sharing 15 titles that delivered on both counts: books that manage to be both literary, and compulsively readable. I hope you find something perfect for you on this list, and I can't wait to hear your suggestions in comments.

Which of these titles have you loved (or not)? What are your favorite books that fit this category-what would YOU add to the list?
P.S. For more page-turners, check out this list of unputdownable books I read in 24 hours or less because they were just that good.

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15 literary novels that will have you compulsively turning the pages

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Readers, today I'm sharing a long list of books in one of my favorite (and completely made-up) sub-genres: compulsively readable literary fiction. Genre distinctions are tricky (or downright odious, to some authors), so let me explain what I mean. (Cue my high school German teacher, who began eve

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I'm a little obsessed with the National Book Award for Fiction. I honestly treat it like the Academy Awards or the Grammys. Every year I enter a pool with my colleagues, betting on which novel I think will win. I've never guessed correctly, but that's beside the point. The point, of course, is that the National Book Award for Fiction is highly prestigious and a great indicator of excellent literature. Here are 11 of the many fiction winners you should definitely read.

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11 National Book Award-Winning Novels to Read Before You Die

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I'm a little obsessed with the National Book Award for Fiction. I honestly treat it like the Academy Awards or the Grammys. Every year I enter a pool with my colleagues, betting on which novel I think will win. I've never guessed correctly, but that's beside the point.

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Fiction (non-YA) only

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We wouldn't be doing our jobs as Off the Shelf recommenders if we didn't share the books we obsess over long after we've turned the last page. For your perusing pleasure, here are a few books we highly recommend you add to your shelf.

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We wouldn't be doing our jobs as Off the Shelf recommenders if we didn't share the books we obsess over long after we've turned the last page. For your perusing pleasure, here are a few books we highly recommend you add to your shelf.

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This is Nigerian novelist Adichie's third novel, but the first I've read. The story centers around a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman named Ifemelu. After university, she travels to America for postgraduate work, where she endures several years of near-destitution, and a horrific event that upends her world. She finds her way, winning a fellowship at Princeton, and gaining acclaim for her blog, called "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black." A highlight: Adichie seamlessly weaves blog posts-about race, national identity, class, poverty, and hair-into the narrative. The novel grapples with difficult issues without becoming overwrought. I would not have read this based on the flap copy, but I was hooked from page one. Haunting, moving, incredibly well done. Terrific on audio.

One of The New York Times's Ten Best Books of the Year
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a Chicago Tribune Best Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick.

A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion-for each other and for their homeland.

Other books in "5 Book Summer Reading Guide"

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This is Nigerian novelist Adichie's third novel, but the first I've read. The story centers around a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman named Ifemelu. After university, she travels to America for postgraduate work, where she endures several years of near-destitution, and a horrific event that upends her world.

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Additional Info: https://library.brown.edu/firstreading2010/index.html

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BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Hiding From a Brutal Past Spent Shattering Lives in Haiti (Published 2004)

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Michiko Kakutani reviews book The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat; photo (M)

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P assing is a work of fiction, but it is a true story about the world in which its author, Nella Larsen, lived. To describe it simply as a novel about a black woman passing for white would be to ignore the multiple layers of its concerns. Passing is about the monumental cultural transformations that took place in American society after World War I. It is about changing definitions of concepts like race and gender, and the inextricable relationship between whiteness and blackness. It is a meditation on the uneasy dynamic between social obligation and personal freedom. It dramatizes the impossibility of self-invention in a society in which nuance and ambiguity are considered fatal threats to the social order. The novel is an indictment of consumer culture and the dangers it poses to personal integrity. It reveals the power of desire to transform and unhinge us, and the lengths to which we will go to get what we want. Passing is about hypocrisy and fear, secrecy and betrayal. It is a universal story of the messiness of being human as it is portrayed in the particularly explosive relationship between two black women, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield.

Irene and Clare have not seen each other in twelve years when they reunite by chance on the roof of the Drayton Hotel in Chicago, where both women are enjoying a respite from a blazing hot August day. The Drayton is an exclusive hotel, and not one in which African Americans, or Negroes, to use the parlance of the day, would be welcome. In fact, on the fateful day of their reunion, both women are passing for white.

'Passing' is a meditation on the uneasy dynamic between social obligation and personal freedom.

In Passing, race is revealed to be, in part, a function of performance (the novel is structured in three sections - Encounter, Re-Encounter, Finale - much like acts in a theatrical piece), and blackness a matter of perception. Of the two women, it is Clare who appears to be so convincingly white that not only does Irene fail to identify Clare as a Negro, she doesn't recognize her childhood friend at all. Even after Clare introduces herself to Irene, Irene still doesn't recognize her or her blackness. When Clare uses her nickname, Irene searches her memory: "What white girls had she known well enough to have been familiarly addressed as 'Rene by them?" By contrast, Clare identifies Irene immediately. Irene squirms under Clare's unflinching stare, terrified of being seen for who she is, and also afraid of the embarrassment that would result from being ejected from the hotel.

It is only when Clare emits her distinctive laugh, which is "like the ringing of a delicate bell," that Irene finally recognizes her old friend. As the women talk, Clare appears more and more black to Irene. "Ah! Surely! They were Negro eyes! mysterious and concealing," she thinks as she feasts her own eyes upon Clare's stunning features. "There was about them something exotic," she thinks. As she is observing Clare, Irene is simultaneously making her up, inventing her - and inventing race, too. Clare isn't any more of a Negro after she reveals herself to Irene than she was before. As Irene confesses to another character later in the novel, no one can tell just by looking.

According to the guidelines of genealogy, Clare's claims to blackness are tenuous. Her grandfather was white. Her father was the product of her grandfather's dishonorable relationship with a black woman. Somewhere along the way, there had been money, but her grandfather squandered it. There is no mention in the novel of Clare's mother.

Once her father died, his pious aunts took Clare in, not as an expression of filial love but rather a sterile sense of Christian duty. They treated her like a servant, and forbade her from revealing the truth about her racial identity. Their bigotry was frank. "For all their Bibles and praying and ranting about honesty, they didn't want anyone to know that their darling brother had seduced - ruined, they called it - a Negro girl. They could excuse the ruin, but they couldn't forgive the tarbrush," Clare tells Irene. Clare was forbidden even to mention Negroes to the neighbors, much less discuss the South Side, where Irene and her friends lived in Chicago. It was easy for Clare to dispose of such an unhappy past, which was bankrupt of love as well as money.

Clare Kendry has not used her fair skin to make a political statement; she has not been passing in order to undermine and subvert the system of white supremacy. There has been no greater good. Instead she has been passing purely for personal gain. Although she grew up in the same racial world as Irene, her social circumstances were radically different. Among their cohort of middle-class girls, "Clare had never been exactly one of the group." Her father had gone to college with some of the other girls' fathers, but he had somehow wound up a janitor, and "a very inefficient one at that." He was also a violent alcoholic who would ultimately die in a bar fight. Among Irene's earliest memories of Clare are images of "a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her." The stubborn little girl boldly stitching together the bright cloth in defiance of her father's rage would grow into a young woman who defied fate, custom, and white supremacy by crossing the color line. But it wasn't racial self-hatred that catapulted Clare into whiteness; it was the shabby room. Clare passed for white because she hated being poor, not being black.

Clare passed for white because she hated being poor, not being black.

All passing narratives are about class as much as they are about race. One never passes down the social ladder; black characters become, or pose as, white in order to improve their material circumstances, or gain access in general to opportunities for personal, social, and professional advancement. The choice of individual comfort over the advancement of the race as a whole is always rendered as wrong; in most passing stories, material ambition and moral ruin are directly correlated. By the time some passing subjects recognize the truly degraded implications of their decisions to engage in racial masquerade, it is too late. In the film Imitation of Life, the main character comes to her senses only after she finds out that her choice to pass has literally killed her mother. The denial of the black mother is often the surest sign of the low character of those who choose to pass. The narrator in the short story "Passing" by Langston Hughes gets a better job as a white man but his financial success requires him to ignore his own mother as they pass each other on the street. "That's the kind of thing that makes passing hard," the narrator sums up in a letter to his mother, "having to deny your own family when you see them."

Clare Kendry is markedly different from other passing subjects in American literature. For one, she is not concerned with the moral implications of passing for white. Unlike other black characters whose passing enables them to marry white people, Clare does not pass for love. Even though she views passing through the lens of rank materialism, ultimately she sees passing as play. Clare Kendry is not an incarnation of the "tragic mulatto" figure, inherently alienated and adrift, whose mixed blood dooms her to racial purgatory. She is not wandering in the interstices of black and white. Instead, Clare is a hunter, stalking the margins of racial identity, hungry for forbidden experience, "stepping always on the edge of danger." She is a gambler, playing the high stakes game of racial roulette. For her, passing is a sport, and she is unrivaled in her technique. Clare desires many things, among them to be among Negroes again. But ultimately, the true nature of her driving need is as opaque as the "ivory mask" she wears.

Clare is a gambler, playing the high stakes game of racial roulette. For her, passing is a sport, and she is unrivaled in her technique.

Irene is tied to race out of duty; Clare's relationship to blackness is affective. "You don't know, you can't realize how I want to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh," Clare confesses to Irene. As a woman motivated by passion and excited to cross lines of propriety, Clare has a lot in common with the writer who dreamed her up: Nella Larsen.

Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker in 1891 in Chicago. Her mother was a Danish immigrant and her father an immigrant from the Danish West Indies. Nella's father disappeared from her life when she was young. Her mother married a fellow Danish immigrant, Peter Larsen, with whom she had another child. Like many fiction writers, Larsen incorporated elements of her own life into her writing. She shared with Clare the experience of being unwanted by white family members; neither Peter nor her half-sister acknowledged the ties that bound them. Like Clare, Nella was born poor and on the wrong side of town. Not only did Larsen spend her childhood in the vice district of Chicago, she was confronted by other dangers: a city in which the crossing of racial lines was unwelcome and cost those who disregarded them dearly. The rigid lines were officially underscored when, in 1920, the category "mulatto" was dropped from the census. There was no room for individuals whose bodies failed to conform to convention.

Nella was introduced to the world of the black bourgeoisie - the world in which Irene moved easily - when she was a student at Fisk University. There she bristled at the strict codes of dress and conduct. In her 1928 novel Quicksand, Larsen describes the disdain that the main character Helga Crane has toward the smug, insular world of the black elite at the fictional college of Naxos (an anagram for Saxon). "These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naïve spontaneous laughter."

Ultimately Larsen was expelled from Fisk, most likely for violating dress code. Larsen went from Fisk to Denmark, where she had spent time as a child. She returned to the United States and enrolled in nursing school, taking a position as head nurse at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the incarnation of the vision of Booker T. Washington, and along with Fisk, a model for Naxos. It was known as the "Tuskegee machine." In Quicksand, Helga reflects on her school: "This great community, she thought, was no longer a school. It had grown into a machine." Larsen found the working conditions at Tuskegee untenable. She resigned in 1916.

A few years later, she married Elmer Imes, who was at that point one of two African Americans to have ever held a Ph.D. in physics. The couple moved to Harlem, where Larsen took a job at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Soon her life as a writer would begin.

As Elmer's wife, Nella began to spend time with intellectual and cultural luminaries of the 1920s, black men like James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W. E. B. Du Bois. These men were architects of the Harlem Renaissance, authors of crucial philosophies that captured the concerns of black intellectuals of the moment. They were also central figures in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization for black progress that Du Bois helped to found in 1909. Irene Redfield, who prides herself on being a ticket taker for a ball for the Negro Welfare League, would have been impressed by the company Larsen kept.

It is safe to say that both Nella Larsen and her character Clare Kendry would have had easier lives as mixed-race women in the 21st century. If the 1920 census, with its removal of "mulatto" as a viable racial category, officially erased the experience of being mixed-race in the United States, the inclusion on the 2000 census of categories that allow individuals to identify for the first time in history with more than one race has already generated new stories. According to the 2010 Census Brief, since 2000, the population reporting multiple races increased by 32 percent. Already, the structure of the new census has enabled people with complex racial backgrounds to more aptly define themselves.

It is safe to say that both Nella Larsen and her character Clare Kendry would have had easier lives as mixed-race women in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the script had already been written for Clare. She was a woman who insisted on being free, and she paid for the crime of her hunger not only to defy racial convention but also the customs of gender, as well. The men in the novel are world explorers, or yearn to be: Jack Bellew is an international banker; Hugh Wentworth has "lived on edges of nowhere in at least three continents"; Brian Redfield longs to abandon American racism and move to Brazil. Clare is the true adventurer, however. Her wanderlust is domestic but perhaps more dangerous in that it is not structured by travel or outlined in a map but rather a function of her everyday life. Her literary descendants, such as Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Sula in the eponymous novel by Toni Morrison; Birdie in Caucasia by Danzy Senna; and the protagonists in Interesting Women by Andrea Lee, also live dangerously by pushing the boundaries of social convention. But in the high stakes games that Clare plays in 1929, the house always wins.

"What is Africa to me?" muses the speaker in "Heritage." Where does race reside? In blood, ancestry, or emotion? How can it be identified, much less quantified? Is it absurdity or a mystery? Race is a function of law, history, and politics, not science. Yet there is an ineffable quality to blackness, a mysterious factor that drives Clare to risk everything in order to "see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh."

It is this ineffability, the mystery that Clare embodies, that Irene cannot bear. She curses race as a yoke, but what she ultimately rejects is not a racial bond with Clare, but the awareness that identity itself is transitional, as mobile as the trains that made it possible for millions of African Americans to leave the South during the Great Migration, and the railroad car that provided the platform for Homer Plessy's historic confrontation. The self itself is unstable, just like the concept of race.

At the end of the novel, Irene finishes her final cigarette and throws it out of a window, "watching the tiny spark drop slowly down to the white ground below." It is impossible not to associate the cigarette sparks with the vitality and danger that Clare brought into her life. But Clare Kendry is unforgettable. After all, when a fire goes out, one does not necessarily remember the ashes. But one certainly remembers the brilliance of the flame.

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In Nella Larsen's 'Passing,' Whiteness Isn't Just About Race

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P assing is a work of fiction, but it is a true story about the world in which its author, Nella Larsen, lived. To describe it simply as a novel about a black woman passing for white would be to ignore the multiple layers of its concerns.

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Mary's 'bipoc-and-lgbtqia-ap-lit' books on Goodreads (47 books)

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Mary's 'bipoc-and-lgbtqia-ap-lit' books on Goodreads (47 books)

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Mary has 47 books on her bipoc-and-lgbtqia-ap-lit shelf: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The Round Hous...

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YA wouldn’t work for AP

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Today marks the last day of National Hispanic Heritage Month. But here at Off the Shelf, we believe you should read books about Hispanic culture all year round. To pay tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have enriched the literary landscape of the United States, I put together a list of seven books well worth reading.

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7 Books to Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month

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Today marks the last day of National Hispanic Heritage Month. But here at Off the Shelf, we believe you should read books about Hispanic culture all year round. To pay tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have enriched the literary landscape of the United States, I put together a list of seven books well worth reading.

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Congratulations to Pulitzer Prize winners and nominees! The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 and continues to carry on its coveted trade name. We're proud of our many books that have won the esteemed award. Whether you're looking for resource or recommendation, we've compiled a list of our Pulitzer Prize-winning books all the way back to 1919.

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105 Pulitzer Prize Winning Books | Penguin Random House

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Congratulations to Pulitzer Prize winners and nominees! The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 and continues to carry on its coveted trade name. We're proud of our many books that have won the esteemed award. Whether you're looking for resource or recommendation, we've compiled a list of our Pulitzer Prize-winning books all the way back to 1919.

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Brandon Hobson's remarkable, moving novel, Where the Dead Sit Talking, follows 15-year-old Sequoyah as he becomes the foster child of Harold and Agnes Troutt, a middle-aged couple already fostering 13-year-old George and 17-year-old Rosemary. Sequoyah bonds with Rosemary over their shared Native American heritages-he is Cherokee, she Kiowa. Sequoyah also learns of Harold's illegal sports bookie business from his foster siblings, and the lure of Harold's hidden sacks of rolled hundred-dollar bills, tucked safely in a backyard shed, tempt all three children with the possibility for trouble, excess, and freedom. Hobson, a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribe, picks 10 essential Native American novels.

The 10 essential Native American novels I've listed here are in no specific order. I've chosen 10 novels I love, but there are plenty of others I would consider essential, many of which are written by the people on this list. While these writers are important to me as a reader, a writer, and as a Cherokee, I should add that there are also many short story collections, books of poetry, and memoirs that represent an active campaign for the traditions and values of Native American culture. And while this list contains such well-established writers as Momaday and Erdrich, there are newer, younger Native American writers out there right now creating amazing works of art-people like Layli Long Soldier, Terese Mailhot, and Tommy Orange, whose names and works will become (are already becoming) a powerful and constructive force in Native American literature.

In an old Cherokee myth, a bear is a representation of greed and satisfaction, so the title of this historical novel refers to the struggles the Cherokees endured on the Trail of Tears when they were removed from their land. As my own great-great-great grandmother walked and survived the Trail of Tears, I felt especially drawn to Maritole, the narrator, who serves as a voice for all the women as they are forced from their homes. Though Maritole serves as primary narrator, there are other voices throughout the book: Maritole's husband, for example, who feels helpless; her father, who manages somehow to cling to hope; and other voices contribute to the desperation and helplessness. A very good novel detailing one of the saddest and cruelest episodes in U.S. history.

Erdrich's Tracks is the third in a series of family saga novels, the first two being Love Medicine and Beet Queen, respectively. Tracks is my favorite, though, for its language and vivid imagery. Told in alternating narrators, Nanapush and Pauline, Erdrich brilliantly threads their narratives together into a powerful story. In Nanapush's sections, he is talking to his granddaughter, Lulu, in an attempt to reunite her with her mother, who had sent Lulu off to government school when she was young. The second narrator, Pauline, tells of her connection to Lulu's mother and how Pauline became jealous of her, which begins a descent into witchery and madness. Beautiful and haunting.

6. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

In any Native American Literature course you'll likely read Silko's Ceremony, a novel known for its complexities involving various timelines dealing with a World War II veteran of Laguna Pueblo descent named Tayo. Even though we follow Tayo through parts of his childhood and his adult life in the war, the book also focuses on three evil spiritual entities who try to destroy Tayo. Real world threads with spiritual world, with medicine men, Spirits, and all sorts of strange witchery. Ceremony is a book about family, war, mental health, and most importantly-healing.

A coming of age story about Omishito, a teenage girl belonging to the Taiga tribe, torn between the harsh modern world and the spiritual world of her Aunt Ama, who kills an endangered panther the tribe considers sacred. What follows is a trial involving her aunt and the tribe. Hogan's prose is beautiful-she's a poet, after all-so it's no surprise this novel is written with such precision, told in a youthful and powerful voice.

9. Winter in the Blood by James Welch

"I was as distant from myself as a hawk from the moon," the young, unnamed narrator tells us. Welch's deeply moving novel deals with a young man's struggle with loneliness, alienation, and identity as he tries to make sense of death and the world around him. Welch's spare novel is quiet but forceful in its urgency and pacing. I haven't seen the film, but the novel is gritty, dark, essential reading.

Sadly, Louis Owens committed suicide in 2002, but he left behind some great books, including The Sharpest Sight, which is about a Vietnam veteran confined to a mental hospital after murdering his girlfriend. His body is later found in a river. While the mystery is unfolding, the novel also takes on a magical-realist element, with ghosts and nature and spirits inhabiting its world. A harrowing and gut-wrenching novel.

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Brandon Hobson, author of 'Where the Dead Sit Talking,' picks novels by James Welch, Louise Erdrich, and more.

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This week, The New Yorker will be announcing the longlists for the 2018 National Book Awards. This morning, we present the ten contenders in the category of Young People's Literature. Check back this afternoon for Translated Literature.

The book "Boots on the Ground: America's War in Vietnam," by Elizabeth Partridge, chronicles one of the most controversial periods in American history through the lives of eight people-six American soldiers, a nurse, and a Vietnamese refugee. Partridge intersperses these personal stories with chapters about the political scene in the United States, crafting a portrait of the human toll of war.

"Boots on the Ground" is the only work of nonfiction longlisted for this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature, but several fiction contenders feature young protagonists narrating some of the great injustices of history. There is "What the Night Sings," by the illustrator Vesper Stamper, about a teen-age survivor of the Holocaust, "A Very Large Expanse of Sea," by Tahereh Mafi, about a young Muslim girl growing up and facing prejudice in the aftermath of 9/11, and "The Journey of Little Charlie," by Christopher Paul Curtis, about a white sharecropper's son reckoning with the implications of slavery. This year's selections address weighty topics like addiction, sexual assault, war, and incarceration. Previously, M. T. Anderson won a National Book Award, and Elizabeth Partridge was a finalist. For the other nine authors, this is a first.

The full list is below.

The judges for the category this year are Robin Benway, whose book " Far From the Tree" won the 2017 National Book Award for Young People's Literature; Lamar Giles, the author of " Fake ID" and a founding member of the nonprofit organization We Need Diverse Books; Grace Worcester Greene, who has spent her career working at libraries with and for young people; Valerie Koehler, the owner of the Blue Willow Bookshop, in west Houston; and Mitali Perkins, the author of numerous books, most recently " You Bring the Distant Near."

The New Yorker offers a signature blend of news, culture, and the arts. It has been published since February 21, 1925.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Facing Racism in America

The writer talks with David Remnick about the black experience in America, and how the left often cannibalizes itself.

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The 2018 National Book Awards Longlist: Young People's Literature

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This week, The New Yorker will be announcing the longlists for the 2018 National Book Awards. This morning, we present the ten contenders in the category of Young People's Literature. Check back this afternoon for Translated Literature.

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If you're a high schooler or college student, there's a list of books and famous works you know you're going to have to read at some point in your career. A Shakespeare play or two, some Hemingway or Faulkner, To Kill a Mockingbird so you can talk about how white people were nice enough to end racism. And these books are all great, and important to understanding the culture - white/Western/American culture that is. And while there's some overlap between that and Latinx culture, what if you want to read the foundational texts of Latinidad? Below is a list of nine books that you can read in addition to (or, we don't want to tell you not to do you your homework, buuuut...) the canonical texts on your curriculum.

Deciding what books are "in" and which are "out" of a canon, particularly on the basis of historical popularity can be a messy, racist, sexist endeavor, especially that historically, a lot of power (including artistic power) was given to European men. We've tried to counteract that here, but know there's still a lot missing. We've also tried to go a little farther than the authors already on your shortlists (if you're wondering where Gabo, or Cisneros, or Neruda are).

And remember, the best part of making your own curriculum is debating and amending it, so have at it in the comments.
Editor's Note: This post has been updated to explain the curation process and to add a new author.

1

If you have to read: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Try: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Holden Caulfield is the classic disaffected teen, known for slouching around New York decrying phonies and having a depressive crisis. Julia, the protagonist of Erika L. Sánchez's coming-of-age novel, wanders the streets of Chicago confronting the confines of the expectations her parents have for her life, while also confronting the mysteries of her recently deceased sister's life. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter takes the same anger and sadness around the limitations of relationships and the world that Holden Caulfield experiences, and filters them through the experiences of a Mexican teen girl growing up in America.

2

If you have to read: Ulysses by James Joyce

Try: Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

James Joyce is best known for using not only stream-of-consciousness narration, but for his inventive use of language, making up words as they suited him and engaging in wordplay like puns and allusions. Cortázar uses similar structure and language to tell the story of a love affair between Horacio Oliveira and La Maga, a mysterious woman who comes in and out of the story. The book is almost structured like a choose-your-own adventure story, and the "Table of Instructions" invites you to plot your own path through the text.

3

If you have to read: Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Try: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

Spooky semi-abandoned agricultural towns, the dissolution of a once-grand family, innovations in prose styling - Pedro Paramo has a lot of the things that make Sound and the Fury great, and is one of the most influential books in Latin American lit to boot. With no lesser writers than Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Valeria Luiselli describing this book as an inspiration to them, to read this work is to uncover some of the earliest roots of magical realism.

4
If you have to read: Try: Popol Vuh Beowulf
Just as the Brits have their ancient epic poetry, so does Latin America have the Popol Vuh, a narrative by the K'iche' people of (present-day) Guatemala telling their creation myths, and tales of warriors and heroes. Written down by a visiting missionary in about 1550, the Popol Vuh is one of the only remaining traces of what was once a vibrant oral tradition of storytelling in pre-Columbian America.

5

If you have to read: The Poetry of Robert Frost

Try: Man-Making Words by Nicolás Guillén

6
If you have to read: Shakespeare's Sonnets
Try: the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Shakespeare and Sor Juana were only divided by 100 years of history - while the Bard was writing love poems, comedies and tragedies around the late 1500s, the New Spanish nun was writing religious (and romantic!) poetry, philosophical essays, and theological tracts in the 1600s. Much like Shakespeare, she adhered to the formal structures of verse at the time - sonnets using meter and rhyme schemes. She, like Shakespeare, is also speculated to have hidden clues to her queerness in some of her writing; scholars have argued that some of her sonnets, addressed to "Lisi," were about María Luisa Gonzaga Manrique de Lara, the wife of the Spanish Viceroy.

7

If you have to read: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Try: No One Will See Me Cry by Cristina Rivera Garza

The Bell Jar is a feminist classic about growing up, aimlessness, and depression, and a bulk of the book takes place with the main character in a psychiatric hospital. With No One Will See Me Cry, Rivera Garza takes us into La Castaneda, the infamous turn-of-the-century asylum in Mexico City, to follow the path of one of its inmates and the inmate photographer. Garza has been lauded as one of the best novelists working in Mexico by writers like Carlos Fuentes, and is becoming better known in the states.

8

If you have to read: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Try: Santa Evita by Tomás Eloy Martínez

While Evita's corpse doesn't come lurching back to life in Tomás Eloy Martínez's novel, it's not for lack of trying. This book, melding fact and fiction about Evita Perón, the wife of Argentina's dictator, focuses not on her living biography but on the fate of her body after death. A madcap story with a zany cast of characters all trying to reclaim control of the corpse, much like Frankenstein, Santa Evita also raises deeper questions about death, legacy, and politics.

9

If you have to read: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Try: Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

A migration across a vast, unwelcoming territory, the tensions of family, a wider arc of socio-political movement. Signs Preceding the End of The World treats migration into the United States in the same way that The Grapes of Wrath treats the Dust Bowl migrations of Oklahoma - by at once humanizing it and placing it within a greater context. Signs comes with the added benefit of being an absolutely fresh, vibrant modern novel.

10

If you have to read: The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Try: El Señor Presidente by Miguel Ángel Asturias

Everything Machiavelli said to do, the title president in Asturias' novel does. Written in the 1930s as a condemnation of Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera, it's one of the first novels written about life under a dictatorship, and the dangers everyday citizens faced. A modern classic, Asturias would later go on to win a Nobel prize in Literature, largely for this work.

latino literature, literature.

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The Literary Canon Is Mostly White. Here's an Alternative Latin American Reading List

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If you're a high schooler or college student, there's a list of books and famous works you know you're going to have to read at some point in your career. A Shakespeare play or two, some Hemingway or Faulkner, To Kill a Mockingbird so you can talk about how white people were nice enough to end racism.

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I've been craving feel-good books recently, which has lead me to contemplate that age-old question: is there such thing as feel-good literary fiction? I think there is, although it can be hard to find. What is slightly less hard to find, it turns out, is happy literary fiction.

These novels are not what I'd call feel-good books. Many of them deal with hard and painful subjects-sexual assault, homophobia, police brutality, suicide, domestic abuse, racism. But while they're not breezy, these are not books that leave you feeling like the world is a dumpster fire and humans are trash and there's no hope for any of us so let's all just hide under rocks forever. These books have uplifting endings. Happy endings. Hopeful endings.

There's a lot of literary fiction out there that does not end like this. I can think of a dozen novels offhand that end with death and destruction and hopelessness, books that track a downward spiral and leave a reader there. There's nothing wrong with books like that. But sometimes I want to read a hefty novel, one that tackles hard things, that puts me through the wringer and then leads me out. That's what these books do.

I would not classify every one of these endings as unequivocally happy (though some of them are). But every one of these books left me feeling hopeful and refreshed. When I was trying to articulate what I meant by literary fiction with happy endings, a fellow Rioter used the word "cathartic", and I think that's right. These books have cathartic endings. They're redemptive. They allow for the possibility of future joy. They're satisfying. They'll make you smile, and if they make you cry, they'll be tears of relief, not desperation.

So, whatever you want to call it-happy literary fiction, cathartic literary fiction, literary fiction with happy endings: here are 20 must-read novels that won't leave you feeling sad as hell.

Patsy leaves Jamaica for America hoping to reconnect with her best friend and first love. She finds a country full of unexpected challenges and heartbreak-as well as unexpected joys. Back in Jamaica, Patsy's daughter struggles to make sense of her life and her mother's decision to leave her behind. Told over the course of a decade, this is a novel about the complexities of motherhood, womanhood, and family. It will make you cry, but it will leave you smiling.

My friends and family are probably tired of listening to me scream about this book. I've read it three times in the past two years; that's how much I love it. It tells the story of the goddess Circe, daughter of Helios (God of the Sun), who is exiled to the island of Aiaia, where she builds a life for herself. It's a gorgeous, complicated, heartbreaking, and deeply moving exploration of all the joys and terrors of womanhood. The ending makes me weep every time-not out sadness, but out of cathartic release.

Evelyn Hugo is one of my favorite bisexual characters in fiction, and this book is like the best fictional biopic-a lush and sprawling portrait of her life. Beginning with her rise to fame as a movie star in the 1950s, Evelyn tells the hidden story behind her seven marriages. The characters are all deeply human, and though the book contains its fair share of heartbreak and queer suffering, it is also full of queer joy.

On New Year's Eve, 1984, Lilian Boxfish, 84, takes a walk around New York City. The book is a a combination of the encounters she has as she meanders through the city, and her reflections on her life-arriving in the city in the 1920s, her career in advertising, her marriage and divorce, motherhood. It's a quiet book about ordinary things, and it left me with a sense of peace.

Set in a small Indian American community in the Cleveland suburbs, this novel follows the quiet but meaningful transformations of two people. Harit is a lonely, closeted, middle-aged man living with his mother; Ranjana is a middle-aged woman seeking purpose in her life after sending her son off to college. When their paths cross, their lives change. Warm, funny, and full of characters you'll be rooting for from page one, this one might actually be feel-good literary fiction.

I recommend this book all the time for folks looking for happy literary fiction. It's got its share of heavy themes, but there's so much humor, exuberance, and joy that the experience of reading it never gets too grim. Nikki is a twentysomething woman living in West London, mostly cut off from the small Sikh community she grew up in. When she responds to an ad to teach creative writing at a community center in the midst of the city's Punjabi community, the widows she meets end up opening her world in ways she never expected.

This is a book I expected to end in disaster, and the fact that it doesn't makes me love it all the more. Spanning the 1980s through the 2020s, it's a kaleidoscopic view of the AIDS crisis and its reverberating aftermath, as told through the eyes of an intersecting group of diverse characters all connected to the Christodora, an apartment building in the East Village. This one puts you through the wringer, but it's worth it for the absolutely perfect ending (not to mention the whole emotional ride).

This is one of the hardest books on this list. It's about trauma and grief and the lasting effects of violence. But that only makes the hopeful ending all the more satisfying. Hero arrives in America looking for a fresh start. Disowned by her parents back in the Philippines and still haunted by her past, she finds a home with her aunt and uncle and their young daughter amid their tight-knight immigrant community. It's a gorgeous book with some of the most intimate characterizations of queer women I've read in recent years.

If you don't think a dystopian novel about bees can be beautiful and uplifting, this novel is here to prove you wrong. Flora 717 is a lowly sanitation worker, and she makes a fantastic narrator as she takes you through a year in the life of her hive. There's danger and political intrigue and all sorts of adventures. The characters-all bees!-are fascinating. And though the hive is not a harmonious place, the book ends on a high note.

Eleanor has a perfectly ordered life, working in an office and avoiding humans when she's not there. But when she tentatively becomes friends with one of her coworkers, her isolated lifestyle loses some of its shine. I love this book for its portrayal of therapy and friendship-the two most important factors that help Eleanor change her life. It's so real and ordinary. Eleanor is a unique and unforgettable character, but the ways she heals are deeply relatable. And the ending is as uplifting as they come.

When her mother vanishes just before a long-planned family trip to Antarctica, her daughter Bee decides to piece together the mystery using emails, letters, invoices, and memos. Combining a fierce satire of Seattle culture with a great mystery, a moving family drama, and a love letter to creativity, this novel is a little bit hilarious, a little bit absurd, and completely lovable.

Told in alternating viewpoints, this book is the story of two women separated by an ocean. In Tokyo, 16-year old Japanese American Nao pours all of her loneliness, frustration, and hurt into a diary. On a small island off the coast of British Colombia, Ruth, a struggling novelist, finds Nao's journal washed up on shore, debris from the 2011 tsunami. As Ruth becomes immersed in Nao's story, their lives intertwine in surprising ways. This book is another heavy one-there's abuse, bullying, and suicide. It's also a beautiful story about the power of art and the mysterious and sometimes magical connections between writers and readers.

When her father starts having conversations with relatives who aren't there, Amina, a photographer working in Seattle, returns to her childhood home to figure out what's going on. Unraveling the mystery of her father's visions takes her back through her family's history in India, as well as some of the most painful parts of her own past. This is a big-hearted family saga full of characters that go through profound change-my favorite kind of ending.

Some of my favorite endings in fiction are endings that make space for future joy. They don't wrap everything up neatly, but give the reader a blueprint for how the characters will move forward. This book ends like that. When Althea and Proctor-the bedrock of their family-are arrested, it's up to Althea's two younger sisters to care for their two teenage daughters. But the sisters have their own messy lives-and a lot of family history to untangle.

This novel begins with a hit-and-run that kills Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant and long-time resident of a small California desert town. In the aftermath of this crime, the narrative weaves in and out of many character's perspectives, focusing on Driss's wife and adult daughter Nora. It's a complicated look at the effects of crime on the many residents of a small town, and the intersections of race, class, and gender that mark their experiences.

This novel follows the four members of a classical string quartet as they navigate success and failure, fame, competition, personal drama, love, and family. It's a wonderful look into the life of classical musicians, but mostly it's about four friends and how their relationships to each other and themselves change as they age.

In 1913, a young Italian immigrant arrives alone in Buenos Aries, expecting to be married. When they discover their new husband has been killed, they don men's clothing and join a group of tango musicians, where they find unexpected companionship and family. Steeped in the rhythm of tango and the vibrant messiness of immigrant communities in Buenos Aries, this is a story of self-discovery, often full of heartbreak, that is sometimes physically painful to read. But if you let it, it will lead you out into the light at the end, leaving you feeling reborn.

A literary murder mystery set at a school for magicians, this book is by turns funny, charming, and sad. Ivy is a PI with no interest in magic; still grieving the death of her mother, she lives a lonely, ordered life. But when a staff member is murdered at the school where her estranged sister teaches, Ivy is drawn back into a world she thought she'd left behind. If you like character-driven mysteries, this is a great one-the mystery is engaging and the world-building is fantastic, but it's Ivy's emotional journey that stays with you.

I wrestled with whether or not to include this book here, because it is dark. Beginning in the 1600s, it follows the decedents of two Ghanaian sisters over 300 years: one sister marries a slaver and remains in Ghana, and the other is sold into slavery in America. There is some truly horrifying violence in this novel, the kind that is physically painful to read. It's also a gorgeous story about some of the most memorable characters I've encountered in fiction. And the ending is like a clean, bracing wind: it does not erase the generational trauma at the heart of this novel, but there's an expansiveness to it that makes room for hope and healing.

In some ways, this book is the opposite of a murder mystery: it begins with an admission. Fabian Vas, resident of a remote Newfoundland coastal town, has killed the lighthouse keeper. The narrative unravels the events, emotions, and motivations behind this act. Told in simple prose as sharp and striking as Fabian's bird illustrations and the windswept Newfoundland coast, this is a book that stays with you long after it's over. It's a page-turner, but a quiet one, dwelling in the intimate moments that make up a life.

Looking for legit feel-good literary fiction? Yeah, me too. There's some great happy literary fiction on this list of books that make you happy long after the last page. We've got feel-good fantasy and feel-good science fiction and comforting books for hard times. But truly feel-good literary fiction is hard to come by.

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20 Must-Read Happy Literary Fiction Books | Book Riot

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I've been craving feel-good books recently, which has lead me to contemplate that age-old question: is there such thing as feel-good literary fiction? I think there is, although it can be hard to find. What is slightly less hard to find, it turns out, is happy literary fiction.

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Asian American Masterpieces from Penguin Classics | Penguin Random House

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Celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with four Penguin Classics by Carlos Bulosan, Younghill Kang, and H. T. Tsiang.

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YA or Children's Books would NOT work for AP.

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The Great American Read is made possible by the Anne Ray Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers.

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Day two of the National Book Foundation's longlist announcements; today, the Translated Literature Longlist, a category that was added just last year. Publishers submitted a total of 145 books. The judges (Keith Gessen, Elisabeth Jaquette, Katie Kitamura, Idra Novey, and Shuchi Saraswat) chose the following ten titles which were originally written in ten different languages: Arabic, Danish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Here's the 2019 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:
Naja Marie Aidt, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book
Translated by Denise Newman
Coffee House Press

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Nona Fernández, Space Invaders
Translated by Natasha Wimmer
Graywolf Press

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national book award for translated literature

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Here is the Translated Literature Longlist for the 2019 National Book Awards.

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Day two of the National Book Foundation's longlist announcements; today, the Translated Literature Longlist, a category that was added just last year. Publishers submitted a total of 145 books. The judges (Keith Gessen, Elisabeth Jaquette, Katie Kitamura, Idra Novey, and Shuchi Saraswat) chose the following ten titles which were originally written in ten different languages: Arabic, Danish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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30 classics every American should read, according to English professors

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Classic books every American should read, English professors say

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I beam with pride at the sight of books by Nigerian authors on my bookshelf-displaying names rich with culture that even my tongue has difficulty navigating. As a first generation Nigerian American, I'm unfamiliar with the many peculiarities and treasures my homeland has to offer. Luckily, the deluge of Nigerian literature in recent years has not only given me the chance to learn more about my own culture, but in many ways, it has affirmed my experiences as a child of West African immigrants. As Nigerian Independence Day approaches on October 1st-and we await the grandiose display of "Naija Pride" during the NYC parade-here are five novels we'll be reading to celebrate.

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I beam with pride at the sight of books by Nigerian authors on my bookshelf-displaying names rich with culture that even my tongue has difficulty navigating. As a first generation Nigerian American, I'm unfamiliar with the many peculiarities and treasures my homeland has to offer.

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From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger and Amnesty, a "ferociously brilliant" (Slate) novel about two brothers coming of age in a Mumbai slum, raised by their crazy, obsessive father to be cricket champions.
*A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES * AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK
Manjunath Kumar is fourteen and living in a slum in Mumbai. He knows he is good at cricket-if not as good as his older brother, Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling, and is fascinated by curious scientific facts and the world of CSI. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know. Sometimes it even seems as though everyone has a clear idea of who Manju should be, except Manju himself. When Manju meets Radha's great rival, a mysterious Muslim boy privileged and confident in all the ways Manju is not, everything in Manju's world begins to change, and he is faced by decisions that will challenge his sense of self and of the world around him.

Filled with unforgettable characters from across India's social strata-the old scout everyone calls Tommy Sir; Anand Mehta, the big-dreaming investor; Sofia, a wealthy, beautiful girl and the boys' biggest fan- Selection Day "brings a family, a city, and an entire country to scabrous and antic life" ( Chicago Tribune).

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781982117535

Publisher:

Scribner

Publication date:

12/18/2018

Edition description:

Media Tie-In

Pages:

304

Product dimensions:

5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Aravind Adiga was born in India in 1974 and attended Columbia and Oxford universities. He is the author of the novels Amnesty; Selection Day, now a series on Netflix; The White Tiger,which won the Man Booker Prize;and the story collection Between the Assassinations. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Read an Excerpt

Selection Day
"I've got news for you, Tommy Sir."

"And I've got news for you, Pramod. You see, when I was twenty-one years old, which is to say before you were even born, I began working on a history of the Maratha campaign at the third battle of Panipat. It had a title: '1761: the soul breaks out of its encirclement.' Because I felt that no truthful account of this battle had ever been written. All the histories say we Marathas lost to the Afghans at Panipat on 14 January 1761. Not true. I mean, it may be true, we lost, but it's not the true story."

"Tommy Sir, there is a younger brother, too. He also plays cricket. That's my news."

"Pramod. I am sick of cricket. Talk to me about battles, onions, Narendra Modi, anything else. Don't you understand?"

"Tommy Sir. You should have seen the younger brother bat today at the Oval Maidan. You should have. He's nearly as good as his big brother."

Darkness, Mumbai. The bargaining goes on and on.

"And you know just how good the elder brother is, Tommy Sir. You said Radha Krishna Kumar was the best young batsman you've seen in fifty years."

"Fifty? Pramod, there hasn't been a best young batsman in fifty years in the past fifty years. I said best in fifteen years. Don't just stand there, help me clean up. Bend a bit, Pramod. You're growing fat."

Behind glass and steel, behind banks and towers, behind the blue monstrosity of the Bharat Diamond Bourse is a patch of living green: the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) Club in the heart of the Bandra Kurla financial center. Floodlights expose the club's lawns, on which two men scavenge.

"I ask you, Pramod, since you insist on talking about cricket, what is the chance of elder and younger brother from the same family becoming great cricketers? It is against Nature."

"You distrust sporting brothers, Tommy Sir. Why?"

"Mistrust, Pramod. Pick up that plastic for me, please."

"A master of English cricket and grammar alike, Tommy Sir. You should be writing for the Times of Great Britain."

"Of London."

"Sorry, Tommy Sir."

Sucking in his paunch, Pramod Sawant bent down and lifted a plastic wrapper by its torn edge.

"The younger brother is called Manjunath Kumar. He's the biggest secret in Mumbai cricket today, I tell you. The boy is the real thing."

Chubby, mustached Pramod Sawant, now in his early forties, was a man of some importance in Bombay cricket-head coach at the Ali Weinberg International School, runner-up in last year's Harris Shield. Head Coach Sawant was, in other words, a fat pipe in the filtration system that sucks in strong wrists, quick reflexes, and supple limbs from every part of the city, channels them through school teams, club championships, and friendly matches for years and years, and then one sudden morning pours them out into an open field where two or maybe three new players will be picked for the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team.

But he is nothing if he can't get Tommy Sir's attention tonight.

"No one knows what the real thing looks like, Pramod. I've never seen it. How can you tell?"

"This Manju is a real son of a bitch, I tell you. He's got this way of deflecting everything off his pads: lots of runs on the leg side. Bit of Sandeep Patil, bit of Sachin, bit of Sobers, but mostly, he's khadoos. Cricket sponsorship is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea: Now you can make it twice as brilliant."

Gray-haired Tommy Sir, taller and wiser than Coach Sawant, kept his eyes on the lawn.

"After thirty-nine years of service to Bombay cricket, they make me clean up like a servant, Pramod. After thirty-nine years."

"You don't have to clean up, Tommy Sir. You know it. The peon will do it in the morning. See, I know Manju, the younger brother, is the real thing, because if he's not, then what is he? A fake. And this boy is not a fake, I promise you."

Having completed a round of the cricket ground, Tommy Sir had started on a second trash-hunting circle within the previous one.

"Pramod, the idea that the boy has to be . . ." he bent down, examined a stone, and let it drop, "either real or a fake is a very Western piece of logic."

He moved on.

"Do you know what the Jains say, Pramod? Seven varieties of truth exist. Seven. One, this younger brother might in fact be the real thing. Two, he might be a fake. Three, the boy might simultaneously be the real thing and a fake. Four, he might exist in some state beyond reality and fraudulence that we humans cannot hope to comprehend. Five, he might in fact be the real thing and yet exist in a state beyond our poor human capacity to comprehend. Six-"

"Tommy Sir. Please. I know what I felt in my heart when that boy was batting. I know."

"My dear Pramod. Hockey is India's national game, chess best suits our body type, and football is the future."

Two old stumps lay in their path. Tommy Sir picked up one and Sawant pretended to pick up the other.

"Football has been the future for fifty years, Tommy Sir. Nothing will replace cricket."

The two men walked the rest of the circle in silence, and then Tommy Sir, holding the stump against his chest, started a third tour of the ground.

He spoke at last.

"Pramod, the great George Bernard Shaw said: They haven't spoken English in America in decades. And I say about Indians: We haven't played cricket in decades. At least since 1978. Go home now. I am very tired, I want to hike near Mahabaleshwar this weekend. I dream of mountains, Pramod."

Sawant, fighting for breath, could see only one piece of uncollected rubbish: a white glove lying in the very center of the ground. Clenching his fists, he raced Tommy Sir to the glove and picked it up first.

"A bit of Sandeep Patil meets a bit of Ricky Ponting. You should have seen the boy today."

"Are you deaf?" Tense muscles extended Tommy Sir's high forehead. "In 1978, Sunny Gavaskar lost the ability to leave the ball outside the off stump, and since then we've been playing baseball and calling it cricket. Go home."

He snatched the glove from Sawant.

Walking to a corner of the ground, he let the rubbish spill from his hands; in the morning, the peon would move all of it into the storeroom.

As Sawant watched, Tommy Sir got into an autorickshaw, which began to move. Then, as if in a silent movie, the auto stopped, and a man's palm shot out and beckoned.

Loaded now with both men, the auto left the Bandra Kurla Complex for the highway, and then turned into Kalanagar, where it stopped outside a mildew-stained housing society.

Suffering Sawant to pay the driver, Tommy Sir got out of the autorickshaw; he looked up at the fourth floor of the building to see if his daughter, Lata, had left the lights on in the kitchen despite his telling her, for twenty-two years, that this was against every principle of Home Science, a wonderful subject which they once used to teach young women in every college in this country.

Tommy Sir pointed at the sky over his housing society: The full moon was balanced on a water tank.

"Pramod. On a night like this, you know the young people in Bandra just go crazy. Out in the Bandstand, those boys and girls walk all the way out onto the rocks, sit down, start kissing. They forget that the ocean exists. Slowly the tide comes in. Higher and higher." The old man raised his fingers to his collarbones. "All at once, the young people stop kissing, because they find themselves sitting in the middle of the ocean, and they start screaming for their lives."

He paused.

"Pramod, what is the younger one's name? Manju?"

"I knew you'd agree, Tommy Sir. You believe in the future of this country. I'll tell the visionary. I mean the other visionary."

"Pramod Sawant: Now listen to me. One, this visionary of yours is probably just a bootlegger. Second, I like Radha Kumar, but I don't like his father. The Chutney Raja is mad. I met him six months ago, remember? Now I have to deal with him twice over?"

"That's the only negative point, I agree. The father is mad."

Tommy Sir blamed the full moon over the water tank for what he said next.

"How much Sandeep Patil?"

For nearly forty years now, a tall, gray-haired man with small eyes had been seen at maidans, school compounds, gymkhanas, members-only clubs, and any other place where boys in white uniforms had gathered. All through the cricket season, either at the Bombay Gymkhana, or at Shivaji Park, or at the Oval Maidan, Tommy Sir would be watching (hands on hips, brows corrugated) and yelling: "Greatshot!" "Bow-ling!" "Duffer!" When he was angry, his jaw shifted. A boy scores a century in the sun, comes back to the school tent expecting an attaboy from the great Tommy Sir, but instead a thick hand smacks the back of his head: "What's wrong with a double century?" He had broken many a young cricketer's heart with a sentence or two: "Not good enough for this game, son. Try hockey instead." Blunt. Tommy Sir was given to the truth as some men are to drink. Once or twice in the season he would take a batsman, after a long and productive innings, to the sugarcane stand; on such occasions, the boys stood together and watched with open mouths: Mogambo Khush Hua. Tommy Sir is pleased.

Not his real name, obviously. Because Narayanrao Sadashivrao Kulkarni was too long, his friends called him Tommy; and because that was too short, his protégés called him Tommy Sir. Like a Labrador that had been knighted by Her Majesty Queen of England. Ridiculous.

He hated the name.

Naturally, it stuck.

On the day before his marriage in July 1974, he told his wife-to-be, who had arrived by overnight train from a village near Nashik, six salient points about himself. One, this is my salary statement. Read it and understand I am not a man meant to be rich in life. Two, I don't believe in God. Three, I don't watch movies, whether Hindi, Hollywood, or Marathi. Four, likewise for live theatrical productions. Five, every Sunday when Ranji, Harris, Giles, Vijay Merchant, Kanga, or any type of cricket is being played in the city of Bombay, I will not be at home from breakfast to dinner. Six, one weekend a year I go to the Western Ghats near Pune and I have to be absolutely alone that weekend, and six point two, because seven points are too many for any woman to remember, before I die, I want to discover a new Vivian Richards, Hanif Mohammad, or Don Bradman. Think about these six points and marry me tomorrow if you want. Afterward don't regret: I won't give divorce.

Educated man, literary man, man of many allusions: His column on the traditions of Mumbai cricket was syndicated in sixteen newspapers around India. Artistic man, cultured man, self-taught painter: His watercolor interpretations of black-and-white photos of classic test matches had been exhibited to universal acclaim at the Jehangir Art Gallery a few years ago. Said to be working in secret on a history of the Maratha army in the eighteenth century. Possibly the best talent scout ever seen in India? Thirteen of his discoveries had made the city's Ranji Trophy team, including "Speed Demon" T. O. Shenoy, bowler of the fastest ball in the city's history; plus, during a six-month stint in Chennai in the 1990s, he had uncovered two genuine rubies in the South Indian mud who went on to scintillate for Tamil Nadu cricket. On his desktop computer were testimonials from nine current, six retired, and two semi-retired Ranji Trophy players; also signed letters of appreciation from the cricket boards of seventeen nations.

And all these people, whether in Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, or anywhere else, know the same thing Head Coach Pramod Sawant knows: Somewhere out there is the new Sachin Tendulkar, the new Don Bradman, the one boy he has still not found in thirty-nine years-and Tommy Sir wants that boy more than he wants a glass of water on a hot day.

There-opposite Victoria Terminus. Disappearing.

Manjunath Kumar ran down the steps toward a tunnel, the black handle of a cricket bat jutting like an abbreviated kendo stick from the kitbag on his left shoulder. Three more steps before he reached the tunnel. Fact Stranger than Fiction: Place a glass of boiling water in your freezer next to a glass of lukewarm water. The glass of boiling water turns into ice before the lukewarm water. How does one explain this paradox? The eyes bulged in his dark face, suggesting independence and defiance, but the chin was small and pointy, as if made to please the viewer; a first pimple had erupted on his cheek; and the prominent stitching on the side of his red cricket kitbag stated: "Property M.K.-s/o Mr. Mohan Kumar, Dahisar." In his pocket he had fifteen rupees, the exact amount required to buy peanuts and bottled water after the cricket, and a folded page of newspaper. Fact Stranger than Fiction: Place a glass of boiling water in your freezer . . . The smelly, cacophonic tunnel was filled, even on a Sunday morning, with humanity, hunting in the raw fluorescent light for sports shoes, colorful shirts, and things that could entertain children. Fact Stranger than . . . Manju worked his way through the crowd. Mechanical toys attempted somersaults over his shoes. To catch his attention, two men stood side by side and slapped green tennis rackets against tinfoil, setting off sparks. Electronic mosquito killers. Only fifty rupees for you, son. How does one explain this paradox . . . Only forty rupees for you, son. In the distance, Manju saw the flight of steps leading up to Victoria Terminus. One half of the steps lay in twilight. There must be a lunette over the entrance of the tunnel, clouded over with one hundred years of Bombay grime. Thirty rupees is as low as I'll go, even for you, son.

But the upper half of the steps glittered like Christmas tinsel.

Emerging from the tunnel, and about to cross the road to Azad Maidan, he stopped. Manju had spotted him-the boy whom he saw every Sunday, but who wore a different face each time.

The average cricketer.

Today, it was that fellow staring at the footpath as he dragged his bag behind him. Wearing a green cap and stained white clothes. Fourteen years old or so. Talking to himself.

". . . missed. Missed by this much. But the umpire . . . blind. And mad, too . . ."

From his side of the road, Manjunath grinned.

Hello, average cricketer.

This was the wreckage of the first match at Azad Maidan-this fellow who was half a foot shorter than he had been at 7 a.m., who was blinking and arguing with the air, cursing the umpire and the bowler and his captain and their captain, and growing shorter every minute, because he knew in his heart that he had never been meant for greatness in cricket.

Hauling his kitbag off his shoulders and lowering it to the pavement, Manju unzipped the bag and extracted his new bat: He held the black handle in both hands, and gripped tight.

And waited.

The average cricketer removed his green cap and raised his head, and the eyes of the two boys met.

Manjunath Kumar showed him how to drive through the covers. He showed him how to attack, defend, and master the red cricket ball.

After which, like W. G. Grace, he stood with his weight on the bat handle. And then stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyeballs.

Across the road, the green cap fell onto the pavement.

Good-bye to you, Prince Manju waved to the average cricketer, and good-bye-Prince Manju turned to his left, then to his right-to all average things.

I am the second-best batsman in the whole world.

"Stop right there. We were talking about you last night. I said, stop."

The silhouettes of the Municipal Building and the spiked dome of the Victoria Terminus struggled against the morning smog, and the air in between them was scored by cable wires. Blue smoke rose from the garbage burning in a corner.

Between the buildings and the burning garbage stood a fat man, trying to catch Manjunath like a football goalie.

"Come back, boy. Come back at once."

With a grin, Manjunath surrendered, and walked back to where Head Coach Sawant stood.

"Did you hear what I was saying? I said, we were talking about you last night. 'We' means two people. So, who was the other man talking about your future? Ask me."

Instead of which, Manju, drawing a hand from his cricket bag, showed the coach something.

"What is this?" Sawant asked, as the boy handed him a disturbingly large page of the Sunday newspaper.

"Please, sir. What is the answer?"

Sawant took the paradox in both hands. His brain struggled with high school physics and his lips with Newspaper English.

. . . place a glass of boiling water in . . .

"I have no idea, Manju. No idea at all. Take it back. Manju," the coach said, "why have you brought this to cricket? Is there no one at home you can show this to? What about your-"

"My mother is away on a long holiday, sir."

As Manju folded his precious piece of newspaper and tucked it into his cricket kitbag, Sawant studied him from head to toe, like a man wondering if he has made a bad decision.

"Tommy Sir was the other man talking about you. You know what it means if he takes an interest in a boy."

But Manju had flown.

"Hey, Manjuboy! Come over here!"

Twenty other young cricketers stood around a red stone-roller with "Tiger" written twice on it. They had been waiting for him.

"Chutneyboy! Look at the chutneyboy come running."

"Chutneyboy who wants to be a Young Lion. Come here!"

It was a court-martial: A boy was holding up one of those new phones that were also tiny television sets, and Manju was told to stand on the stone-roller, while the circle tightened around him.

As Manju rose above the circle of white, Sawant, hands on his hips, walked around the stone-roller for a better view.

The boys were making Manju watch as a woman reporter aimed a mike at a tall teenager, handsome enough in every other way, too, but whose eyes, cool gray clouds, were like a snow leopard's.

"Chutney Raja! That's what they call your father, Manju. Chutney Raja!"

"You heard them on TV. My big brother is a Young Lion."

"Chutney Raja SubJunior! All you're good for is your science textbooks. What do you know about batting?"

"Thomas, today I'll hit you for three fours one after the other. Then I'll hit you for three sixes. What did you say about my father?"

"He's a Chutney Raja."

"And what is your father, then?"

"Your brother is Chutney Raja Junior. That makes you-"

YOUNG LIONS

"Join us in the quest to find the next generation of sporting legends!"

You can see from these images that Radha Krishna Kumar has grown up in what some would consider less than ideal conditions, at the very edge of Mumbai. His father is a variety-chutney salesman, whose main business is his sons. In his own words:

"We have a family secret which makes us superior to every other cricketing family in the city of Mumbai. There is a secret blessing given to my son Radha by the Lord Subramanya, who is our family deity . . ."

(Secret from God? Shit. Your father really is mad.)

(Ashwin. I heard that. Two fours!)

"Mr. Mohan: Is it really true that your son got Sachin Tendulkar out in a practice match or is that just a story?"

"There is a saying in our language: he who steals a peanut is a thief. He who steals an elephant is also a thief. This means we do not lie in matters big or small. Radha Krishna clean bowled Sachin Tendulkar with his fourth ball."

(This is true! This really happened!)

(Shut up, Chutney Raja SubJunior! And why is your brother called Radha? Isn't that a girl's name?)

Radha Kumar has the status of a superstar in his neighborhood. We spoke to his neighbor, Mr. Ramnath, seen here in front of his ironing stand.

"Dahisar was famous, they used to shoot films here before the river became dirty. The moment I saw Radha, when his father brought him here over ten years ago, I told my wife, this boy will make Dahisar famous again."

YOUNG LIONS
MONDAY 6:30 PM REPEATED ON WEDNESDAY

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Enough! Flailing his arms, Manju scattered his tormentors from the stone-roller: time for real cricket, at last.

". . . SubJunior! Get ready to bat!"

"O Champion of Champions!"

A drumbeat had begun at the far end of the maidan. Padded up, helmeted, and swinging his bat in circles over his head, Manju walked up to the crease.

At noon, he was still batting. Manju Kumar had kept his word to the bowlers, punishing each one of them in a different way for what they had said about his father (and about his brother having a girl's name), lofting Thomas over mid-wicket, driving Ashwin twice through the covers, and cutting, pulling, and flicking the others.

Pramod Sawant stood, arms folded across his chest, and watched Manju: passing over the boy's dark, eye-heavy face, pointy chin, and solitary pimple, and then over his shoulders and biceps, to settle on the crucial part of a batsman's body. In Australia they bat with their footwork. In India we do it with our wrists. Manjunath Kumar's forearms in action made his coach's mouth water. Dark and defined cunning, those forearms were broader than the biceps; they were a twenty-five-year-old man's forearms grafted onto the body of a four-foot ten-inch child; they were forearms which, as they petted, coaxed, and occasionally bludgeoned the hard red ball to the boundary, made Head Coach Sawant remember, with a shiver, the muscular man in black shorts who had come to his village with the traveling circus three decades ago.

There-shirtless, on the floor of a 320-square-foot box of brick. Home. Manjunath was back in the one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain, where he had lived since his father brought him and his brother to Mumbai, nine years ago. Pressing his palms against his cheeks, the boy went over the newspaper once again:

One theory relies on the "Lake Effect," which is seen in the cold countries of northern America . . .

His cricket gear lay around him, and he was stripped to his waist.

Manju saw shadows moving in the blade of light beneath the closed metal door of his home. His father was outside, answering the neighbors' questions. When is Radha Krishna coming back? Does he think he is too big now to talk to his own neighbors?

On the table there was dinner made by his aunt (or possibly great-aunt) Sharadha. The world was in order, except for one scientific paradox.

A quick crust of ice forms over the lake, keeping the water underneath it liquid all through winter. Similarly, when lukewarm water freezes, a thin crust forms on top. In a glass of boiling water, in contrast, evaporating steam stops the . . .

A clattering noise made him look up: A vermin cavalry went galloping over the corrugated tin roof. Rats, rushing toward the flour mill in the center of the slum. Manju turned on the television, and increased the volume.

Reaching far behind the television set, he picked up an instant-noodle cup filled with dark mud in which two horse gram beans, planted forty-eight hours ago, had sprouted. New life, fathered by Master Manjunath. He looked at the tender shoots paternally, spilled big drops of water from a glass into the pot, and then returned the life-bearing cup to its hiding place behind the TV.

The final image of the day's episode flashed on television: the cadaver of an American man lying naked on a green dissecting table under a cone of hard white light, before the screen went black and the credits rolled.

Manju looked down at his own body: That thing had started again-he was hard. It was happening all the time now, sometimes even when his father or brother were in the same room. He lay down and pressed himself against the floor.

He wondered what color his cock had become under the pressure of his own body: and then he felt that it was liquefying under the weight, and spreading, an icy liquid, all around him.

Now he found himself on a frozen lake. He was not alone here. Beamed from the CSI inspection table, the foreigner's cadaver now lay in the middle of the lake.

Promoted to the elite squad of CSI Las Vegas, Agent Manjunath Kumar-Grissom crawls, scraping the surface of the ice with his right toenail, inching nearer and nearer to the naked dead body that he must retrieve; but when he is almost there, click, crack, the surface of the lake starts to break under him.

Whistles and cheers explode all around-Ra-dha! Ra-dha!-for a Young Lion has just returned to the slum, but Manju, who must now go out and smile for the neighbors, is still on the floor, trying to crush his hard-on.

An egret flew in from the river and watched the boy, who lay above a well, watching a turtle.

It was an open well, the kind that still exists in a suburb like Dahisar, raised three inches from the ground and covered by a rusty iron grille: and as he lay facedown on it Manju watched something beneath the water's skin.

His legs made a V on the checkerwork of the grid, which creaked as he shifted his weight. Through its interstices, he shone a pen-torch down on the black water.

He lanced his beam of light around the well. There! Splashing out of the black water, it came curiously to the light, a dark and domed creature, its limbs paddling fast.

Manju turned his pen-torch off, and put his face to the cold grille. His heart beat hard against his rib cage, which beat in turn against the metal of the grid. In a few hours he would have his chemistry class. He knew a surprise test was coming.

Which of the following is used to make bleach?

A. Hydrogen

B. Hydrochloric Acid

C. Sodium Phosphate

D. Chlorine

Please, please, help me: O God of Cricket and also of Chemistry.

From the depths of the well, a cool draft tickled his cheek; the boy's imagination transformed it into a breath from a range of blue mountains. He felt his hair blowing in the breeze: the mountain air of the Western Ghats.

Each summer, the family went back to their village. Taking the train from Mumbai to Mangalore, they then got on a bus that carried them over the hills and toward the shrine of the God of Cricket, their family deity, Kukke Subramanya; past trees with red leaves, and little streams that skipped a heartbeat when a schoolboy leaped into them, past waterfalls shrouded in waterfalls, until they reached a temple hidden deep inside the Western Ghats, where, leaving the bus and standing in line for hours, moving past burning camphor and sharp temple bells, past a nine-headed painted snake, the protector Vasuki, they finally came to the silver door frames, beyond which, lit by oil lamps, waited the thousand-year-old God of Cricket, Subramanya.

"Remind Him, my sons. We can't offer Him much money. So remind Him, monkeys."

"One of us should become the best batsman in the world, and the other the second best."

Mohan Kumar had his own way of reminding God. As he did each year, he rolled bare chested over the hard granite floor of the temple, rolled from one side of the wall to the other, and then back again, until his torso was lacerated, and the secret contract was renewed in his blood.

"Are you licking yourself again?"

"No," Manju said. "Just watching."

"Get up."

Manju didn't.

And now Radha lowered himself beside Manju, and there were two bodies lying on the old metal grid over the well.

"Let's go. He must have woken by now," Radha said.

Manju pointed the pen-torch to a spot below them.

"It's that turtle again. She's the mother."

"Maybe. Let's go home. He may hit you again if he's in a bad mood, Manju."

"It is the mother. I'm not going till you agree that it is the mother."

"I can't see it from here, Manju."

"I'm showing you, I'm showing you."

Radha, the Young Lion, was square-jawed, tall, and muscular, and was sometimes mistaken for Manju's uncle, though there was just a year and a month between them. He strained to see through the grating to where his younger brother was directing the pen-torch beam.

"See. The mother. Do you agree? Then we can go."

"Wait, Manju. Point the light over there. I think there's one more."

The pen-torch moved: A second turtle was discovered. It raised its head toward its two human observers. How fascinating, it seemed to be saying, to see the turtles that live in that bigger darkness up there. Done, it lost interest in the boys and sank back into the water.

"Do you agree? That's the mother. Then we can go."

Manjunath Kumar pressed against his brother's body; the warmth sharpened his senses.

Suddenly a new turtle came into view: its body angled toward the light, jaw wide open, a rim of gold glistening around its shell.

"Manju, you're wrong. That's the mother. It's bigger."

"I've hidden it behind the TV," Manju whispered.

"What?"

"My biology experiment. I want full marks in class this time."

Two months ago, his model fighter jet plane, a project for his physics class, left on the dining table, had mysteriously vanished after he had put four days of work into it.

"He's going to find it anyway, and then he'll throw it out, Manju. Come. We have to go. He's woken up by now."

"I want to watch the turtle."

"Manju, it's not that morning."

"I want to watch the turtle."

"Manju, it's not a checkup morning," his brother said. "Don't be afraid." Radha poked his brother in the ribs. "And if you don't come now, I'll show him where you've hidden your science experiment."

The brothers looked at each other for a moment: then both bodies sprang from the well and ran.

Their father had already folded up their cots and propped them against the wall, forming two isosceles triangles; his own cot was on the other side of the green curtain. Next to the dining table stood a metal almirah, which complained of its years of ill treatment in a rash of rusty patches and livid scars; leaning on three of its sides were seven cricket bats.

Old Sharadha, relative of some kind, aunt or great-aunt, polyglot remonstrator in Kannada, Hindi, and English, the only woman to have entered their home for a decade, perhaps longer (neither boy can remember exactly when She left), was cleaning the stove and last night's dishes.

Standing before the mirror on his side of the green curtain, Mohan Kumar was painting his mustache, a grooming procedure that could take a quarter of an hour. He turned around with his dye brush and looked at his sons.

"Were you looking at girls again? Naked girls bathing in the morning?"

"No, Appa. We were looking at turtles."

"Boys," Mohan Kumar said, closing his eyes and restraining his anger. "If you are looking at naked girls, half-naked bathing girls, tell me. I will not punish. But don't lie. What were you two looking at?"

Emerging with a pitch-black mustache, Mohan called his second son to him, held his chin, and turned his face from side to side.

"There's blood in your cheeks, Manju. That comes from hormones. You were looking at girls, weren't you?"

"No, Appa."

When Mohan Kumar raised his hand, his palm rotated ninety degrees to the left and vibrated, like a man having a fit just as he was saluting; Manju cringed and readied himself; the blow fell on the right side of his face.

In ten minutes, the boys were in school uniform and had packed their cricket bags: They stood at attention while Mohan slid his fingers into the bags to check their contents.

And then, closing the door of their home behind them, the family Kumar left for cricket practice.

When they passed the tire-repair place with the sign saying PUNCHER SHOP, Manju stopped, and shouted, "Wrong, that's wrong!"

"Quiet," Radha said.

But when he looked at his father, Manju knew that he wanted him to continue: He was proud of his son, smarter than everyone else his age in the slum.

"Do You Want Pan Card!" Manju raised his voice. "Pumpkin Carrot Banana Shapes Fruit and Vegetable Salad Decorators! Pandal, Marriage, Birthday Experts! Everything in English is written the wrong way and I alone know!"

But Manjunath Kumar, world's second-best batsman, knew something much more important than how to spell English correctly: Manju knew how to read other people's minds. It had come to him like one of those special things that some children can do; like being able to move your ears without touching them or curling your tongue up as if it were a dried leaf or flexing your thumb all the way back. If he let himself be still, Manju could tell what other people wanted from him. And he could complete their sentences for them.

He knew that this secret gift, this mind-reading power, had come to him from his mother. Her long, elegant nose; her ravishing smile; her way of looking at him sideways-he remembered all this about his mother. This, too: her sitting on a sofa, fixing her beautiful smile on her visitors, all the time rubbing the silver coin embossed with the image of Lord Subramanya that hung from her marriage necklace as if it were an amulet that read minds for her. She could always say what her guests wanted to hear, and she pampered them with flattery after flattery, till they left her with their egos refreshed and glowing, as if they had just stepped out of a hammam; and then one day, she read his father's mind and vanished. That is what saved her from being killed by Mohan Kumar. Manju was sure of it. That is why their mother had never come back to see Radha or him, even though she must have heard they were famous. She was so scared of her husband, she had forgotten her sons.

Right now, reading his father's mind, knowing what he had to do to give him satisfaction and pleasure, Manjunath kept shouting in English, while Radha (who did not have his brother's secret gift) protested:

"Didn't you hear him? Shut up, Manju."

Manju did shut up: but only because of the grinding noise and a cloud of particulated flour produced by the wheat mill. It was a tyrant of blue pipes and funnels, the most famous object in the slum, which brought even people from good buildings to Shastri Nagar every morning. The noise and choking white dust temporarily pacified the youngest Kumar, but then he began again:

"Internet Gaming Cyber Mahesh Cafe!"

"Manju, shut up, I told you. I know English too, but I'm not showing off."

Following their father, the boys had passed the shuttered shops of their slum, and through a cardboard WELCOME TO OUR HOME arch. The gift of a political party was painted blue and covered by the beaming, disembodied faces of city, statewide, and national leaders, at least two of whom were serving jail sentences, a fact which only heightened the impression that they were so many medieval criminals whose grinning heads had been hoisted up above a city gate. An observer from a distance, however, might well judge that the faces on the blue arch were so many genies gathered there to perform friendly magic: for the family Kumar now appeared to be walking on water.

The slum had grown at the very edge of Mumbai's municipal limits. For most of the year, the Dahisar River was a rock-filled sewer, lit up by egrets and the flutter of a paddy bird returning to its nest of twigs. A series of bricks, spaced two feet apart in the water, formed a makeshift bridge: Their father had hoisted his cycle over his head, and the boys followed him step by step, as they crossed over the river and into the rest of Mumbai.

At the station-get in, get in-Mohan pushed the slow cricketers and their bags into the fast train. Hurry, hurry. Miss this train and there won't be space on the next one. It'll be rush hour. Yes, I know there's an empty seat, but you can't sit down, Manju. All three of us will stand. I don't want anyone sleeping in the train and yawning during practice.

A thin, tall, gap-toothed child went about the first-class carriage, offering or threatening to polish shoes for five rupees each. Mohan Kumar's shoes were polished for free. As he worked, the gap-toothed child looked up at the father of cricketers.

"Young Lions? Young Lions. Young Lions? Young Lions. Young Lions?"

"I sell unique chutneys," Mohan told one passenger after the other. "Twenty-four chutneys, for each hour of the day. You like mint? We have mint. Garlic? We have extra garlic. Chilli, hot chilli, green chilli, sweet chilli, mango, rainbow, one hundred percent vegetarian."

Manju leaned his face to his brother's shirt and dozed against his body.

At Bandra, the family Kumar got off and walked along the pedestrian bridge, a grid of inverted Vs that zigged and zagged, yellow and metallic, over the swamps and green vacant fields of east Bandra. The sun burned, the wet earth reflected, and the two brothers knew they had to run. Down the yellow bridge, in the direction of the Kalanagar traffic signal. Radha surged. Yee-haah. Manju wanted to touch his brother-I've caught you, I've . . . But to his right (he surrendered a yard to his brother) he saw fields of water lilies, and right beside them newly rutted mud roads on which men fought to move their motorbikes. He caught up with Radha and they ran past security guards playing with their lathis, and a cluster of Muslim youth with their feet dangling down the bridge. Because their father was now invisible behind them, Radha turned to his brother and-

"Sofia."

At once both of them skidded to a halt.

"Spotty Neck Sofia."

Putting his hands on his hips, Manju turned his lower lip inside out; while Radha, just a year older but so much wiser, smiled.

"Everyone saw Young Lions on TV." He touched his brother on the shoulder. "You're the brother of a Young Lion. Which girl in school do you like?"

By way of reply, Manju said, "Shut up," because their father was coming up behind them.

The three walked down from the bridge and went into the suburb of Kalanagar.

An armored car painted in camouflage drove past them; they had reached the Matoshree compound, home to the most important man in Mumbai. Surrounded by sandbags, a machine-gun unit guarded the home of Bal Thackeray, permanent boss of the city. They passed the guns, and roadside canteens serving hot breakfast, and then the Kumars stood before the Middle Income Group (MIG) Cricket Club.

Making his sons wait by the gate, Mohan Kumar negotiated with the security guard:

"We were on the TV. Young Lions. We're here to see . . ."

"Tommy Sir doesn't come until ten o'clock."

"He told us nine o'clock. We came all the way for him. My boys shouldn't miss a day's cricket practice."

"Can't practice here," the guard said. "Down the road."

Where they found a rubbish dump, and a patch of ragged green beyond it.

Radha and his father took the ragged green. Manju strapped on his pads near the rubbish, one eye on the big holes in the ground. Rat holes. Tightening his calf muscle, Manju raised his right foot on a low brick wall to double check that his pads were fastened. Going down on his haunches, Manju now launched himself over the rat holes. Master Kumar, Rat Tamer, jumped up and down; underground, rodents shivered. While doing his jumps, Manju turned himself 180 degrees, to see his father lecturing Radha.

"The bat is touching your toes, Radha. You won't be able to drive cleanly."

Manju saw the irritation on his brother's face.

But the Man had to be obeyed, and Radha readjusted his stance. From a distance, Manju gripped his bat and waited. Radha Kumar attacked; Manjunath Kumar imitated.

The ball had flown from Radha's bat to a distant corner of the wasteland, and Manju took off, until his father announced: "He who hit it will retrieve it. That is the rule."

So Radha raised his bat, sucked his teeth, and ran after the ball.

Radha Krishna Kumar meant to honor his end of his father's contract with God. Two years ago, God sent his living viceroy, Sachin Tendulkar, to meet Radha at a practice match at the MCA grounds: Sachin stood at the wicket, and Radha was tossed the ball by Tommy Sir. The boy, who had let his hair grow long, like Sachin's, and had watched Sachin's videos, especially Perth 1992 and Sydney 2004, at least 120 times each, spun the ball right past Sachin's forward defensive stroke and into his stumps. "Well done, sir," God's viceroy said, and, as everyone clapped, made Radha the gift of his own batting gloves.

At the age of fourteen and a half, Radha was now conscious that his father's rules, which had framed the world around him since he could remember, were prison bars. He saw the red cricket ball inside a thicket of wild grass and thorns. Getting down on his knees, he put his hand into the thorns.

Why must a boy not shave till he's twenty-one?

Because the cut of a razor makes hormones run faster in his blood.

And why must a boy not drive a car till his father allows him to?

Because indiscipline will destroy anything, even a secret contract with God.

Drenched in sweat and his father's mad theories, Radha seized the ball and threw it back at Mohan, who had already started stepping back to catch it. Radha admired the method, the textbook correctness of his father's pose. Before teaching his boys, Mohan Kumar had taught himself the science of cricket. But when the ball landed in his palms, it hit the flesh and bounced out, and Radha smiled, and became a year older.

"I told you not to come! He hates fathers!"

Radha and Manju saw Pramod Sawant, their head school coach, half walking and half running toward them, pumping his arms.

Mohan Kumar summoned his boys to his side and put his arms on their shoulders, as if posing for a group photo.

"They're my children, I made them," he shouted back, "and neither you nor your Tommy Sir is going to steal them from me."

Coach Sawant clacked his tongue.

"Steal them? This boy loves you, Mohan. If anyone says a bad word about his father, Manju will murder them. But for their sake, you must leave now. Tommy Sir's plan is visionary."

Mohan Kumar pulled both his restless sons into his body.

"Why must I leave? My sons always play better when I am watching them. I've never heard of a cricket scout who doesn't like fathers."

But Coach Sawant reached over and squeezed Mohan Kumar's right shoulder.

"Do it for your sons, Mohan . . ."

After a moment, Kumar let go of Radha. Part of any Bombay school coach's job is to declaw the parent and gently prise from his grip the boys who will contribute to the greater glory of Bombay cricket. Sawant smiled, pointed at Manju, and made ingratiating contractions with his eyes.

". . . both your sons, Mohan. And you must go now."

More of Mohan Kumar's rules for his sons

Cricket Rules

Same as Life Rules. Keep your head absolutely still. Play straight. Do not loft or hit across the line before the time is right. Hoard. Hoard runs on top of hoarded runs.

Food Rules

No Chinese, noodles, potatoes, fried or otherwise, or junk food. No oil, no ghee, no sugar. Green, bright vegetables, rich in antioxidants. If I ever catch you, Radha, eating dosa at that dirty stall near your school, I'll wake-your-skin-up.

Golden Proverbs

Learn your proverbs, boys. For instance: "A thousand maggots in the cow-dung patty, but they're all dead by sunset." Interpretation? Whatever your worries, they're gone by six o'clock. That's not a very true proverb, by the way. Here's one more: "On its way into town, the king's white horse turned into a donkey." Think about the meaning of that, my boys. If both of you fail in cricket, boys, the three of us will have to sit outside Dahisar station and beg for our food. But if you really want to understand the life that waits for you as adults, this is the only proverb you need: "Big thief walks free. Small thief gets caught."

How to Talk about Your Father with Strangers

There is a chutney mafia in this city, run by men called Shetty: and they are determined to crush your father's life. Do not discuss any aspect of his past, or what happened to your mother, with anyone.

Twilight was her favorite hour.

Manju remembered coming home screaming Amma! Amma! only to find their hut empty because his mother was outside, in the strange light, walking in circles by herself. Thinking by herself. Planning something by herself. Perhaps planning to leave him and his brother and run away. Manju breathed slowly. Brilliant sunlight all around-but he was sitting next to his brother, and shaded and protected by Radha Krishna's bulk, he was free to dream. He kept his eyelids half closed, until Radha said: "Manju, this is all bullshit. Total bullshit."

Manju opened his eyes wide, looked around, and nodded, before he knew what his brother was talking about.

"That man is never going to give us any money, Manju. It's a waste of time. Let's go. What do you say, scientist?"

Forty minutes had passed since Head Coach Pramod Sawant had brought them over to the club, so that they could be shown to the "visionary." Who was apparently the man in the red T-shirt, with the logo that said, Manchester United Gold Key Challenge Supporter.

A dozen boys from Ali Weinberg's cricket team had been summoned to the MIG club, and were sitting in a circle on the lawn; and they watched Tommy Sir and the man in the red T-shirt describe languid circles around them. That was all the two men had done for three-quarters of an hour.

Leaning back to eavesdrop on the two men as they passed, Manju instead heard his brother's voice say, "Scientist. You know what I'm thinking of right now? She's got a spotty neck."

Manju elbowed him away, but his brother kept whispering, "Spotty Neck, Spotty Neck."

All at once, in both boredom and desire, Radha stood up and began dancing as he sang, Spotty Neck, Spotty Neck. Radha was the leader of this group of boys; one day he would be captain of their cricket team. The other cricketers joined him: "Spotty Neck, Spotty Neck, she's got a spotty neck." Tommy Sir and the rich man in the red T-shirt took no notice. The boys became louder and louder, as Radha swished his hands like a bandmaster before the swaying, singing cricketers.

Only one boy, Manju observed, was not obeying Radha.

While the other cricketers wore regulation school caps, this fellow had his own cap, monogrammed in gold thread with the initials "J.A." He had small alert eyes, and a beautiful nose, hooked and swooped, which looked as if it had been made to order. Full black sleeves worn under his cricketer's white T-shirt rendered his arms sleek, pantherlike; and he was rubbing them in alternation, as if getting ready.

The moment he smiled, sickle-shaped dimples would cut into his cheeks. Manju was sure he would see the dimples today, because the last time he and this Mister "J.A." had been close together, the rich Muslim boy had not smiled. That was after their match with Anjuman-i-Islam. Dusty and sweaty, the cricketers had waited in a queue by the sugarcane stand, a reward from Coach Sawant for winning the match. Manju had stood right behind Javed. The Muslim boy's neck, glossy with sweat, was shaved bright below the hairline. When seen from behind, his thick neck conveyed an impression of hidden strength as it expanded into his shoulders. The queue had moved in starts, and the sugarcane machine had made a tinkling noise as it crushed cane. Before drinking his juice, Javed had lifted his ice-cold glass to the sunlight in an exaggerated flourish that Manju thought might have been meant for his benefit; then, as Manju observed, the powerful throat pulsed and swallowed the juice in one continuous motion.

Now, from opposite points of the circle of white, their eyes met.

"Enough of this shit."

Manju started, and then realized he had not said it. Javed Ansari, the Muslim with the majestic nose, had risen up to his feet, making his black-panther limbs even longer.

"Enough of this shit," he repeated.

Radha Kumar stopped singing, took a step back, and sat down.

Now the fellow with the commanding nose was, in a very deep voice, chuckling.

U-ha. U-ha. U-ha.

Manju drew closer to his big brother. Radha was not doing much better. With an open mouth he saw the black-panther limbs come closer and closer to him and his brother.

Choosing a route between the Kumars on his way out, "J.A." put a hand on Radha's shoulder and nearly kicked Manju in the face as he raised one huge shoe after the other, and left the circle of passive white.

"Ansari!" Tommy Sir shouted. "Come back. You sit and wait with the others."

But the boy had left the circle, and was not returning: He kept walking to a car, its door already opened for him by the driver. Slam. Engine on, car gone. He didn't need any rich man's sponsorship.

A magician came thirty years ago to a village in the Western Ghats with an elephant. Not an elephant that did normal work like moving logs with its trunk or pulling down trees, no. It had a secret power, the magician said. He left the creature in the village square and walked a hundred feet away from it-too far for it to hear him. People gathered around the magician. Young Mohan Kumar was one of them. "Whisper a command for the animal into my ear," the sorcerer said, "any command." Mohan Kumar went up to his ear and whispered: "Roll on the ground like a baby." And then-without a word-the sorcerer just looked at his elephant, which got down on its knees and thrashed about the ground, kicking up dust everywhere. "Raise your trunk and roar three times." Again, without a word, the magician forced his elephant to roar. Three times. Mohan watched with his mouth open. That massive beast, with all its muscles, was helpless: It obeyed the brain waves of its master, it suffered the enchantments of his black magic. When he went back to work, Mohan, a thinking boy, had looked around at the other farmers toiling in the wheat fields, and realized: We are no more unmanacled than that elephant.

This was a truth about life he had never forgotten, even after he had left the village and come by train to the big city. Only recently, Ramnath, his neighbor in the slum, observing that poor Muslims were becoming revolutionaries in Egypt and Syria and kicking out their governments and presidents, had whispered: "Maybe the same thing will happen in India, eh?" Mohan Kumar had smirked. "Here, we can't even see our chains."

After being forced by Coach Sawant to leave his sons at the MIG Cricket Club, Mohan had returned to Dahisar, mounted his bicycle, tied two stainless-steel containers of chutneys to its side, and visited a Mysore Sweets, an Anand Bhuvan and a National Hindu Restaurant, before cycling down to Deepa, the restaurant-bar near the Dahisar train station. No one bought a thing from him. Heaving his bicycle over his head, he walked over the Dahisar River on the all-but-submerged bridge of bricks, then slammed the bike down and cycled through the cardboard WELCOME TO OUR HOME arch (shielding his eyes from the gaze of the grinning politicians), past the broken homes and little shops, until he got to his own, where the sight of his neighbor Ramnath pressing white shirts with a stupid industriousness was so unbearable that he went to a tea shop for relief.

He squatted by his bicycle and blew on the hot tea. He seethed. Tommy Sir thinks he can cut me out of my own sons' future. I know what he is telling that visionary investor about me. He is calling me a chutney salesman. A thug. A peasant. An idiot.

When he got angry, Mohan Kumar's right eyebrow rose up rakishly, which highlighted the comic element in his small and mustached face.

Looking at his glass of tea, he delivered the speech he wanted to give Tommy Sir (but had had to desist for the sake of his sons):

"Other parents pay tens of thousands of rupees for cricket coaches, but I, a penniless migrant to Mumbai, am the pro-gen-i-tor of pro-di-gies. Mr. Tommy Sir, I say these words slowly, why? So that even a man of your mental capacities may understand them. Here are two more words pronounced slowly for you. Amoxicillin. Azithromycin. Do you know what they are? Do you know how to prescribe them? I do. I have taught myself medicine and pharmacology. Mr. Tommy allegedly Sir: Where were you when my sons fell ill? Where were you when they needed someone to sit by their side and record their temperature every half hour? Mr. Tommy: When my Radha becomes famous and glorious, I'll call the reporters to the MIG Cricket Club. To the very place where you humiliated me. And I'll have my press conference right there."

Even in tea, there is no peace today. The moment Mohan Kumar began sipping, the legless man had to make noise on his flute in a corner of the shop. This legless fellow performed every morning in the train station, and came here afterward. Holding up his glass of tea, Mohan Kumar looked at the flautist.

Brother. Have pity on me. Think how much I have suffered in life. Please stop.

The flour mill began its rumbling, giving off pungent fumes-it ground red chillies in the second shift, adding burning eyes to its customary noise pollution.

Mohan Kumar kept looking. The legless flautist kept playing.

Until the father of champions put his glass down, walked over, slapped the flute out of the man's hand, and returned to his spot to pick up his glass, only to find that his phone was ringing.

It was the boys' cricket coach, and he said: "It's payday, Mohan. Congratulations."

"But where is Coach Sawant?"

Three-quarters of an hour had passed, and Mohan Kumar, an aureole of sweat on his back, had pushed through the crowds around Bandra train station, and returned to Kalanagar, walking past Matoshree for the second time that day, to find a tall gray-haired man, whom he recognized from his one previous meeting nearly six months earlier as the man who hated all sporting fathers, Tommy Sir, waiting at the entrance of the MIG club, along with a stocky middle-aged man wearing a wonderful red T-shirt.

"Gone with the other boys to school," said Tommy Sir, without smiling at Mohan Kumar.

"I'm Anand Mehta." The man in the T-shirt, who smelled of cologne, stuck his hand out. "Just seen your boy bat. Very impressed."

When he smelled the rich man's hand, Mohan Kumar was overcome by shame. He almost cried.

"Forgive me," he said, refusing to touch the perfumed flesh. "For my wet state, forgive me. For my lateness, forgive me."

"No problem, mate," the rich man said, slapping Mohan on his wet back. "My wife, Asha, says, if people sweat it means they're honest. Can you read my T-shirt? Manchester United Gold Key Supporter. I have a cricket academy near Azad Maidan, did Tommy Sir tell you? Last year, I was happy to escort, at my own expense, seventy-six of the brightest young cricketing bodies in this country under the age of fifteen to Bowral, New South Wales, home of the one, the only, the eternal, the infinite, Sir Donald Bradman, where, in addition to a master class conducted in the Don's own town, the boys also enjoyed a sumptuous meal of Aussie lamb wrapped in brown pita bread. Australia is the reality principle in cricket, Tommy Sir: otherwise we Indians would think we were good at this game. Am I right, or am I right? Come in, come in, let's eat and do business."

They sat in the cafeteria of the MIG club, and a waiter came for their order.

"Nothing for me," Tommy Sir said.

"Order," Anand Mehta retaliated. "Order samosas."

Like many others of his class in Mumbai, Mehta gave an impression of dogged and uncerebral strength. A small square forehead, held tight by close-cropped hair, expanded into a powerful black brush mustache over a stone-crusher jaw; a white fold of fat at the back of his skull broadened down a thick neck into a wide chest and wider paunch whose width he exaggerated by letting his shirt hang loose. His fleshy palms had clearly done no hard work, and yet he seemed to sweat a lot. His English was international; he drew his phrases equally from the American, British, and Indian dialects, and had acquired the democratic Australian habit of calling everyone around him "mate." Halfway through each sentence came a pause in which he stared at a corner of the ceiling with an open mouth, as if just then realizing what he had begun to say; and he had the child's habit of raising his voice when he repeated himself.

"This man," Tommy Sir, pointing a finger at the investor, "is a visionary. He wants to start the world's first cricket sponsorship program, and of all the boys in Mumbai he has picked yours as his first candidates. You are a lucky man, Mohan Kumar."

"No, sir," the chutney salesman replied. "No, sir."

"No?"

"He is a lucky man." He took a breath, and turned to the investor: "Mr. Anand, sir, I was not allowed to be present when my own sons were exhibited to you like goods at the market"-an angry glance at Tommy Sir-"so I could not present a full picture of their talents. Let me share with you the whole A-Z of Future Champion-Making. Now, sir-"

Everyone stopped talking. Like a gangster introducing a gun into the discussions, Mohan Kumar suddenly placed a white cotton handkerchief on the table. Within the handkerchief was something black and heavy; he unwrapped the white layers to reveal a very large cell phone, which he proceeded to squint at.

"Just checking if any customer has asked for a new batch of chutneys," he said, rewrapping his phone in the handkerchief. "To keep germs away," he explained.

"Excellent idea." Anand Mehta grinned. "Does look a bit odd-but then who cares what they think? There is a wonderful European philosopher named Mister Nietzsche who said, the man who doesn't care about what other men think becomes a superman. I congratulate you on shedding all inhibitions. Now, relaaaaaax. Don't bore me with details. Has Tommy Sir told you the arrangement I am proposing?"

Mohan indicated with his head that, no, the arrangement and its details were not known to him. Since he was not allowed to be present when his sons were exhibited like buffalo at a weekly fair.

"Simple. I'll give you a certain sum a month. You can pay all your son's expenses using this certain sum. In return, I negotiate for him in the future with Adidas or Nike or whoever wants him when he joins the Indian Premier League. And I'll take a certain interest, by which I mean a fair percentage, in his marketing revenues. Fair enough?"

"No, sir," Mohan said, clearing his throat. "No. It is not fair in the least." He joined his thumb and index finger in the manner of a maestro. "My sons are not sportsmen. They will grow into the Bhimsen Joshi and Ravi Shankar of cricket. Sir-"

Tommy Sir slapped his hand on the table. "You know where these two boys are from, Mr. Anand? Dahisar. From a slum. Hungry Lions."

"Sir, let me finish."

"Angry Lion, I think, was what the television people said," Anand Mehta suggested. "The boy Radha has these very . . . film-star eyes. And long hair, like Sachin's. Pepsi, Coke will love those eyes and hair. He will act in films one day, I say."

Mohan Kumar found himself still sweating from his bicycling, which put him at a disadvantage in the negotiations.

"Sir: I will finish. Returning to the process by which I created two geniuses of willpower, sir, it must be noted that the first principle of my system is diet-"

Tommy Sir turned to Mohan Kumar and indicated, with "down, boy" motions of his palm, that it was time for silence.

The investor proposed terms.

"I am being asked, to invest, in a highly speculative manner, in a young person, whom we shall call Person X."

Anand Mehta smiled at the cricket scout, and then drew a square with his fingers.

"Is there a guarantee that said Person X will get into the IPL team? Can you give me this"-he drew a smaller square inside the first-"guarantee?"

"Sir, a growing body, scientifically speaking, needs three things, known as the triangle of-"

"Shut up," Tommy Sir told the father, "right now." He turned to the investor. "Radha Kumar is the best batsman I've seen in ten, maybe fifteen years. And he has the right background. Because a middle-class boy can no longer make the Bombay team. You saw for yourself what that Javed Ansari did today. He has everything, money, background, pedigree, but he will never make the team. He comes to practice in an air-conditioned car, with nurse and driver. Can't sit in the sun for five minutes. This boy, on the other hand, this Radha-"

"Maybe you didn't hear me, Mr. Tommy."

The investor drew that magic square again.

It was one of those moments when Tommy Sir realized his age: A decade ago, he would have got up and walked out at this point.

Having taken up painting many years ago as a way to calm himself when cricket-related tension grew unbearable, Tommy Sir now thought about his own watercolor copy of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, a reproduction which in some ways improved on the original, and which he had framed and hung in his living room so that its stimulation, direct or recollected, would regulate his heartbeat and lower his blood pressure at moments precisely like this one.

"If you want guarantees, play Carrom. And if you don't want the boys," Tommy Sir looked the investor in the eye, "we will go to Reliance and Nike and the big boys. Directly."

"Relaaaaaaaax." Anand Mehta smiled at the old scout. "I make an offer of . . . four thousand rupees a month. Four thousand. Done? Are we done?"

"Eight thousand," Mohan Kumar said. "For one boy. And fifteen thousand for both."

"Two?" The investor broke into an incredulous smile. "Two? I've done plenty of charity in my time, mate, but I did not come here to make a donation."

"Two. Two is the opportunity." Tommy Sir bunched his fingers together. "Two is the visionary aspect. Listen. Sport alone isn't enough today. People want sport and a story. I know, because I am also a writer. Two brothers from the slums making it big. One of them looks like a film star. It's a story."

Anand Mehta rubbed his mustache.

"Maybe you're right," he said. "As I often ask my wife, Asha: What are Indians? To which I give the answer: Indians, my dear, are basically a sentimental race with high cholesterol levels. Now that its hunger for social realist melodrama is no longer satisfied by the Hindi cinema, the Indian public is turning to cricket. Brothers X and Y from the slums. Playing cricket for Bombay. I can see the potential. I once donated a lakh of rupees to a school in the slum near Cuffe Parade, back when I had just returned from New York. You know what the Mumbai Sun did? Called me a hero, and printed my photo. Page four. But Brother Y is too young. Voice hasn't broken yet."

"Manju is almost fourteen," Tommy Sir said. "In this city we throw boys out of the women's compartment of the train when they are seven, and tell them, go to the men's compartment. Push and survive. In sport there is not always a difference between a boy and a man. What is cricket, anyway, Mr. Mehta? Game of chance. Take two, one may win."

Anand Mehta looked at the ceiling so sadly.

"What is cricket?"

Meaning, no. He was not taking two boys.

He pointed at one man, and then at the other, and asked:

"Done?"

So the scout put his large palms on the table and got to the point.

"Doing well in Mumbai is nothing: being noticed while you do well is everything. There are competitions, shields, trophies, prizes I have to get these boys into. There's a fine art to getting a boy selected in this city. No guarantee, but . . . if I support a boy, he is well supported."

Anand Mehta did not smile.

"For all this work that I will do for the boys, I don't want any money, Mr. Mehta. Not one rupee. But I have a simple question, Mr. Mehta: Tell me, what makes a great batsman great? Hard work? Sacrifice? Mother's prayers? Each is necessary, yet all together are still insufficient. Even I don't know. It is a shroud before my eyes. Believe me when I say I could be running a very profitable coaching academy for fat and rich mummy's boys, instead of which I am out here day after day, in the field, in the sun, trying to solve this mystery of mysteries and find a great, I mean great batsman. The shroud must part, and that is the only reason I-"

Anand Mehta had other things to do with his life.

"I'll compensate you a thousand a month for your time, Tommy Sir. Done deal?"

The scout looked away.

"Two thousand. Final offer."

"Plus I want a T-shirt," Tommy Sir said.

"T-shirt?" Anand Mehta frowned.

"Yes. Like the one you're wearing. Manchester United Gold. For Lata, my daughter."

Everyone shook hands with everyone else; they bought South Indian paans, rich with clove and pulverized sugar, and placed them on their tongues to close the deal; before the sugar had melted, Tommy Sir had disappeared.

At once, Mohan Kumar caught the rich man by his wrist and said: "Finally, I can open my mouth."

Revenge is the capitalism of the poor: Conserve the original wound, defer immediate gratification, fatten the first insult with new insults, invest and reinvest spite, and keep waiting for the perfect moment to strike back. Because every mocking remark that Mohan Kumar had heard about his plan to produce champions had been stored away in his keen memory, he knew only one way of telling his sons he had secured their future for them:

"I've screwed a rich man, my boys," he said, even though he had taken a liking to Anand Mehta. He clapped his hands. "A man in a red foreign T-shirt. I flipped him over and screwed him royally. Come and see."

His boys gathered around; Mohan Kumar showed them a paper napkin from the MIG club, which was covered with writing in a blue ballpoint pen. A contract.

Until mountains fall and rivers dry this contract will be honored by Mohandas Kumar of Alur Taluka and Anand Mehta of Mumbai. One third of all future earnings of my two sons Master Radha Krishna and Master Manjunath will be the legal property of Shri Mehta, in return for his commitment to sponsorship. May God fill our mouths with worms if either breaks this contract.

"Isn't it beautiful, boys? Words are magic, remember this: Words are magic. There is a man who comes to our village and with a spell and a secret poem he makes an elephant dance for him. Today, I made a rich Gujarati man dance for me. At first he said, No, no, I don't want Manju, his voice hasn't broken, but I said, You will take Manju, because I made two champions! Yes, he said, and he's giving us five thousand rupees each month! But I wasn't done. Made him sit down and bought him a samosa and told him about this flour mill and how it pollutes the air, until he said, Oh, terrible, how terrible, and then I said, There are rats and stupid neighbors, how can I raise champions here-so he gave us a loan, interest free, of fifty thousand rupees, so we can get out of this hole, boys! To a more 'hygienic location.' His words! Screwed him."

Manju and Radha looked at the contract that guaranteed their future, and the older boy asked: "But where are we moving to? And when?"

Mohan Kumar rubbed his hands, and pointed one of his warmed palms at Radha: "Get ready for a checkup. Manju, stand outside. Stand at attention."

Radha began removing his shirt. Manju closed the tin door behind him and stood outside with his arms pressed to his sides like a soldier at a drill. It was evening in the Shastri Nagar slum, and men were returning to their homes after work; their faces, dark from fatigue, glowed with the anticipation of seeing their children again. There are times when only a sick man knows how warm and bright the rest of the world is. Manju watched his neighbor, Ramnath, showing his daughter how to stack up a pile of fresh shirts and cover them in newspaper, so that they could be delivered in the morning.

He strained his ears: From inside the hut, his father's voice rose.

"Are you thinking of shaving? I can see in your eyes that you are thinking of shaving."

"No, Appa."

"A boy mustn't shave until he's . . ."

"Twenty-one."

"Why must a boy not shave till he's . . . ?"

"Hormones."

"Which are not good for . . ."

"Cricketers."

Tap, tap, tap. On a coconut tree beside their hut, Manju saw a woodpecker hammering away. He thought at once of Mr. "J.A." with his beak nose. Working with his beak-tap, tap, tap-the woodpecker raised his enormous profile, which looked like a tribal mask, and disappeared, only to reappear half a foot higher on the coconut stem-tap, tap, tap-before his dark face again vanished, to rematerialize another foot higher: as if he were ascending via masks. In school, Javed had invented a new "look" for himself these days by wearing his blue monogrammed cap backward, like an actor in an American film. Watching the woodpecker, and thinking of Javed, Manju smiled until he heard Radha pull up his trousers and promise to take more scientific care of his cricketer's body.

The tin door opened; one brother came out, and so the other had to go in.

Now safe, Radha buttoned up his shirt, looking at the dark sky; he whistled. He put his hands on his thighs, spread his legs, and walked like a duck. To build strength on the insides of his thighs. Mohan Kumar, after minutely analyzing his older son's body, had pronounced the quadriceps as the problematic area of Radha's athletic anatomy.

The brothers had exchanged their roles; inside the closed tin door, Manju was now the one making noises-outside, Radha eavesdropped.

"Didn't you take off your shirt and chaddi out there, while I was looking at your brother?"

"Sorry, Appa."

"Don't move. Manju. What are you doing? Stay still. You think you'll insult me now? You think you'll treat me like Tommy Sir or Coach Sawant?"

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

The boy shrieked from inside the closed tin door. Outside, Radha kept walking with his arms on his legs like a duck, as his father had taught him, conscious with every step of the need to build up his weak inner thighs and overcome the flaw in his otherwise perfect body.

Inside, done with the teeth, tongue, forehead, neck, chest, and stomach, Mohan Kumar was checking his second son's particular area of recalcitrance: his failure, his refusal to take proper care of a sportsman's penis.

"Pull the foreskin back, each and every time you do number one, each and every time you bathe-pull it all the way back, otherwise it will become filthy, and filth will become septic, and we'll need to operate on it. Which your father doesn't have money for."

Manju stood with arched back: His father had moved his foreskin back scientifically and now touched him with a finger. Manju felt his body splitting in two where his father touched. He said something.

"What did you say?" Mohan stared at his son. "Did you say 'Enough of this shit?' Did you?"

Manju shook his head. Certainly he had not said that. So his father zipped him up: weekly inspection done.

Leaning against the wall as his sons did their pre-sleep stretching exercises, Mohan Kumar made a call to his village in Alur, to check on the status of a piece of ancestral land that was tangled in litigation; the boys saw their father use his cell phone as if it were two parts of a walkie-talkie, placing it in front of his mouth when he spoke, and transferring it back to his ear to listen.

Already in bed, waiting for his father to turn the lights out, Manju watched his elder brother dry himself and lie down in the bed next to his. He watched his father stand by Radha's skull and whisper into it: "Go to sleep with one thought, son. What is that one thought?"

"That I should be the world's best batsman."

Manju knew it was coming. He stiffened his body; then his father whispered into his skull:

"And your turn, Manju. Quickly, so I can turn the lights off."

When the boy said nothing, his father's voice changed, turning high pitched and whining.

". . . fighting with his own father. Complex boy. Fighting with his own . . ."

And he tickled Manju in the stomach until the boy gave in and said, ". . . second-best batsman . . ." and "I love you, I love you."

Manju's legs were still thrashing and his big powerful eyes were shining. Because his father's expert fingers were warming his tummy.

"Angry with me?" Mohan said.

"Stop. Stop!"

"You're angry with me, Manju. I look into your heart and see the truth. No one has loved your poor old father in his life but you, Manju, and now even you fight with him. Listening? Yes, I know you are. The one thing I never had in life was a friend, Manju. A friend is someone who sees the best in you when everyone else sees the worst. I never had that. I only had you, my second son, to talk to."

At last the man was gone to his side of the green curtain, and the world was quiet and dark, but beneath their closed eyelids both boys were awake.

"Did he touch your balls this time?" Radha said to the dark, as his brother sniffled in his bed.

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"No. That's all he ever does with me. With you?"

"The same. Just examines my balls and cock. And lets me go. But I hate it."

"I hate it, too."

"Manju," Radha said. "We're going to be rich soon. You know this, right?"

He reached over and shook his brother. Radha had been, since the start of time, chief consoler and psychiatrist to the world's second-best, but most intelligent, and most complex, young cricketer.

"Manju, you know the first thing I'm going to do with the money? Buy you a bat. And you know from where? You know from where?"

Radha gave his little brother a good shake.

"You do know from where."

Every Sunday Radha took his brother to Dhobitalao, the city's sporting equipment district, full of shops glutted with fresh willow and lipstick-red match-quality balls covered in crackly cellophane. There the two boys went window-shopping from Metro Cinema all the way to a back lane, where, below a balcony with a red paper star from last Christmas and in between a store that sold golden sporting trophies and another that sold hard liquor in 180 ml "quarters," like the starting and finishing points of the average Indian male's trajectory in life, was an open door that exhaled fragrant Kashmiri and English willow: Alfredo Athletic Center. Some men are handmade by God, Manju felt, and some are machine made-Mr. Alfredo, for sure, was machine cut. With waxed mustache, black bow tie, and the halogen lights shining off his bald head, Mr. Alfredo would kindly open a glass case to show the brothers a row of his best imported bats; kindly let them gaze at the best imported bats and discuss the best imported bats, and on some days, when in the kindliest of kindly moods, even let them touch the best imported bats. The moment they got that sponsorship cash, Radha Krishna Kumar and the world's second-best batsman would wrap it in a handkerchief and run to Dhobitalao and-and-

"SG Sunny Tonny." Radha tickled his brother. "Genuine English Willow! Wombat Select! World Cup Edition Yuvraj Singh Signature Edition! I'm taking your best imported, Kindly Alfredo-or your mustache!"

Closing the door of his home behind him so his sons could sleep, Mohan Kumar looked around, made sure he was alone, and, by the light of a fluorescent street lamp, slit open an envelope he had brought from the bank. The first installment of the sponsorship money. Five thousand rupees in fresh cash. Rubbing the crisp notes between his fingers, he mentally divided them into three piles. One for the boys' present (cricket equipment), one for the boys' future (savings bank), and one pile (for this was a man who honors his contracts) for God, to be dropped into His collection box at the Chheda Nagar temple. He put the cash back in its envelope, leaned against the door of his home, and looked up at the night sky. He dialed on a phantom phone, waited till Lord Subramanya picked up in heaven, then, both imitating and mocking the way in which the Indian elite speak English, told the God of Cricket: "Thank you soooooooo much, thaaaaaaaaank you s'much, Thank you soooo . . ."

Just inside the forest stood an old arch made of red laterite. No one knew who built this arch; but this kind of stone was not found anywhere nearby, and some people remembered that there was once a statue of a king on top of it. After sunset, people avoided this arch, because elephants and wild boar were known to sleep under it; but one boy was brave enough to go near it at night, and he found the spot loud with bullfrogs and louder with the twinkling of the millions of stars against which the arch etched its black shape. Sitting down on the forest floor, he looked up at all the stars, and felt himself a boy apart from all other boys in the world, resplendent, an uncrowned Adam.

Mohan Kumar had grown up in the poorest end of a poor taluk: Ratnagirihalli in Alur, in the foothills of the Western Ghats. As a boy, each morning at four, he stood on the back of an open lorry that took him to a coffee estate. There he signed his name in a long green register. Then he cleared twigs, dropped sunna from his forefingers in white circles around the plants, and watered the bushes, taking more care of the Arabica, and less care of the Robusta. At ten o'clock, the man supervising the estate paid him three and a half rupees, and he climbed back onto the open lorry. There was school for the rest of the day. He learned to read and write. This was something new for his family. His dowry went up. Sex: with a prostitute out in the fields; marriage: to a girl from his own caste; employment: with the landowner who had hired his father; pilgrimage: to Kukke Subramanya, in the mountains of the Western Ghats, as soon as his wife fell pregnant. All this was as it had been for generations in his family.

But one morning a neighbor yelled, "Who is going to pay for the window?"

The window that had been broken by Mohan Kumar's son in the most recent game of cricket.

Mohan looked at the broken glass and remembered what a boy in Mumbai had done to the windows in his neighborhood. A boy named Sachin Tendulkar.

Now Mohan Kumar stood by passing trains and trucks and saw them in a different light. He observed highways and mighty things in a different light. He saw the sun, high over the peaks of the Western Ghats, charge from cloud to cloud like a soul in transmigration.

Mohan, Mohan-how people laughed. Why Mumbai? Take your son to Bangalore to learn cricket-it's closer, cheaper!

Bombay it had to be. Mohan Kumar put his wife and Radha and his second son, Manju, into a bus and then into two trains before they descended into VT station in Mumbai to take a third train to his cousin's small tin-roofed hut in a slum in Dahisar that was famous for its mechanical flour mill, which ground wheat early morning and red chillies late morning. "Anything I touch in Mumbai turns into powder like that flour mill makes," Mohan wrote to his brother Revanna back in the village. He had tried photocopying books, binding them, and selling them near the station; the police arrested him and kept him in lockup for a night. Ten lakh books are sold in black in Mumbai every day and he has to be put in lockup! Big Thief Walks Free. Small Thief Gets Caught. A year later he discovered his wife was fucking a Christian man near the train station. He waited for her, and bolted the door behind her. Never tell your mother lies, never tell your wife secrets. That was a golden proverb, why had he ever forgotten it? He made up for it with his hands. Nothing more than a man's natural right, but next morning the social workers-six of them-barged in and told him to stop hitting his wife, or else go to jail again. Can you believe what they do to a man in this city? One night he returned home and found that she had run away with his money and his honor. So he had nothing left; he lay in bed, and stared at the ceiling, and thought, I should just kill myself.

"Get up, Mohan," a voice said. Though there was no one else in the room, he heard fingers snapping in the dark.

"Why?" he asked.

The invisible fingers snapped a second time: "Because I say so. Don't you know who I am?"

Destiny, I suppose, he thought, and rose, and breathed in the crisp, energizing air of crisis.

Taking the bus all the way to a spot in Bandra where one could observe the new skyscrapers of Prabhadevi and Lower Parel, Mohan Kumar clenched a fist and held it over the kingdoms of Mumbai; after closing an eye to perfect the illusion, he brought his fist down on the city.

Except to grow a thin black mustache-a "statement," he declared, of protest against his ill luck with women-he never complained; he never again looked back; he simply transferred all his hopes in life onto young Radha Kumar.

Old Sharadha came in every day to do the cooking. She made chutneys from green mango, lemon, and raw guava, and Mohan Kumar tried to sell them. This meant that every day he cycled around Mumbai swallowing insults more pungent than any chutney he took with him; yet every night when he lay down to bed, he could say: "Today my son has become a stronger and better batsman." Mohan made Radha hold the cricket bat low down on the handle, exactly as Sachin had done. At the age of five he made Radha grow his hair long and pose with the bat for a black-and-white photo exactly as Sachin, Bacchus-haired, had posed at that age. At the age of seven he took Radha by train to Shivaji Park to listen to Ramakant Achrekar, exactly as seven-year-old Sachin had been taken to sit at the great Achrekar's feet to learn the science of batsmanship.

Around this time, his second son also began to break windows when he was playing cricket.

"Did you see how much money he had with him?"

"Are you awake? You were snoring."

"I was pretending to be asleep. Just like you. Did you see the money?"

"No. I didn't see."

"Manju, you know what I did find on his cot the other day?"

"What?"

"Dirty magazines, Manju. You never saw these magazines?"

"Don't lie. Appa has no dirty magazines."

"You're an innocent, Manju."

Radha sat up in bed; his younger brother was turned away from him.

"Whatever you're thinking about, Scientist, don't keep it to yourself. Only girls do that . . ."

When Manju faced him, his eyes were narrowed and a furrow cut into his brow, dark and slanting noticeably to the left. Radha remembered that the same flamelike furrow had appeared on their mother's forehead when she was thinking: It was like a bookmark left there by the woman.

Manju looked at Radha. "When you become a famous cricketer and I'm your manager, do I have to give him all your money?"

"I'll kill you if you give him my money. It's just for you and me."

Radha kicked the body beside him, which kicked back; and each knew what the other meant to say. Let their father become old: They would make him beg for every rupee they gave him.

Every. Single. Rupee!

Both of Mohan Kumar's sons, too, were becoming entrepreneurs of revenge.

Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for Selection Day includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Introduction

From Aravind Adiga, the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger, comes a dazzling new novel about two brothers in a Mumbai slum who are raised by their obsessive father to become cricket stars, and whose coming of age threatens their relationship, future, and sense of themselves.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Selection Day opens with a young Manju thinking about the darkness of kattale, secrets, and his mother (p. 1). On page 23 Manju describes his "secret gift, this mind-reading power, [that] had come to him from his mother." How do Manju's secrets and his and Radha's mysterious, absent mother set the stage for the novel?

2. Mohan tells his boys that "if you really want to understand the life that waits for you as adults, this is the only proverb you need: 'Big thief walks free. Small thief gets caught'" (p. 29). What does this mean and why is this a key proverb for Mohan? How does this saying play out in the rest of the story?

3. "All batting-all good batting-starts with superstition" (p. 73). How do superstitions affect each of the Kumars, on and off the cricket pitch?

4. Both Mohan and Tommy Sir have a deep distrust of the male body, and they believe cricket helps boys to master it and ignore filthy urges. Why are they so suspicious of the boys and their natural instincts? How does cricket factor in?

5. Tommy Sir, whose one great ambition is to find the ultimate cricket player, also believes that "only failure-the right kind of failure-has tragic grandeur," and failure excites and arouses him (p. 141). What does this reveal about Tommy Sir and his pursuits?

6. After Radha begins to falter at bat, he rails against the sea. "Someone up there was rewriting the promised contract, and Radha Kumar, who could do nothing to undo the changes to the script, who had learned-as his father had-what it meant to be only a man before he had learned what it meant to be fully a man, bludgeoned the waves around him" (p. 182). What is the difference between "only a man" and "fully a man"? How does this difference characterize both Radha and Mohan?

7. On page 185, Manju says Javed is his " real father." What does he mean by that? What would Javed think of that statement?

8. Sofia influences both Radha and Manju's lives. When she picks Manju up in her car to talk to him about the rumors that he's gay, in the background is Durga Puja, the festival of the Mother Goddess (p. 199). Is Sofia a mother figure in the novel? A goddess? What roles does she play?

9. Tommy Sir comes to believe that "a great sportsman is a kind of monster" and that Manju's hatred-for his father, for Tommy Sir, for cricket itself-makes him a great batsman (p. 224). What does this hatred change for Manju as an athlete, as a man? How does hatred fuel other characters in Selection Day?

10. After Manju talks with Javed's father, he sees that Javed's many personalities, built up and then discarded, are a reaction to his father's manipulations (p. 245). Why does Javed create these personas and destroy himself in this way to get back at others?

11. "Out there, Manju thought, with regret-a regret he would feel so keenly for the rest of his life-there must be fellows who are actually proud of their fathers" (p. 246). Why is this such a painful realization for Manju? Does this play into his decision not to be a father himself (p. 284)?

12. In Hindu mythology the world is thought to rest on the backs of four elephants who stand on the shell of a turtle. Elephants are often masculine symbols, while turtles are feminine. Turtles appear throughout the novel-Manju and Radha observe them near their home in the slum, Radha imagines a turtle speaking to him in his dreams, and Manju imagines seeing turtles that become Mohan, Radha, and Tommy Sir, as he gazes into Javed's batting helmet (p. 261). What do turtles signify for Manju? For Radha? Why are they important?

13. Why does Manju ultimately reject Javed (p. 262), and with the words "you homo" that he and his brother had previously taunted Javed with?

14. Selection Day ends with Radha and Manju meeting for Manju's birthday, and Radha finally pinching Manju until he agrees to fight "till one of us falls" (p. 297). How does this closing scene reflect the novel as a whole?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. In honor of benefactor Anand Mehta, have Indian and Australian food and drinks with your group as you discuss the book. Vegemite, samosas, Fosters, biryani-use your imagination for a meal your book club won't forget.

2. Research Sachin Tendulkar, the "god of cricket," who once made a pilgrimage to Kukke Subramanya temple to worship and improve his career. What else is there in the famous cricket star's life that might have influenced Selection Day?

3. For more of Aravind Adiga's insightful fiction and characters who navigate modern Indian society and the caste system, read The White Tiger as well and discuss how the two novels intersect and diverge.

Editorial Reviews

It's disconcerting to see cricket, the gentlemanly game that gave its name to fair play, revealed as corrupt, exploitative, and a sop to the masses. This, however, seems to be the case in India today, and the sport — as cutthroat, commercialized, and media-saturated as American college basketball and football — provides the milieu for Aravind Adiga's Selection Day, the author's third novel. The book follows The White Tiger, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2008, and Last Man in Tower of 2011, both of which were mordant satires on India's social inequalities and ruthless economy. The present novel is also a satire, but it goes more deeply into hearts of its characters than its predecessors and, in that way, is an even more accomplished work.

Mohan Kumar, deserted by his wife a decade ago, is a chutney salesman, a bully, and the father of two sons, Radha and Manju. When we meet the boys they are in their teens living in a one-room shed in a slum on the outskirts of Mumbai. Their lives are regulated by their father's eccentric and oppressive rules by which he means to preserve them from the trinity of evils: germs, sex, and interests other than cricket. He has devoted his life — and theirs — to forming them into India's greatest cricket players. The older boy, Radha, is already a celebrated young star, but it is Manju who seems to have the greatest potential and has caught the eye and exuberant imagination of Pramod Sawant, head cricket coach of a highly competitive school. Coach Sawant is, in sum, "a fat pipe in the filtration system" through which promising young players are channeled, finally pouring "them out into an open field where two or maybe three new players will be picked for the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team." These life-altering, fortune-making decisions occur on Selection Day.

Sawant infects cricket journalist and scout Tommy Sir with his enthusiasm; and he, in turn, agrees to peddle Manju's promise to businessman Anand Mehta. Scion of stockbrokers, Mehta has forsaken the family tradition, "handed down from generation to generation, of gently ripping off loyal customers." Instead, he has become an entrepreneur of sorts, engaging in one (failed) enterprise after another. Now, dazzled by visions of the pelf to be gained through product endorsements, he agrees to sponsor both boys. He will issue monthly payments in return for a share of future earnings. Tommy Sir agrees that, for a substantial fee, he will publicize the two — and everyone's in business.

But all is not well. While Manju moves from triumph to triumph as a batsman, his heart is set on studying science and becoming a forensic scientist as seen and admired on CSI Las Vegas. Radhu, on the other hand, lives for cricket, but his performance is slipping, his growing body having altered the mechanics of his swing. Enmity grows between the brothers. Meanwhile, Manju has met Javed Ansari, a handsome boy from a rich Muslim family, and, as it happens, the object of Manju's romantic desire. The two enter a tormenting, up-and-down relationship, each drawn to the other: Javed, openly though capriciously, Manju more problematically. He feels threatened by the implications of their social and economic inequality, to say nothing of the opprobrium attached to homosexuality. It is in following this relationship, so perfectly drawn in all its bewildering contradictions, uncertainties, and reversals, that the novel develops beyond social satire. Adiga shows Manju's raw confusion, resentment, and fear, and his conflicting desires both to please others and to be free. This last is, of course, impossible for a boy from the slums, one who has to repeatedly truckle to someone or knuckle under to something in order to survive.

Again and again we glimpse the desperation and sordidness that lies behind these lives of single-minded striving. Mohan's tyrannical grip on his sons has impoverished not only their lives, but his own. In a striking image, Adiga shows him, fearing the collapse of his plans, sitting in a bar where he has been drinking for hours: "Late afternoon is when the sunlight hits the tables, and the germs and the slime begin to shine. Darkness will clean the bar, but right now nothing is concealed. The life you have made for yourself — and have hidden from yourself — is on full display."

Adiga's disgust with the inequity, exploitation, and hypocrisy of Indian society runs through the novel in a subtle, acidic current, but it is also spelled out, in one case by himself. At a conference of "social entrepreneurs" ("a bestiary of financial analysts, brokers, and bankers who had been transformed, from the waist down, into Mother Theresa"), he describes the Indian character to an American representative of a venture fund: "We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant, and funny beings. All that Jhumpa Lahiri stuff. But the truth is, we are absolutely nothing of the kind . . . We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbor's children in five minutes, and our own in ten."

Except for providing a short, insouciant glossary of cricketing terms, Adiga does not pander to those of us for whom the game is a mystery. Instead, he writes about cricket just as his characters see and understand it. But whether one has made cricket one's life study or just blundered on in American innocence, one can still thoroughly appreciate the predicaments, conflicts, and torments of Adiga's characters, and that, after all, is this fine novel's real subject.

Katherine A. Powers reviews books widely and has been a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. She is the editor of Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963.

Reviewer: Katherine A. Powers

The Barnes & Noble Review

It's one of many commendable things about this book that it both relishes the brothers' talents and presents them within a bigger picture, revealing the many varieties of corruption and damaging obsession that surround such endeavors. This story, after all, is a universal one...This is a novel with broad sweep, accomplished with commendable economy and humor, in a sinewy, compact prose that has the grace and power of a gifted athlete. And it pulses with affection for Mumbai itself; the effortless sociological dissection of that exasperating city recalls Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. The book's sporting themes, the salty, eccentric dialogue and the vivid characters who also become perfect archetypes made me think of The Natural. Ultimately, like Malamud's baseball novel, Selection Day transcends sport. This is a book about choice and destiny, smothering family ambition and the pull of a young person's nascent identity.

The New York Times Book Review - Marcel Theroux

... Selection Day, Aravind Adiga's powerful new novel...supplies further proof that his Booker Prize, won for The White Tiger in 2008, was no fluke. He is not merely a confident storyteller but also a thinker, a skeptic, a wily entertainer, a thorn in the side of orthodoxy and cant...Mr. Adiga, who was born in India and attended Columbia and Oxford, again displays what might be his greatest gifts as a postcolonial novelist: His strong sense of how the world actually works, and his ability to climb inside the minds of characters from vastly different social strata...What this novel offers is the sound of a serious and nervy writer working at near the top of his form. Like a star cricket batter, Mr. Adiga stands and delivers, as if for days.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

Mr. Adiga writes with customary acerbity and astuteness. Class resentment is the gasoline that fuels the brothers' ambitions and gives this novel its noisy volatility. The gritty urban realism that animated The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower is again on display... Selection Day churns with the same propulsive energy.

The Wall Street Journal Sam Sacks

Selection Day, Mr. Adiga's third novel, supplies further proof that his Booker Prize, won for The White Tiger in 2008, was no fluke. He is not merely a confident storyteller but also a thinker, a skeptic, a wily entertainer, a thorn in the side of orthodoxy and cant... Powerful... Soulful... What this novel offers is the sound of a serious and nervy writer working at near the top of his form. Like a star cricket batter, Mr. Adiga stands and delivers, as if for days."

New York Times Dwight Garner

This is a novel with a broad sweep, accomplished with commendable economy and humor, in a sinewy, compact prose that has the grace and power of a gifted athlete. And it pulses with affection for Mumbai itself; the effortless sociological dissection recalls Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers... Selection Day transcends sport. This is a book about choice and destiny, smothering family ambition and the pull of a young person's nascent identity. You're just going to have to trust me that the cricket is worth it.

The New York Times Book Review Marcel Theroux

Spirited...the elements of Selection Day are strong throughout: a dramatic, readable arc; satire glinting with hints of tragedy; a witty, vibrant voice.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune Hamilton Cain

Praise for Aravind Adiga and Selection Day
"Masterful. . . . With his gripping, amusing glimpse into the contradictions and perils of modern India, Adiga has cementedhis reputation as the preeminent chronicler of his country's messy present.

Read More

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From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger and Amnesty, a "ferociously brilliant" (Slate) novel about two brothers coming of age in a Mumbai slum, raised by their crazy, obsessive father to be cricket champions.

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The Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, annually recognizes the year's best work of fiction. The selection committee changes year to year and is usually helmed by accomplished writers and critics. This year's prize committee will be chaired by A.C. Grayling, a noted British philosopher. The judges include Jonathan Bate, Sarah Churchwell, Dr. Alastair Niven, Dr. Daniel Glaser, and Erica Wagner. The shortlist has already been announced and includes such literary luminaries as diverse as Joshua Ferris, Neel Mukherjee, and Karen Joy Fowler. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, October 14th. Here is the Booker Prize website.

As we anxiously wait for the winner to be announced, Off the Shelf has decided to collect and share our favorite Man Booker nominees and winners over the course of its more than forty year existence. Enjoy!

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5 Of Our Favorites from the Man Booker Prize - Off the Shelf

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The Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, annually recognizes the year's best work of fiction. The selection committee changes year to year and is usually helmed by accomplished writers and critics. This year's prize committee will be chaired by A.C. Grayling, a noted British philosopher.

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This list was compiled by Susan Barber, Scott Bayer, and Joel Garza at #TheBookChat. I simply ported it to List Challenges because I

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I keep hearing this new debut novel mentioned in the same breath as "best of the year" and now I understand why. For the first hundred pages I didn't quite grasp what the author was up to, but when it hit me it was powerful. By exploring the stories of two sisters, who met different fates in Ghana more than 200 years ago, Gyasi traces subtle lines of cause and effect through the centuries, illuminating how the deeds of ages past still haunt all of us today. A brilliant concept, beautifully executed. Read it.

Publisher's description:

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

Other books in "50 Contemporary Books Every Woman's Gotta Read: Contemporary Fiction"

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I keep hearing this new debut novel mentioned in the same breath as "best of the year" and now I understand why. For the first hundred pages I didn't quite grasp what the author was up to, but when it hit me it was powerful.

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MASTER (BIIIIG) LIST for books that have EVER been cited on Exam

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Prizewinners and finalists in Drama category, including bios, photos, jurors and work by winners and finalists

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Books That Changed Our Readers' Lives | Penguin Random House

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We asked our readers: What book changed your life? From beloved classics to contemporary novels, discover the stories that have shaped you and other readers like you!

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I read this myself for the Reading Challenge, having previously read A Room of One's Own but none of Virginia Woolf's novels. In this slim novel, Woolf weaves together two seemingly unrelated storylines: one following Mrs Dalloway, an upper class woman preparing to host a dinner party, and the other her "double," a shell-shocked WWI vet contemplating suicide. Woolf used stream-of-consciousness style to explore the inner workings of the mind; this pioneering technique had a lasting effect on fiction as we know it.

Publisher's description:

It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life's happiest moment?

Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.

Luminously beautiful, Mrs. Dalloway uses the internal monologues of the characters to tell a story of inter-war England. With this, Virginia Woolf changed the novel forever.

Other books in "2015 Reading Challenge: books you should have read in high school (that are totally worth reading now)"

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I read this myself for the Reading Challenge, having previously read A Room of One's Own but none of Virginia Woolf's novels. In this slim novel, Woolf weaves together two seemingly unrelated storylines: one following Mrs Dalloway, an upper class woman preparing to host a dinner party, and the other her "double," a shell-shocked WWI vet contemplating suicide.

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Publishers submitted a total of 1,529 books for this year's National Book Awards. - 394 in Fiction - 553 in Nonfiction - 245 in Poetry - 337 in Young People's Literature

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Colson Whitehead received copious attention for his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the antebellum South, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. We follow Cora, a third-generation slave on a Georgia cotton plantation who has been abandoned by her mother. When Cora meets Caesar, a new arrival from Virginia, and he tells her of a free North, they hatch a plan to escape together.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD then takes a dreamlike turn and the concept of the Underground Railroad becomes an imagined actual railroad that takes our heroine between hypothetical worlds in the South. They show her what life could be outside the confines of the slavery she knows. Each world is weighted down with its own set of problems and intensities that will make a reader's pulse quicken and urge him to steam through the story.

The Underground Railroad becomes almost like the Yellow Brick Road. But as Dorothy realized in the classic children's book, Cora, too, comes to find that all that glitters is not gold. A maniacal slave catcher is hot on her heels at every turn, and the fear of being sent back to the hell she escaped is palpable as the book continues on. Whitehead weighs down the start of this book with such trauma that as Cora runs I found myself thinking, Oh, please don't take us back there. It is the sign of a good book when a reader's empathy can abound.

I don't want to deter you by calling this a "tough" read. Yes, the novel is riddled with harrowing scenes, unfathomable horrors, and unconscionable actions by some of its characters, but Whitehead is a skilled writer. He provides elasticity in the narrative with specks of lightheartedness and reflection. His brilliant imagination can take you to dark places, but he is empathetic to his readers and doesn't keep you down for too long.

Don't let any of the harsh realities of slavery scare you away, because the worlds within worlds created here aren't easy to escape from and will stay with you for many years to come. Impactful stories are hard to come by, but unforgettable ones are even rarer.

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An Impactful, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Read You'll Steam Through

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Colson Whitehead received copious attention for his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the antebellum South, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. We follow Cora, a third-generation slave on a Georgia cotton plantation who has been abandoned by her mother. When Cora meets Caesar, a new arrival from Virginia, and he tells her of a free North, they hatch a plan to escape together.

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This compilation of reading assigned to students everywhere will expand your horizons - and your bookshelves.

In the US, most students are required to read To Kill a Mockingbird during their school years. This classic novel combines a moving coming-of-age story with big issues like racism and criminal injustice. Reading Mockingbird is such an integral part of the American educational experience that we wondered: What classic books are assigned to students elsewhere?

We posed this question to our TED-Ed Innovative Educators and members of the TED-Ed community. People all over the globe responded, and we curated our list to focus on local authors. Many respondents made it clear in their countries, as in the US, few books are absolutely mandatory. Take a look at what students in countries from Ireland to Iran, Ghana to Germany, are asked to read and why:

Afghanistan

What it's about: The revelations of God as told to the prophet Muhammad, this is the central religious text of Islam and remains one of the major works of Arabic literature.
Why it's taught: "Overall, there is no culture of reading novels in my country, which is sad," says Farokh Attah. "The only book that must be read in school is the holy Quran, and everyone is encouraged to read it starting from childhood."

Albania

(1971) by Ismail Kadare
What it's about: Known in English as Chronicle in Stone, this novel is told through the eyes of a child and shows how different conquering forces - Italian fascist, Greek and Nazi - ravage a small Albanian city during World War II.
Why it's taught: Kadare is one of the most critically acclaimed Albanian writers, and was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. This book "helps you understand vividly what World War II meant for the people who lived through those events," says Vaitson Çumaku. "Because it's from the perspective of a child, it also shows you that there can be optimism during hard times."

Australia

Tomorrow, When the War Began (1993) by John Marsden
What it's about: A teenage girl and her friends return from a camping trip to find that an unidentified foreign military force has invaded Australia.
Why it's taught: This book "speaks to our fear of invasion and our fighting spirit," says Beth James Waters. It also "beautifully portrays the vastness of and abundant natural dangers in our land."

Austria

Bosnia; Serbia

(1945) by Ivo Andrić
What it's about: Known in English as The Bridge on the Drina, this novel sweeps through 300 years in a small town near the Mehmed Pasha Sokolović bridge. Its story begins in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire, when the bridge was built, to World War I, when it was partially destroyed.
Why it's taught: Andrić received a Nobel Prize, and so far he has been the only Nobel Prize winner from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. "It is truly a timeless book," says Martin Kondža. "Its themes and stories also apply to humanity today. The bridge acts as a dumb witness to empires being born and crushed, human lives reaching their peaks and depths, and countries being established and destroyed."

Brazil

Morte e vida Severina (1955) by João Cabral de Melo Neto
What it's about: Known in English as The Death of a Severino, this play in verse is about the arduous journey of a man who is fleeing the drought- and poverty-stricken northeastern region of Brazil in search of a better situation and the city.
Why it's taught: "It shows the dual conditions that the country has always presented and still presents - poor lives, inequality, ignorance, and silent people, versus a city population, with all its advantages - and the distance between these two groups," says Andrea Rodrigues.

Bulgaria

(1894) by Ivan Vazov
What it's about: This novel looks at a Bulgarian village under Ottoman rule and depicts a failed insurrection in the 1870s that helped trigger the country's eventual breakaway. The large cast of characters includes villagers on both sides of the rebellion.
Why it's taught: For one thing, Vazov is seen as the father of Bulgarian literature. But, adds Kristine O'Malley, "Being enslaved by the Ottoman Empire and the struggle for independence have shaped the national identity of Bulgarians," making this book a perennially popular read.

Canada

(1977) by Timothy Findley
What it's about: Robert Ross, a 19-year-old Canadian, tries to cope with the death of his sister by enlisting to fight in World War I. Beset by his own demons, he travels to France where he fights in the trenches and sees the worst of warfare - and of humanity.
Why it's taught: "It's an iconic Canadian novel. It's so brutally honest in its depiction of war, sorrow, and coming to terms with an uncaring world in one's own way," says Karen Goepen-Wee.

Chile

China

Colombia

(1967) by Gabriel García Márquez
What it's about: This pioneering fictional work of magical realism - known to English-language readers as 100 Years of Solitude - traces the rise and fall of a fictional Colombian town through five generations of the Buendía family, starting in the early 19th century.
Why it's taught: Márquez is considered one of the most important writers in the Spanish language, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. This novel depicts the violence that has plagued Colombia for decades, and "shows how much corruption and suffering Colombians have endured," says Daniela Ramirez Barreto. "Yet there is something about us that refuses to give up."

Cyprus

The Murderess (1903) by Alexandros Papadiamantis
What it's about: This novella is about an old woman named Hadoula who lives on the island of Skiathos. She murders poor young girls as a kind of mercy killing, since she views their future prospects to be limited and bleak.
Why it's taught: "It sheds light on the role of women and on gender roles within marriage; these are of great importance in Cyprus and Greece," says Evanthia Poyiatzi. "And it makes students decide whether the woman's behavior is ethical or unethical."

Egypt

The Days (1935) by Taha Hussein
What it's about: This book is the autobiography of intellectual and writer Hussein, who lived from 1889 to 1973. He became blind at the age of 3 but grew up to be the minister of education in his country and is one of the most influential figures in Egyptian literature.
Why it's taught: The book teaches students "the importance of gathering knowledge, the need to rebel against traditions and the negative effects of ignorance upon individuals in a society," says Mahmoud Attalla.

Finland

Seitsemän veljestä (1870) by Aleksis Kivi
What it's about: Known in English as Seven Brothers, this book is about a quarrelsome family of seven brothers and their struggles in rural Finland. They eventually grow and mature into decent members of society.
Why it's taught: It is believed to be the first truly Finnish novel by a Finnish author in the Finnish language about ordinary people. "It's considered the national novel of Finland," says Jaani Länsiö. "It's about Finnish stubbornness."

Germany

Tagebuch der Anne Frank (1947)
What it's about: Known in English as The Diary of Anne Frank, this journal was kept by a Jewish girl named Anne Frank as she lived with her family in hiding in Amsterdam under Nazi occupation.
Why it's taught: "We should never forget what horrors were unleashed by narrow-thinking people," says Charlotte Böhm.

Ghana; Nigeria

(1958) by Chinua Achebe
What it's about: Set in Nigeria in the 1900s, this novel follows Okonkwo, an Igbo leader and village wrestling champion, his journey to power and glory, and his eventual fall when he fights back against white colonialists.
Why it's taught: "On the surface, it's a celebration of African traditionalism and how those ideals were washed away with the coming of the missionaries," says Ama Y Adi-Dako. "At the heart of it, though, it is a critical look at the concept and drawbacks of African and tribal masculinity."

Indonesia

(2005) by Andrea Hirata
What it's about: Known in English as Rainbow Troops, this novel is based on a true story about ten students from a remote village in Indonesia who, with the help of a pair of inspiring teachers. learn to stand up for themselves and their community.
Why it's taught: It teaches "sacrifice, dedication, hard work, passion, brotherhood, friendship, optimism and perseverance in the face of challenges," says Mahrukh Bashir.

India

Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1927-1929) by Mohandas K. Gandhi
What it's about: The Indian leader's memoir covers his life from his childhood to his early 50s.
Why it's taught: "This book upholds the essence of living a life with dignity, which is possible only through truth and nonviolence," says Bismi Sain.

Iran

Poems by writers such as Hafiz, Sa'Addi, Ferdowsi, Rumi and Khayyam
What they're about: Love, beauty, joy and other themes.
Why they're taught: "In Iran, the novel is a relatively newer form of literature," says Ne Da. "But among our literary classics are abundant poets and poetry. Each poem speaks to a different value."

Ireland

Ice Man: the Adventures of an Irish Antarctic Hero (2010) by Michael Smith
What it's about: It's a biography of Tom Crean, an Irish boy who ran away from home at the age of 15 to join Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic voyage. He was also a member of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition.
Why it's taught: "It shows that the Irish are ambitious explorers who can triumph over adversity and that through hard work, focus and dedication, everything is possible," says Naoimh Morton.

Italy

(1827) by Alessandro Manzoni
What it's about: Known in English as The Betrothed, this novel takes place in northern Italy in the first half of the 17th century. Italy was not yet a nation, and this book shows the lives of villagers living under repressive Spanish rule as well as the impact of a deadly plague that killed many people.
Why it's taught: " I Promessi Sposi is one of the two pillars of Italian literature," says Sofia Ramundo. "It is considered the blueprint for historical novels," adds Michela Sacchi O'Brien.

Pakistan

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) by Mohsin Hamid
What it's about: An international bestseller, this novel follows the story of a Pakistani man as he reflects on his time in the United States before and after the events of September 11, 2001.
Why it's taught: "These books touch the unique dilemmas faced by modern Pakistanis who are struggling with fundamental ideals and trying to find their own identity," says Vajiha Atiq.

Philippines

(1887) by Jose Rizal
What it's about: Rizal went on to be a hero of the Philippine revolution, and his novel - the English-language title is Touch Me Not - shows life in the Philippines society under cruel, repressive, arbitrary Spanish Catholic rule.
Why it's taught: By combining a dramatic story with an activist message, this novel has been compared to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is taught to help students "appreciate the efforts of our forefathers in shaping our independence," says John Eric Uy.

Russia

US

(1960) by Harper Lee
What it's about: A classic novel about the American South in the 1930s that illustrates how racism, sexism and injustice have shaped US history (and still cause harm today).
Why it's taught: "We're still dealing with racism and systematic prejudice, especially in the legal system in the US," says Shaun McGovern.

Vietnam

(1820) by Nguyễn Du
What it's about: It's an epic narrative poem about a young woman named Thuý Kiều who is driven to sacrifice herself to save her family.
Why it's taught: Known in English as The Tale of Kiều, the poem shows "the humanity and the beauty of my country," says Joy Truong, who adds that she likes its positive qualities, a stark contrast to most other stories and poems which "focus on the difficulties of the Vietnamese."

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Required reading: The books that students read in 28 countries around the world

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In the US, most students are required to read To Kill a Mockingbird during their school years. This classic novel combines a moving coming-of-age story with big issues like racism and criminal injustice. Reading Mockingbird is such an integral part of the American educational experience that we wondered: What classic books are assigned to students elsewhere?

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Augie comes on stage with one of literature's most famous opening lines. "I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted." It's the "Call me Ishmael" of mid-20th-century American fiction. (For the record, Bellow was born in Canada.) Or it would be if Ishmael had been more like Tom Jones with a philosophical disposition. With this teeming book Bellow returned a Dickensian richness to the American novel. As he makes his way to a full brimming consciousness of himself, Augie careens through numberless occupations and countless mentors and exemplars, all the while enchanting us with the slapdash American music of his voice.

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Augie comes on stage with one of literature's most famous opening lines. "I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted." It's the "Call me Ishmael" of mid-20th-century American fiction.

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Most fiction books on this list would work

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The sixth category for the 2017 Reading Challenge -for those of you who are stretching yourselves this year-is "a book about the immigrant experience."

Why? The books that fulfill this category automatically include a diversity of plot lines that make for a good story: the clash of cultures, the journey tale, the confusion of identities, the pang of homesickness, the nostalgic look to the past.

Depending on which title you choose, this could be your opportunity to take a journey you'll never actually live, to travel back in time, to better understand your neighbors, or to experience your own land through radically different eyes.

Need ideas for this category? There are so many good ones, which is why I've included a whopping twenty-five titles here. Most are fiction; a few are non-. All are fair game for this category. I can't wait to hear your suggestions, and to see which titles YOU choose to read.
What are you reading for this category? What titles would you add to the list?

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25 great stories about the immigrant experience - Modern Mrs. Darcy

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The sixth category for the 2017 Reading Challenge-for those of you who are stretching yourselves this year-is "a book about the immigrant experience." Why? The books that fulfill this category automatically include a diversity of plot lines that make for a good story: the clash of cultures, the journey tale, the confusion of identities, the ...

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The saying goes, "Father Time is undefeated," and the meaning is pretty straightforward: as a person ages, their potential for significance (whether in an athletic or a creative capacity) ultimately dwindles. This thinking is frequently applied to aging sports legends, veteran employees, and fading musicians. But no matter the inevitability of time's march, it is life's twists and turns that afford each of us the opportunity to grow and impact our surrounding world. That is the idea, at least, behind Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD.

Meet music mogul Bennie Salazar and his young personal assistant, Sasha. The first chapters of the novel alternate between their two points on view. Both Bennie and Sasha narrate in the present day to allow the reader a first-person account of when they knew one another intimately.

Sasha, recently let go by Bennie, is on a date and indulging in the kleptomania that has left her both unemployed and living in a tiny apartment filled with random, useless objects. Bennie, now an aging music executive, is attempting to salvage the deal to sign one of his similarly waning artists but is hampered by his "shame memories," memories that extinguish the creative spark he so desperately hopes to re-create later in life. These are the brief portraits Egan initially provides of her flawed characters. What follows is a journey that reveals the powerful relationships that shaped these two people, tracing their lives through intricate passages of time.

Through her effortless writing and satirical, dark humor, Egan explores the lives of Bennie and Sasha by allowing the people they choose to surround themselves with to explain for them. In subsequent chapters, which follow Bennie's bandmates, his ex-wife, and his mentor, we learn of his beginnings as the de facto manager of his high school punk-rock band, the Flaming Dildos, and his eventual rise to music-producer fame. Over the course of the novel the reader is invited to piece together this portrait of Bennie based on the insights of the affiliate characters and the relationships they have with him as a man, husband, and music executive. Likewise, Sasha comes to be defined by her now-deceased college companion, her complacent uncle, and her overly curious daughter.

What makes A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD so compelling is Egan's ability to, first, connect all these characters through cohesive story lines and, second, to provide each chapter's focus character with their own intimate profile outside of their marginal connection to Bennie or Sasha. In the course of a single chapter, Egan adapts her form to create entire devastating story arcs for secondary characters as memorable as those of our protagonists'. Take Rob, for instance, Sasha's college confidant who struggles to overcome the confusion of his sexuality and a recent suicide attempt, only to find himself completely isolated and lost. Or Bosco, Bennie's former star musician, now aged and in severely poor health, who aims to go on tour one last time, with the hope of dying on stage in the perfect, public spectacle.

All of these characters convey the many stages of life we all will encounter and the ever-changing roles we play. Jennifer Egan's vivid portraits allow the reader a satisfyingly raw look at authentic people who are molded and fractured by those around them. A character-driven novel at its best, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD will resonate for years to come.

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Here's Why You Should Read This Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel by Jennifer Egan - Off the Shelf

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The saying goes, "Father Time is undefeated," and the meaning is pretty straightforward: as a person ages, their potential for significance (whether in an athletic or a creative capacity) ultimately dwindles. This thinking is frequently applied to aging sports legends, veteran employees, and fading musicians.

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When I began seriously pursuing writing (around 1991) I was told that my novels were literary and "little." I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, except that it seemed to portend that they would remain little known. Somehow I broke out of that box with Pay It Forward (and into different boxes), but I notice that in my own reading, many of the novels I love and respect are little and little known. I'd rather create a short list of these books than dwell on the popular books I've enjoyed, if only because you will likely discover the latter without my help.

The following are works by three authors I believe deserve a much larger following. All three are people I consider friends. But I'm not trumpeting their work because they're my friends. They're my friends because their work is so worth trumpeting. That's how we were drawn to know each other in the first place.

The first is Dissonance by Lisa Lenard-Cook. I first read this book in 2004 when it was published by the University of New Mexico Press. It's now been rereleased by the Santa Fe Writer's Project, a good thing for the world of books, in my opinion. In Dissonance, a piano teacher in Los Alamos-the daughter of a man responsible for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima-inherits the journals and music scores of Hana Weissova, a concert pianist originally from Prague whom she does not think she knows. But their connection slowly emerges. Interspersed with meaningful music theory and touchingly and respectfully encompassing an LGBT theme, this beautifully written novel defies its apparent fate: It weaves through the history of the bomb and the Holocaust without feeling depressing. To my mind, it is everything a novel should be.

The second is Theft by BK Loren. Its protagonist, Willa, is a tracker whose real job is reintroducing the highly endangered Mexican wolf to the Southwest United States. But she ends up tracking her own troubled brother, one step ahead of the police. The aching regret so common in families really shines here, and anyone (like me) who is in love with the natural world will enjoy its reflection in this novel, where it is shown in all its unforgiving beauty. Plus, I dare you to look at the wolf cub on the cover without wanting to read it.

Now I plunge even further off the beaten path to the work of Thomas M. Atkinson, a man I call "the best author you've never read." His work is literary, real, detailed, dark, and as sharp as needles fresh out of the package. Thom's first novel, Strobe Life, was picked up by a small press, who gave it a bad cover and very little help being discovered. But that doesn't keep it from being well worth the read. And his story collection Standing Deadwood, while still waiting to be picked up in book form, is having wonderful success as individual stories. They have been published in The Sun, North American Review, Indiana Review, and other prestigious magazines. They've been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and have won more awards than I have room to list. Some can be read online, including " River's Edge," " Standing Deadwood," and " Blue Highway."

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When Some of the Best Novels Are "Little" - Off the Shelf

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When I began seriously pursuing writing (around 1991) I was told that my novels were literary and "little." I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, except that it seemed to portend that they would remain little known. Somehow I broke out of that box with Pay It Forward (and into different boxes), but I notice ...

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OHIO by Stephen Markley is one of those rare reads that get into your DNA to reconfigure molecules so you are changed forever. Reading it is a nosedive into an unrelenting and intense universe full of hardship, pain, trauma, anger, and hints of love on the fringes. It's a wildly remarkable debut novel, full of those sentences you underline, a plot you need to talk about, and characters who haunt you long after the last word. OHIO is singular. It is unprecedented. It rattles along like a runaway train until it reaches an epic conclusion, which reveals that at its core, this tale is a murder mystery. And who doesn't love a good mystery?

When I first recommended OHIO to someone, I explained the plot and said that it was one the of the best books I'd ever read. (How's that for an adequate vote of confidence?) They proceeded to ask me, "well, who does he write like?" Reader, I was paralyzed. Sure, we've all compared writers and have references at the ready, but in that instant my mind went blank. I replied honestly, "I've literally never read anything like it before." I still, many moons later, stand by this unequivocal statement.

Set in the fictional Ohioan town of New Canaan, the novel opens with the funeral of a former high school football star and then soldier, Rick, who was killed in the Iraq War. The story then picks up several years later, when on one fated night, four former high school classmates converge in their hometown for very different reasons: Bill Ashcroft, who shows up with a mysterious package and dubious intentions; Stacey Moore, a grad student investigating the disappearance of her high school ex-lover; Dan Eaton, an Iraq War veteran, who is on a date with his high school sweetheart; and Tina Ross, who is looking for redemption from a long, internalized traumatic event. As their lives intertwine with old acquaintances and foes and we learn of their braided pasts, the book crescendos with an act of violence after a roller-coaster ascent. The story then spectacularly and strategically winds down toward a shocking and revelatory finale, with all the pieces fitting into a troubling but satisfying mosaic.

New Canaan, to me, is an equally important character. It's been ravaged by the Great Recession and displays the scars of an opioid epidemic and crumbling middle class, and creates a lurid, dilapidated backdrop for the characters' escapades. I grew up during this time, though not in the rust belt depicted here, but I fully recognize the nuances of this contemporary setting. OHIO is an acute examination of a recent era, of that fog of a post-9/11 world stewing in disappointment, frustration, and aimlessness. It's also about dreams never fully realized and those squashed dead on arrival to reinforce that famously true phrase "you can't go home again."

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This Debut Gets My Vote for the Next Great American Novel

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OHIO by Stephen Markley is one of those rare reads that get into your DNA to reconfigure molecules so you are changed forever. Reading it is a nosedive into an unrelenting and intense universe full of hardship, pain, trauma, anger, and hints of love on the fringes.

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I hope it's not just me: not only do I have a ridiculously long TBR list (that's To Be Read, if you don't usually discuss your reading life in acronyms), my personal list of bona fide classics I've been meaning to read but haven't yet easily reaches triple-digit territory.

Readers, I know I can't be alone in this-and that is why the very first category for the 2018 Reading Challenge -for those of you who want to get more out of your reading lives this year-is "a classic you've been meaning to read.

We're starting the year with this category because for devoted readers, those books we've been meaning to read-for months, years, or decades-begin to hang over our heads after a while, and nothing hangs heavier than a classic. Consider this category your invitation to finally scratch a deserving book off your list and gather some momentum for the new year.

We know that many of you saw this category and knew immediately what book (or books) you wanted to read to fulfill it. We also know that some of you saw this category and immediately thought old books are boring. If you belong to the latter group, rest assured that we've assembled this list with you in mind. The classics compiled here are, by turns, strange, surprising, and completely unexpected, but "boring" doesn't apply.
What would you add to the list? What are YOU reading for this category?
P.S. 9 books you should have read in high school (that are totally worth reading now), and bestsellers actually worth the hype. And if you haven't yet gotten your free reading challenge kit, get it here.

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25 classics that are not remotely boring - Modern Mrs. Darcy

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I hope it's not just me: not only do I have a ridiculously long TBR list (that's To Be Read, if you don't usually discuss your reading life in acronyms), my personal list of bona fide classics I've been meaning to read but haven't yet easily reaches triple-digit territory.

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Totally Awesome Books of Summer | Penguin Random House

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Summer is here and it's time to kick back with a great read. From new releases to can't-miss favorites, there's a beach book for everyone. Click the filters below and dive into summer reading!

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Mary's 'lgbtqia-ap-lit' books on Goodreads (10 books)

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Mary has 10 books on her lgbtqia-ap-lit shelf: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Another Country by James Baldwin, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, The Co...

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The joy of reading is universal-that's why we're shining a spotlight on some of the most popular translated books on Goodreads!

For this list, we focused on reader-chosen favorites that were originally published in another language before being released in English. Then we measured their popularity by taking a look at the average ratings and number of ratings per title. From A to Z, with ancient classics including Dante Alighieri's Inferno to more contemporary favorites including Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove, there's a little something for everyone.

How many of these have you read? Don't forget to add what catches your eye to your Want to Read shelf.

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40 of the Most Popular Translated Books on Goodreads

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The joy of reading is universal-that's why we're shining a spotlight on some of the most popular translated books on Goodreads! For this list, we focused on reader-chosen favorites that were originally published in another language before being released in English.

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There are certain books that, even if you didn't personally read them in ninth grade, you associate with high school reading lists. You know the type: strong moral character, conducive to in-class discussions and take-home essays. They're seemingly always dog-eared, even if they're brand new, and there's the expectation that somewhere, on some page, will be notes, in pencil, about literary tropes. But are there classic books we should skip in high school? And if so, what do we read instead?

Now, before we go any further, I want to be clear - I'm not saying that we should never, ever, not once read these books that for generations we've deemed mandatory classics. You should read them. We all should, probably, but on our own time. Because books that are specifically chosen for classrooms, for high school students about to venture forth into the world with their new minds and shiny hopes, should carry in them the potential for disagreement, for arguments, for debates, for shifting perspectives, for lessons learned and beliefs questioned. They should simultaneously be familiar and very, very new. They should show a diverse set of protagonists. They should be written by a diverse set of authors. They should reflect the world we're currently navigating.

And when the word "classic" is synonymous with white male writers writing about white male protagonists, then we need to take a step back and consider what we mean when we say "classic"... and why.

'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee & 'The Underground Railroad' by Colson Whitehead

Scout Finch is, truly, a favorite literary character of mine. But if we're looking at the larger reason for reading Harper Lee's 1960 novel about an Alabama town cleaved apart by a racially-charged court case, then perhaps shifting our lens to a work like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which explores the effects of slavery on Black communities beginning before the Civil War through today.
Click here to buy.

'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald & 'Behold the Dreamers' by Imbolo Mbue

Both The Great Gatsby and Behold the Dreamers tackle the same core element: the American Dream's trap door. Both are notably "accessible," welcoming the reader inside. But Behold the Dreamers, which takes place in 2007, focuses on more contemporary elements of the same concept - immigration, the financial crisis of the early aughts and the aesthetic nature of capitalism.
Click here to buy.

'Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger & 'How to Set a Fire and Why' by Jesse Ball

Angry, jaded, disillusioned teens, slogging through a world they think they've already figured out. Salinger brought us Holden; In How To Set Fire and Why, Ball brings us Lucia, whose father is dead, whose mother is in a mental hospital, and who makes her way through the world armed with licorice, a lighter and an increasingly, uh "burning" desire (SORRY I HAD TO) to set the world ablaze.
Click here to buy.

'The Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne & 'Here Comes The Sun' by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Both of these books explore sexuality for women - the ways women interact with it, the ways in which it's forced on us and the tendency of the world around us to villainize the women who refuse to follow the rules of decorum. But Nicole Dennis-Benn's incredible debut novel, Here Comes The Sun, addresses sexuality specifically for Black women, for poor women and for sex workers.
Click here to buy.

'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare & 'Don't Call Us Dead' by Danez Smith

Please don't @ me for saying Romeo and Juliet should be retired. It's a beautiful book, it's a beautiful play, Shakespeare is a genius. But if we're asking the current generation of students to explore the power of love, its warmth and its pain, and what it means to give and receive kindness, then Danez Smith's devastating poetry collection, Don't Call Us Dead, which opens the imagining of the afterlife for Black men shot by police, is going to be more relevant. Truly.
Click here to buy.

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5 Classics We Should've Skipped In High School - And 5 Books To Read Instead

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There are certain books that, even if you didn't personally read them in ninth grade, you associate with high school reading lists. You know the type: strong moral character, conducive to in-class discussions and take-home essays. They're seemingly always dog-eared, even if they're brand new, and there's the expectation that somewhere, on some page, will be notes, in pencil, about literary tropes.

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is the first work of fiction I read by Zadie Smith and its style lived up to what I have heard about her work: her prose is elegant and literary, the play with words is fluid, adept and completely singular. The story moves slowly but deliberately and reads as having been carefully cultivated. The themes of the book, though, are what struck me, as they are so plentiful it seemed as if Smith touched on nearly every dimension of the human experience. Some of the themes are: parent-child relationships, single motherhood, puberty, poverty, wealth, overwhelming materialism and fame. There are some themes, though, that are more prominent than others; themes that thread their way throughout the novel, bringing the characters back to each other again and again and weaving for the reader an intricate lens through which to see the world Smith has created.

On Names

Strikingly, the narrator and several of the crucial characters are unnamed, leaving the readers with gaps and half truths about who is leading us through the story. The narrator jumps through time in her telling and, at first, it's easy to get lost. It isn't until getting further into the novel that pieces are revealed, voices are magnified, and blind spots begin to make sense. Even without names, though, the characters feel remarkably vibrant. So full and alive are the characters that is seems as if the storyteller was sitting around a fire with friends, narrating on her troubled life, digressing at certain checkpoints and then getting back to the true path.

Her prose is elegant and literary, the play with words fluid, adept, and completely singular.

The mothers, also unnamed, were other voices I wish could've been magnified. If withholding names took away agency from some of the characters, assigning names had the opposite effect. Against the backdrop of the unnamed, Tracey and Aimee-the two defining relationships of the narrator's life-stand in stark contrast, bright and immovable forces whose influence over the narrator makes much else fade into the background.

On Dance

Tracey, the narrator's childhood friend-and, at times, rival-is central to the narrator's discovery of the power of dance. At times the pair seem as different as two young people can be, but they are pulled together by two things: they're both biracial and love to dance. Meeting at a community dance class when they were young, Tracey has the talent-dancing comes naturally to her but she is careless, rarely applying herself and rebelling against authority.Our narrator, on the other hand, lacks the natural skill that her friend has, but has the drive. The author's fascination with a dance sequence from the movie "Swing Time" provides poignant, recurring moments in the narrative, highlighting dance as a much-needed form of self-expression. It is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration throughout the story, giving her something to hold onto in a life that so often does not feel like her own.

On Friendship

The question of friendship is perhaps the most complicated one in the novel; is friendship based on trust, similarity, and support, or rather is it about coming back to each other time again and again, no matter the consequences?

From a young age, Tracey's attitude towards everything she did bulldozed the narrator, ultimately casting both in a negative light. Tracey's need to steal the show is bracing, as is her need to be the center of attention and her unquestioning belief in her self-righteousness. On the other side of the coin, though, the narrator's refusal to stand up for herself-wading through life as things happen to her-can be just as infuriating. One wonders whether a relationship that seems to bring out the worst in both parties can still be considered a friendship, but their relationship remains one of the most defining aspects of the book.

Another strong figure in the narrator's life is her mother, a black woman who constantly attempts to further her intellectual and professional life, often at the cost of keeping her family at a distance. Her mother also constantly prodded the narrator to achieve more, but her prompting, while in some lights could be perceived as support, fell flat as her misplaced ambition was completely one-sided. The narrator's father, a white man, was the caregiver of the house, cooking and providing emotional support on a daily basis. His lack of ambition, though, leaves him one-dimensional, defined only by the security he provided, leaving his own story lost in the cacophony.

It is a breath of fresh air, a source of inspiration throughout the story, giving her something to hold onto in a life that so often does not feel like her own.

In many ways, Swing Time is a novel about power, or lack thereof. None of the core elements of the story-names, dance, friendship-are as simple as they appear on the surface; each have their own complex power dynamics. The novel's strength, perhaps, is in presenting us with more questions than it answers-questions about the power of our own names, questions about the role of an art form like dance, questions about what constitutes a friendship, and questions about what it means to find oneself, to become self-actualized in a world where everything is acting upon you.
(Featured photo: NPR.org)

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Zadie Smith's 'Swing Time' Explores Dimensions Of The Human Experience | Get Literary

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is the first work of fiction I read by Zadie Smith and its style lived up to what I have heard about her work: her prose is elegant and literary, the play with words is fluid, adept and completely singular. The story moves slowly but deliberately and reads as having been carefully cultivated.

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Recommendations from a fellow AP teacher

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Recommendations from a fellow AP teacher

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Susan Barber's 'ap-literature' books on Goodreads (20 books)

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Susan Barber has 20 books on her ap-literature shelf: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, A Thousand Splendid Suns by...

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Every day, teachers across the country inspire and empower their students to see the world in a new way through classic and contemporary novels. But we know there's a lot to worry about in high school: friends, driver's tests, college applications, and, fine, maybe also that cute guy or girl who sat behind you in Algebra. Regardless of whether you completed every extra-credit assignment (guilty as charged), required reading has a lot to offer, even more so when you circle back to those books later on in life. Here's a list of 13 books I've reread since my time in high school and some of the surprising results that came with returning to them.

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13 High School Classics Worth Rereading - Off the Shelf

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Every day, teachers across the country inspire and empower their students to see the world in a new way through classic and contemporary novels. But we know there's a lot to worry about in high school: friends, driver's tests, college applications, and, fine, maybe also that cute guy or girl who sat behind you in Algebra.

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The plot: Under lock and key until publication day on 10 September, The Testaments is set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale and follows the lives of three women in Gilead.

The plot: Under lock and key until publication day on 10 September, The Testaments is set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale and follows the lives of three women in Gilead.

What we said: Nothing yet! But it is set to be one of the biggest books of the year.

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (Canongate)

The plot: Late at night in the Spanish port of Algeciras, two ageing Irish gangsters, Charlie and Maurice, are waiting on the boat from Tangier so they can continue their search for Charlie's daughter. Banter ensues.

What we said: "What distinguishes this book beyond its humour, terror and beauty of description is its moral perception. For this is no liberal forgiveness tract for naughty boys: it is a plunging spiritual immersion into the parlous souls of wrongful men." Read the full review.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic Books)

The plot: A Nigerian woman is forced to clean up after her younger sister when she develops a taste for killing her boyfriends.

What we said: "It all adds up to a distinctive but uneasy mix of morbid humour, love story, slashfest, family saga and grave meditation on how abusive behaviour is passed down through the generations." Read the full review.

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (Galley Beggar Press)

The plot: The1,000-page monologue of an angst-ridden homemaker in Ohio, in which she frets about love, loss and the state of the nation - which unfolds almost entirely in a single sentence.

What we said: "Readers who have been exposed to the work of, say, Sarah Manguso and Rachel Cusk, or even Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, will recognise Ellmann's dauntless cataloguing of desires and hopes and fears, and her refusal to be anything other than endlessly curious and utterly self-directed." Read the full review.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton)

The plot: The novel follows12 characters, most of them black British women, some living in different decades while others overlap. There's Amma, a lesbian socialist playwright; non-binary Morgan, who uses the internet to navigate gender identity; and Winsome, an unhappily married migrant from Barbados. There is no overarching story, but the book is more widely about the connections that can be made between disparate humans.

What we said: "Girl, Woman, Other is about struggle, but it is also about love, joy and imagination ... For many readers, it's not a familiar world - this is a Britain less often depicted in fiction. But that certainly doesn't mean it's not a world that is possible, and worth celebrating." Read the full review.

The Wall by John Lanchester (Faber & Faber)

The plot: Set in Britain in the not-too-distant future after a climatic event known as "the Change", movement between countries is outlawed. A young conscript patrols the Wall, a barrier built along the British coastline, looking for "Others" who might appear at any moment from the sea.

What we said: "It's a clever, clairvoyant concept. Lanchester reveals with slow, steady control the cruelties of his strange new world and then socks you with their philosophical implications." Read the full review.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton)

The plot: Two versions of the same story are interwoven - in 1989, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Road crossing, but gets up and goes to see his girlfriend, travels to East Germany and buries his father. And in 2016, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Road crossing and is rushed to the hospital, spending the following days in and out of consciousness as his father sits by his bedside.

What we said: Nothing yet - it's published on 29 August.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (4th Estate)

The plot: As a young family leaves New York to go on a road trip to the southern border, several Mexican children start their journey to attempt to cross into the US.

What we said: "In a virtuoso piece of writing, as the children, delirious with heat and fear, trudge through the desert, Luiselli unleashes a sentence that unfurls over 20 pages, swooping easily from one stream of consciousness to another, and somehow carrying the reader with it. But for all its cleverness, this is also a warm and funny novel, equally droll in its treatment of the precocious, anxious children and its mockery of the solipsistic adults who are so careless of them." Read the full review.

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma (Little, Brown)

The plot: Narrated by a chi, a guardian spirit in Igbo myth, this novel follows Nonso, an ambitious Nigerian graduate who becomes trapped in Cyprus after falling for an education scam.

What we said: "Where his Booker-shortlisted debut, The Fishermen, felt like the work of a born storyteller, his new book - a mystical star-crossed romance - is more polished ... Obioma's absorbing tragicomedy painfully probes the perils of victimhood." Read the full review.

Lanny by Max Porter (Faber & Faber)

The plot: Set around the disappearance of a small boy after he summons a strange presence to his commuter village, Lanny experiments with voices and typography and taps into the strangeness of English folklore.

What we said: "Lanny is simultaneously a fable, a collage, a dramatic chorus, a joyously stirred cauldron of words, and remarkable for its simultaneous spareness and extravagance." Read the full review.

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape)

The plot: A modern-day reimagining of Don Quixote that follows a travelling salesman across the United States.

What we said: No reviews yet - it's out on 29 August.

* Rushdie is speaking at a Guardian Live event in Oxford on 27 August - book your tickets now.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak (Viking)

The plot: On the outskirts of Istanbul, a sex worker is murdered and her body dumped in a rubbish bin. As her brain shuts down - over 10 minutes, 38 seconds - key moments and memories from her life play out over the page.

What we said: "Shafak takes a piercing, unflinching look at the trauma women's minds and bodies are subjected to in a social system defined by patriarchal codes. It's a brutal book, bleak and relentless in its portrayal of violence, heartbreak and grief, but ultimately life-affirming." Read the full review.

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (Jonathan Cape)

The plot: Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor who self-describes as a "hybrid", meets Victor Stein, a celebrated professor who sees transhuman possibilities in Ry's body. "You aligned your physical reality with your mental impression of yourself," he tells Ry. "Wouldn't it be a good thing if we could all do that?"

What we said: "Frankissstein is a fragmented, at times dazzlingly intelligent meditation on the responsibilities of creation, the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the implications of both transsexuality and transhumanism." Read the full review.
Topics

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Not read them yet? A cheat's guide to the 2019 Booker prize longlist

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The plot: Under lock and key until publication day on 10 September, The Testaments is set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale and follows the lives of three women in Gilead.

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The Native American Heritage Month Book List | Penguin Random House

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Celebrate National Native American Heritage Month by reading with us! This list features award-winning contemporary and classic fiction to nonfiction and young adult.

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Celebrate stories from around the world by authors of Hispanic heritage! Discover book recommendations from some of our beloved authors, including Cristina Henríquez, Sandra Cisneros, and more. Discover more books written by Hispanic authors here.

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Author Recommendations for Hispanic Heritage Month | Penguin Random House

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Celebrate stories from around the world by authors of Hispanic heritage! Discover book recommendations from some of our beloved authors, including Cristina Henríquez, Sandra Cisneros, and more. Discover more books written by Hispanic authors here.

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The National Book Award has been one of the most celebrated prizes since 1950. Rediscover our fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature award winners through the years!

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The National Book Award Winners List | Penguin Random House

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The National Book Award has been one of the most celebrated prizes since 1950. Rediscover our fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature award winners through the years!

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Looking for your latest literary goal? Try checking out these Man Booker Prize-Nominated books! The Man Booker Prize, awarded annually since 1969, recognizes the best original novel written in the English language. Each year, the judges also release a long- and shortlist of finalists. Our list is comprised of 13 of our personal favorite Man Booker-longlisted books, finalists, and winners from the past 20 years.

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13 Man Booker Nominated Novels You Need to Read Before You Die

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Looking for your latest literary goal? Try checking out these Man Booker Prize-Nominated books! The Man Booker Prize, awarded annually since 1969, recognizes the best original novel written in the English language. Each year, the judges also release a long- and shortlist of finalists.

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Twists of fate. Long-kept secrets. Choices that resound through the ages. Multigenerational stories teach us that our lives are not simply our own but are also woven into the fabric of space, time, and family. In these ten multigenerational epics, matriarchs, patriarchs, and the children they beget all face new challenges but come to realize that these challenges have, in varied forms, echoed through the decades. Give yourself a day to get lost in the layers and tangled roots of heritage and legacy. These stories of indomitable will and gentle strength are testaments not only to the invisible links that connect us all but also to the fact that nothing, even the most immovable obstacle, is immune to change.

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10 Beautifully Complex Stories About Multi-Generational Families

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Twists of fate. Long-kept secrets. Choices that resound through the ages. Multigenerational stories teach us that our lives are not simply our own but are also woven into the fabric of space, time, and family.

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Whether it be a poem, a story, a novel, or an essay, Margaret Atwood's words are undeniably memorable. Best known for her 1985 award-winning novel The Handmaid's Tale (which has been adapted into an opera, a film, and most recently an acclaimed Hulu series), Atwood's work unblinkingly grapples with the horrors of capitalism, misogyny, tyranny, and ecological degradation. Ever since she self-published Double Persephone, Atwood has consistently challenged generations of readers to reckon with the consequences of our choices as individuals, communities, and nations. Through the characters that she breathes to life and the dystopian worlds she conjures, we are reminded that although the world often feels as if it's overshadowed by darkness, storytellers have the power to "illuminate it, and bring something back out to the light."

Author photo © Liam Sharp 2019

The Testaments

At last, after nearly 35 years, Margaret Atwood returns to the Republic of Gilead. As timely as ever, Atwood's highly anticipated sequel introduces readers to Agnes Jemima (a devout 16-year-old facing an arranged marriage), Aunt Lydia (one of four Founding Aunts who is revered by the Republic), and Daisy (a teenager whose life isn't quite what it seems). Through their voices, the dread of Gilead and its slipping grip on its citizens is revealed. A testimony of suffering, survival, and rebellion, Atwood's latest novel proves why she's one of literature's greatest storytellers.

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale (Movie Tie-in)

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian bestseller, the US is overthrown by a supremacist misogynistic theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. Once in power, Gilead ships any women who they deem undesirable to work in brothels as Jezebels or to clean toxic waste in the Colonies as Unwomen. The rest of the Republic's women (save for those married to Gilead officials, the iron fisted Aunts, and the Econowives) are forced to become Handmaids (those who are fertile) or Marthas (those who are infertile). Through the eyes of a Handmaid named Offred, readers witness the depravity of the Republic's violence. An urgent and timeless classic, Atwood's novel is just as chilling on the page as it is on screen.

Margaret Atwood

The MaddAddam Trilogy Bundle

The MaddAddam Trilogy begins with Oryx and Crake, which takes place in a not-too-distant future where humankind is irrevocably altered by genetic engineering and a resulting plague. Throughout the novel, Snowman grapples with his grief over his best friend Crake's passing and losing Oryx, the love of his life. In the trilogy's second book, The Year of the Flood, a waterless flood threatens Earth's remaining human population as a trapezist named Ren (who once dated Snowman) and Toby (A member God's Gardeners, a religious sect of survivors) attempt to find safety in a crumbling civilization filled with genetically modified humans and ecological danger. The trilogy ends with MaddAddam, which begins on the heels of the waterless flood's destruction, following Toby and the Children of Crake as they attempt to build a new world. Collectively and singularly, each arc of The MaddAddam Trilogy is doubly an epic and a warning.

Margaret Atwood

Good Bones and Simple Murders

The stories and illustrations within Good Bones and Simple Murders tease the line between folklore, fabulism and incantations. Filled with retellings of fairy tales, parabolic musings on writing, and scathing (yet satisfying) critiques of masculinity's shortcomings, this slim yet searing collection makes the most of brevity, subtly, and unabashedly grim endings. Perhaps best read under a full moon a night, the pages of this book wield a strange magic that only reveals itself to those who are willing to see it.

Margaret Atwood

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Must-Read Books by Margaret Atwood | Read It Forward

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Whether it be a poem, a story, a novel, or an essay, Margaret Atwood's words are undeniably memorable. Best known for her 1985 award-winning novel The Handmaid's Tale (which has been adapted into an opera, a film, and most recently an acclaimed Hulu series), Atwood's work unblinkingly grapples with the horrors of capitalism, misogyny, tyranny, and ecological degradation.

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There's no shortage of books about the kind of passionate romances that cause women to go mad, men to embark on quests, and couples to cross heaven and earth to make out in the rain and live happily ever after. Love stories are an eternal favorite because of all the strong, satisfying, and generally warm and fuzzy feelings one gets from reading them. But the feelings one gets from real-life intense relationships are actually quite different. These 7 books are not only great, satisfying reads, but they show that making out in the rain is not a prerequisite for a great, satisfying love story.

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7 Authors Who Know Life Ain't No Fairy Tale - Off the Shelf

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There's no shortage of books about the kind of passionate romances that cause women to go mad, men to embark on quests, and couples to cross heaven and earth to make out in the rain and live happily ever after.

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Only fiction titles for AP

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For me, Puerto Rico isn't just a vacation spot or the subject of usually depressing news stories. Instead, Puerto Rico has always meant family, since many of my cousins, aunts, and uncles call the island home. My dad taught my sister and me to be proud of our heritage and its rich cultural history, particularly the arts and literature, so enjoy these several fabulous books that are either written by Puerto Rican authors or are about the gorgeous island itself. ¡Wepa!

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¡Wepa!: 10 Books That Celebrate Puerto Rico's Rich Culture

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For me, Puerto Rico isn't just a vacation spot or the subject of usually depressing news stories. Instead, Puerto Rico has always meant family, since many of my cousins, aunts, and uncles call the island home.

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Toni Morrison was a prolific novelist, essayist, and editor who wrote eleven novels and several essays including her most recent collection, The Source of Self-Regard. Discover her beloved fiction and nonfiction works below, along with quotes that have touched readers around the world.

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The Toni Morrison Primer | Penguin Random House

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Toni Morrison was a prolific novelist, essayist, and editor who wrote eleven novels and several essays including her most recent collection, The Source of Self-Regard . Discover her beloved fiction and nonfiction works below, along with quotes that have touched readers around the world.

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It's always surprising to us which books wind up on the banned books list each year. They might be banned for violence or drug use or "inappropriate" sexual relationships. But we believe that everyone who has the desire should have the opportunity to read these books and judge the content for themselves.

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden increase in challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries. Each September, publishers, librarians, booksellers, and readers celebrate the freedom to read and raise awareness about the problems of book censorship. We've collected some of the most challenged books here based on BannedBooksWeek.org and the American Library Association.
Are you a librarian? The S&S Education & Library website has additional resources and title recommendations. Follow the team on and .

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13 Banned Books That Will Always Have a Place on Our Shelves - Off the Shelf

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It's always surprising to us which books wind up on the banned books list each year. They might be banned for violence or drug use or "inappropriate" sexual relationships. But we believe that everyone who has the desire should have the opportunity to read these books and judge the content for themselves.

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Sci-Fi/Speculative Fiction writer - Octavia Butler

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Sci-Fi/Speculative Fiction writer - Octavia Butler

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Twenty-five years ago, author Octavia Butler published her iconic Parable of the Sower with the epigraph: "All that you touch you Change. All that you Change changes you. The only lasting truth is Change." And while Butler passed away in 2006, her work continues to change and inspire other artists. It has been adapted for musicals, graphic novels, conferences, exhibitions and an upcoming television production by director Ava duVernay.

For those who have yet to read her books, TIME asked two Butler experts, Northeastern University professor Dr. Moya Bailey and Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network founder Dr. Ayana A.H. Jamieson, which works to start with - and next steps if you already love her novels.
How would you introduce Butler's work to those who may not have read it?
Dr. Ayana A.H. Jamieson: She's an award-winning speculative fiction writer whose work takes you to places that you didn't realize you wanted to go.

Dr. Moya Bailey: Butler's work calls on us to think critically about humanity. There's hope and despair as she tries to imagine worlds where humans are not undone by themselves. No matter the setting, Butler makes us struggle with the nature of humanity. Can we ever overcome hierarchy? Can we use our intelligence in constructive ways?

Jamieson: The things she writes about are based on a huge body of research in all kinds of fields: neuroscience, geology, microbiology, the etiology of diseases. The intellect and genius is there, even underneath prose that's conversational without being at all vernacular or simple.
If a friend or student were to ask you which Butler novel (or series!) to start with, what would you recommend and why?
Bailey: I always say Parable of the Sower. That book is scarily good because each time I read it, it still feels like it describes the world we live in. Butler is sometimes heralded as a prophet or psychic because [her work] so terrifyingly describes the world in which we live, even down to a presidential candidate vowing to " make America great again.

Jamieson: One of my magical powers is writing Octavia prescriptions! I like thinking about where people should go if they haven't encountered her work.

If you are a young person, in maybe 10 th or 12 th grade, I would suggest Kindred, which is her most famous standalone novel, and also Blood Child and Other Stories, which is a compilation of short stories. One of my favorite ones to start with is Wild Seed, because it asks you the question, "What if you had the ability to heal yourself from the inside out on a molecular level?"

For people interested in the environment and climate change, they should read the Parable novels. People interested in epic fantasy should read the Patternist series, which is a set of books that came after Wild Seed. People who are into e-books could read Unexpected Stories, which was published after her death.

And did I mention she has a vampire novel? It's called Fledgling. And it is hot! The vampires don't glitter, but it's a spectacular novel for people who like reading horror.
For people who already love Butler's work, what other authors and artists do you recommend they consider?
Bailey: N.K. Jemisin, Nisi Shawl, and I just read the first installment [ Children of Blood and Bone] of newcomer Tomi Adeyemi 's series and love it!

Jamieson: If you love Black Panther, or you like the new Star Wars films with John Boyega, there are other folks writing novelizations and graphic novels you might like. Daniel José Older has written a couple of books about Lando and young Han. Roxane Gay and Nnedi Okorafor - they've also written Black Panther graphic novels. And there's a graphic novel of Kindred, that is just as emotionally compelling as the original. It was done by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, who's a premier Afrofuturist graphic artist.

Many artists and activists - such as Janelle Monáe, Junot Díaz, Juliana Huxtable, and Gloria Steinem - have said they're influenced by Butler's work. Why do you think her writing resonates across so many disciplines: activism, music, literature, visual arts?

Jamieson: Her work is fundamentally about the creative process and what it means to live creatively even in the face of circumstances that not everyone would survive. By that I mean her personal existence, but also the world that she's writing about.[Her work is] immediate, life-affirming, and full of problem-solving for a lot of the issues that we have today.

Bailey: Butler's worlds hold so much possibility. Her work is super queer, and gender fluid, and there are Black and brown people at the center. That type of diversity is rare and it speaks to readers. Her attention to her craft is something that can't be denied.
Can you tell us about the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network? And, Dr. Bailey, what's your role as the Network's "Digital Alchemist"?
Jamieson: This is an organization that I founded in 2011 during my doctoral research on Octavia Butler. We maintain a digital presence as a community to gather, share information, and talk about Octavia Butler, her legacy, and the things that we're doing that reflect some of the principles in her writing. We're journalists, writers, musicians, physicians, humanitarians, scholars, K-12 teachers, people with regular jobs.

Bailey: Digital Alchemy is a concept I came up with to think about the transformative way women of color and Black women in particular are using online tools to do revolutionary work those tools were never imagined to do. For the Network, that looks like managing our Tumblr and Twitter accounts and staying informed about how Octavia Butler's legacy moves through digital spaces which helps to nurture all kinds of Black Girl Magic online and off.
Ava DuVernay, Victoria Mahoney and Charles King are adapting Butler's Dawn. Are you excited to see Butler's works translated to the screen? Any advice or comments that the filmmakers should consider from your perspective as a scholar? Or as a fan?
Bailey: Her work is epic! I'd love to see it on the big screen and after the success of Black Panther, it seems that Black science fiction is going to get its just due

Jamieson: [Laughing] I mean, I know it's hard to say, but I'd be happy to help!
This interview has been edited and condensed. This article and gallery were produced in partnership with Spotify as part of their year-long "Black History Is Happening Now" platform. Click here for curated playlists, videos, podcasts and more that celebrate Black achievements and culture beyond Black History Month. Check out this playlist from Spotify:
Afrofuturism- in all its wild, otherworldly musical dimensions-is captured by guest curators Janelle Monae and Ytasha Womack.

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How Sci-Fi Genius Octavia Butler Inspired Janelle Monae and Ava DuVernay

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Twenty-five years ago, author Octavia Butler published her iconic Parable of the Sower with the epigraph: "All that you touch you Change. All that you Change changes you. The only lasting truth is Change." And while Butler passed away in 2006, her work continues to change and inspire other artists.

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There are certain books that feel almost inherently "classic." To Kill A Mockingbird. Catcher in the Rye. Moby freaking Dick. But do you ever wonder what the world thought when these books first hit shelves? Who was the initial voice that pointed to their covers and said, "You - you're special"? We regard " classics books" with a level of veneration that is not afforded to so many other works. We teach "classics" to our children. We pat ourselves on the back for powering through a certain number of "classics," regardless of whether we actually, uh, like them. But time does not stand still. There are books on our shelves right now, being placed lovingly on "New Release" tables by booksellers, that will someday be given their own little "classics" stamps. What modern books will become literary classics? And why will we designate them as such?

We're not the only ones who wonder about the future of literary acclaim. Yesterday, a debate arose on the Reddit Books page. "What are some contemporary literature books (last 20-30 years) that you think may attain 'classic' status decades in the future?" asked user fabrar. "By classic status I mean the reputation that novels like Crime and Punishment, To Kill a Mockingbird, Les Miserables, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, etc. have attained, i.e. Standing the test of time through decades (sometimes centuries) and used as a standard and as a learning tool in educational institutions."

Over 120 users hurried to the message board to debate what merits a figurative "classic" stamp of approval. Graphic novels, novels by women, by people of color, books that charted territory through the Holocaust, through India's independence, through the American South, were all mentioned. It's a deeply diverse list, and it illustrated the fact that the future is bright and it is hopeful and it is filled with a host of new stories.

'Maus' by Art Spiegelman

The inclusion of Maus, a Holocaust survivor story (and winner of a Pulitzer Prize) sparked a debate about the potential of graphic novels within the "classics" canon. Are they considered literature? Will they ever carry enough clout to compete with tomes like Moby Dick? "I would include novels, poems and plays, so why not a graphic novel?" argued user finding_flora.
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'Americanah' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Nobel Prize is a pretty clear indication of a book's "classics" worthiness, and Never Let Me Go, a haunting work of speculative fiction, wins double for tackling questions of morality and memory, and for forcing us to consider the worth of a human body and the ways we commodify them.
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'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi

'Midnight's Children' by Salman Rushdie

'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco

'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's debut novel introduced the world to Smith's panoramic, multi-layered style, and to an England barreling towards the future in a post-World War II world. It's also on the PBS' The Great American Read nominee list.
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'Sing, Unburied, Sing' by Jesmyn Ward

Winner of the National Book Award, finalist for the Kirkus Prize, finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal and a New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year, Jesmyn Ward's latest novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing,which traces a family's saga throughout rural Mississippi, has already racked up a serious resume since its 2017 publication.
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Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels

If you haven't read any of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, which chart the fierce female friendship that burns brights in a post-WWII Italy, then you better get to reading - the series is set to be adapted for an HBO series, debuting this upcoming fall.
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'Norwegian Wood' by Haruki Murakami

Fan favorite Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood first hit shelves in Japan, where it sold over four million copies before being translated for an American audience. First love and first moments of hopelessness intersect in this coming-of-age novel.
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'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy's debut novel about an affluent Indian family, was so affecting, so searing (it did, after all, win the Man Booker Prize and was a New York Times best seller), that it kept fans captivated for literal decades, while Roy worked on her second (and equally fantastic) book.
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'The Savage Detectives' by Roberto Bolaño

Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of a fringe literary movement, embark on a decades-long, Don Quixote-esque adventure in The Savage Detectives, often powering through the uncharted area of overlap between literature and violence.
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The 12 Modern Books That Could Be Destined To Become Modern Classics

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There are certain books that feel almost inherently "classic." To Kill A Mockingbird. Catcher in the Rye. Moby freaking Dick. But do you ever wonder what the world thought when these books first hit shelves? Who was the initial voice that pointed to...

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Prizewinners and finalists in Fiction category, including bios, photos, jurors and work by winners and finalists

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I was a teenager when I first read Octavia Butler and had recently begun rebelling against my mother. Deeply rooted in her Christian faith, she forbade me to watch certain movies, read certain books, or participate in certain activities. In her eyes, she was protecting me from temptation, showing me the path, and working toward keeping me focused on it. I, on the other hand, felt limited and emotionally abused. I wanted to read and watch everything she said would reserve me a one-way ticket to hell.

When I left home for college, I started asking questions without the guilt of being punished by The Almighty and fell in love with stories that challenged my perception of reality. I lived for the likes of Harry Potter, Underworld, and "Inception." But I eventually noticed that none of the characters looked much like me. So I ventured on a new hunt to discover black science-fiction writers, and that is when I discovered Octavia Butler. To me, her literary imagination is filled with incomparable creative power.

Octavia Butler was the first black American woman science-fiction writer to achieve international acclaim. She was also the first science-fiction writer to receive the "Genius Grant," better known as the MacArthur Fellowship. Butler began her writing career because of a conviction to see herself in stories that weren't oppressive or harmful.

DAWN is the first book in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, which starts when humans are no longer living on earth but instead are forced to make a life on a ship steered by aliens called the Oankali. By the end of the third book, the story has progressed many decades and forces its reader to imagine a world dominated by others.

Meet Lilith, a woman who wakes up in a strange white room with no doors or windows and later discovers she's been abducted by an advanced alien race from an Earth dying at the hands of war. We are witnesses to Lilith's confusion, apprehension, and fear as she is forced to adapt in a world with creatures who don't claim a planet as home but instead travel through the universe seeking other forms of life to trade with. Imagine yourself in Lilith's shoes for a moment: you are no longer at the top of the food chain; you are no longer the smartest being to cross the land.

As we learn about her abductors (or saviors, depending on your perspective), Lilith experiences a blow to her ego as she discovers the dearth of her knowledge about them. After all, it is a little embarrassing to discover your own stupidity. Butler writes, "You are hierarchical. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all . . . That was like ignoring cancer. I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing."

Part of Butler's talent is being able to carve out space within the narrative for her reader to reside. If the story didn't feel possible, I fear it wouldn't have resonated with me so much. She taught me to visualize the makeup of family and gender differently. In the series, for example, it takes five biological people to make one being; the household is composed of male, female, and unisex persons.

DAWN breaks down what it means to be a creature of this world and others in simple terminology, but with the confidence to educate. Although the collection is almost thirty years old, the story confronts our present-day political climate in terms of what we can accomplish if we would simply work together. Butler writes that "[the Oankali] are not hierarchical, you see. We never were. But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life-seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell."

Lilith, the feminine figure and lead character in the book, is black, strong, and yet emotionally fluid. The Oankali studied her long before choosing her role in their colonization of acquiring human cells while attempting to save humanity. The characters woven throughout are multicultural, of all shades and experiences. DAWN is a true joy to spend time with; so much so that you might find yourself devouring the entire Xenogenesis series.

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An Enduring Sci-Fi Classic That Will Resonate With Diverse Readers - Off the Shelf

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I was a teenager when I first read Octavia Butler and had recently begun rebelling against my mother. Deeply rooted in her Christian faith, she forbade me to watch certain movies, read certain books, or participate in certain activities. In her eyes, she was protecting me from temptation, showing me the path, and working toward keeping me focused on it.

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The Literary Canon Is Mostly White. Here’s an Alternative Latin American Reading List

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These books are all great and important, but they hardly include our history.

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Have you ever finished a book and thought, Wow, I wish everyone would read that?

An avid reader myself, I love hearing about the books that inspire strong reactions in other readers-the ones they finish thinking the world would be a better place if every single person would read it.

But here's the funny thing about these books we consider "must" reads: every reader has a different list. I asked on Instagram for you to share the books you think are so good that every woman has gotta read them. And WOW, did you deliver: the comments, both public and private, contained an astonishing variety of literary works.

I'm sharing the most frequently cited books in two blog posts: today, I'm listing the ones that can reasonably be considered classics (which is good timing if you need a classic to read for the 2018 Reading Challenge). Later this month I'm sharing 50(!!!) contemporary works that many women consider must-reads.

Readers, I hope you enjoy getting to see the variety of books many different women consider to be must-reads. Are YOUR must-reads on this list? If not, please tell us all about them in comments.

P.S. If you haven't yet, sign up for the 2018 Reading Challenge and get your free challenge kit. Plus 7 books that will make you a better human, 4 female authors worth binge reading, and my favorite books of 2017.

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25 must-read classics for women - Modern Mrs. Darcy

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Have you ever finished a book and thought, Wow, I wish everyone would read that? An avid reader myself, I love hearing about the books that inspire strong reactions in other readers-the ones they finish thinking the world would be a better place if every single person would read it.

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THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS is a moving literary debut. It weaves together the stories of two heroic girls who experience similar harrowing journeys centuries apart through North Africa and the Middle East as they battle and overcome forces bigger than themselves. Bound together by undaunted courage on their course to find home, this stunning, lyrical, and timely coming-of-age novel urges readers to focus on the devastating reality of Syrian refugees.

When a 12-year-old Syrian American, Nour, loses her beloved father to cancer, her mother and sisters move back to Syria from New York City to be closer to the family they left behind. Nour is curious and sensitive, and her synesthesia is a wonder to read, as the trees rustle in different colors, laughs have a hue, and voices carry more than just sound. It's an enchanting element to a young girl trying to make sense of the world she lost and struggling to understand the one she now finds herself in. In the midst of her grief she is catapulted into an evacuation as her new home, Homs, is being bombed due to a civil war.

Simultaneously we are told the story of Rawiya-a bedtime story Nour's father created-who leaves her widowed mother disguised as a boy to become the apprentice of cartographer and historical mapmaker Al-Idrisi. Eight hundred years before Nour, Rawiya traverses the same lands fighting rocs and mythical monsters while Nour battles bullets, ill-fated boat crossings, and the threat of displacement and separation. Armed with only her memories and an unfinished map Nour's mother created and gave her, this sweeping and linked history lets us recognize the importance of storytelling, the enduring power of myths, and the weight of remembering where we've been in order to understand where we need to go.

Through captivating prose and empathetic characters, this book is an important read that uses fictional specifics to present the very real sacrifices, dangers, and risks of the refugee experience. Reading it made me utterly heartbroken, but also filled me with hope and resolved humanity. To me, the book beautifully illustrates the ways in which we try to define ourselves in relation to a physical place and the struggle that comes when that place no longer exists, and how we ultimately learn that the parameters of home, love, and loss aren't defined by geography, but rather always carried within us.

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Loved THE KITE RUNNER? Read This Timely and Moving Debut

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THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS is a moving literary debut. It weaves together the stories of two heroic girls who experience similar harrowing journeys centuries apart through North Africa and the Middle East as they battle and overcome forces bigger than themselves.

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"All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is."

-Aleksander Hemon

So reads the opening epigraph to Colum McCann's stunning, National Book Award-winning tour de force. In the bustling city of New York, eight million people whirl through their lives every day. It is easy for our tunnel vision to blind us to the humanity of the people we pass in the street, on the subway, in line at the grocery store. Yet each of these people has a story, perhaps far and away from our own, and it is an extraordinary thing that our lives have brought us to the same place for even a moment. It is even more extraordinary to consider that our paths have already crossed, or will continue to intersect-to imagine that we are connected to these strangers in ways yet unknown.

In Let the Great World Spin, McCann explores this phenomenon through the catalyst of a hot summer day in 1974, when Philippe Petit walked across a tightrope strung between the Twin Towers. McCann introduces a dynamic cast of characters, each grappling with his own demons. There is Corrigan, an Irish monk who has abandoned the church and settled in the projects of the Bronx, where he offers shelter and companionship to the prostitutes turning tricks on the block. Among these women are Jazzlyn and her mother Tillie, who take a liking to the kind monk. Meanwhile, on the Upper East Side, housewife Claire and her husband mourn the loss of their son, who died in Vietnam. The web grows horizontally across the city's boroughs and beyond to include an artistic couple involved in a horrible car crash, a young man who photographs the graffiti on the subway, and a team of hackers in California eager for details of the tightrope walker's feat. The narrative also expands vertically, including the next generation. Barriers of time and space are transcended seamlessly in the pursuit of a rich, omniscient narrative.

The connection between these characters seems tenuous at first. What could they possibly have in common? Yet, as each chapter gives voice to a new perspective in this intricate web, the links between seemingly disparate lives are illuminated. The virtuosity of this novel lies not merely with McCann's narrative mastery, but in his expert rendering of each character as complex and sympathetic within the space of just a few pages.

The novel opens and closes with the story of Philippe Petit, and I can't help but examine the metaphorical implications of his tightrope as they pertain to this formidable novel. A tightrope is only as strong as the foundations to which it is moored, and this novel is anchored to the beautiful and complicated people to whom McCann gives life through language. Without his painstaking depiction of the common humanity that ignites us, the story would be nothing but a flimsy rope, abandoned to the winds of time and taste. Instead, Let the Great World Spin has left a searing mark on the contemporary literary canon, and on each reader lucky enough to enter McCann's vividly rendered world.
Hilary Krutt works on the Subsidiary Rights team at Atria Books. You can follow her on Twitter @Hkrutt.

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An Ambitious, Dazzling Novel of Intertwined Lives - Off the Shelf

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In the bustling city of New York, eight million people whirl through their lives every day. It is easy for our tunnel vision to blind us to the humanity of the people we pass in the street, on the subway, in line at the grocery store.

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100 Books Everyone Should Read Before They Die

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Amazon's list of the fiction, nonfiction, children's, young adult, and best selling books everyone should read at least once.

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A desperately poor law student kills a pawnbroker. There we have the story, maximally distilled, of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Or at least we have the central event, to which everything in Dostoevsky's best-known novel leads and from which everything else follows. But as with so many 19th-century Russian novels, there's much more to it than that; some Dostoevsky enthusiasts see the book as not just the story of a murder's meditation and aftermath but an incisive portrayal of the eternal moral condition of humanity. But since such grand-sounding claims no doubt put off as many readers as they bring in, we'd do better to ask a simpler question: Why should you read Crime and Punishment?

The animated TED-Ed lesson by Alex Gendler above answers that question in four and a half animated minutes. "Though the novel is sometimes cited as one of the first psychological thrillers," Gendler says, its scope reaches far beyond the inner turmoil of the student-turned-killer Raskolnikov. "From dank taverns to dilapidated apartments and claustrophobic police stations, the underbelly of 19th-century Saint Petersburg is brought to life by Dostoyevsky's searing prose."

With its large cast of fully realized and often not-quite-savory inhabitants, this "bleak portrait of Russian society reflects the author's own complex life experiences and evolving ideas" - experiences that included four years in a Siberian labor camp as punishment for his participation in intellectual discussions of banned socialist texts.

You might assume that such a background would produce a bitter writer concerned only with revenge against the state, but Dostoevsky's social critique, Gendler says, "cuts far deeper. Raskolnikov rationalizes that his own advancement at the cost of the exploitative pawnbroker's death would be a net benefit to society," which "echoes the doctrines of egoism and utilitarianism embraced by many of Dostoyevsky's contemporary intellectuals." And all of us, not just intellectuals and political leaders, have the potential to cut ourselves off from our own humanity as Raskolnikov does. Some of us face punishment for the crimes we commit, but many of us don't - or not official, externally applied punishment, in any case, but "Dostoyevsky's gripping account of social and psychological turmoil" still shows us how the harshest punishment comes from within.
Related Content: The Digital Dostoevsky: Download Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russian Novelist's Major Works Dostoevsky Draws Doodles of Raskolnikov and Other Characters in the Manuscript of Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Life & Literature Introduced in a Monty Python-Style Animation The Animated Dostoevsky: Two Finely Crafted Short Films Bring the Russian Novelist's Work to Life Batman Stars in an Unusual Cartoon Adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

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Why You Should Read Crime and Punishment: An Animated Introduction to Dostoevsky's Moral Thriller

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A desperately poor law student kills a pawnbroker. There we have the story, maximally distilled, of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Or at least we have the central event, to which everything in Dostoevsky's best-known novel leads and from which everything else follows.

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It's mid-September, 2019, and we're beginning to see the light (or to be slightly more accurate, the infinite pulsing darkness) at the end of the decade. In the coming weeks, we'll be looking back at the ten years that were, as well as forward to the ones to come. To begin our descent, I proposed a staff poll, of sorts: I asked each of my colleagues in the Literary Hub office to make a list of the ten books from the last ten years that they thought we'd still be reading-for good or ill-ten years from now, circa 2030.

The below results collate the responses of 14 people, who range in age and interest as much as possible for a group that works for a literary website. I was not surprised to see Claudia Rankine's Citizen top the list by a wide margin-that's a book that keeps on getting more relevant; one hopes that in ten years we'll be reading it as an artifact, but one also doubts it. Same goes for some of the others on here, though some of course are just very good novels that people will continue to enjoy.

Take a look, and if you're so moved, tell us which books you think we'll all still be reading, talking about, and studying in ten years time in the comments.

9 votes:

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6 votes:
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
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5 votes:

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4 votes:

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3 votes:
Anne Carson, Nox (2010) Clarice Lispector, tr. Katrina Dodson, The Complete Stories (2015)
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2 votes:

N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season (2015)

Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me (2014)

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Also listed by at least one person:
Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
Andy Weir, The Martian
Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
Anthony Doerr,All the Light We Cannot See
Attica Locke, Black Water Rising
Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Daniel Woodrell, The Maid's Version
David Grann,Killers of the Flower Moon
Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously
Elif Batuman,The Idiot
Elizabeth Kolbert,The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Esmé Weijun Wang,The Collected Schizophrenias
Haruki Murakami,1Q84
Helen Garner, This House of Grief
Homer, tr. Emily Wilson,The Odyssey
Horacio Castellanos Moya, The Dream of My Return
Isabel Wilkerson,The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
J. D. Vance,Hillbilly Elegy
Javier Marías, The Infatuations
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead
Julie Otsuka,The Buddha in the Attic
Karen Russell,Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Karl Ove Knausgaard,My Struggle (et al)
Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf
Ling Ma,Severance
Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Margaret Atwood,MaddAddam
Marlon James,A Brief History of Seven Killings
Michael Lewis, The Big Short
Miriam Toews,Women Talking
Natalie Díaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec
Ocean Vuong,On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Olga Tokarczuk,Flights
Ottessa Moshfegh,My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Patrick Modiano, So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood
Patrick Raddon Keefe,Say Nothing
Patti Smith,Just Kids
Paul Beatty,The Sellout
Rabih Alameddine,An Unnecessary Woman
Rachel Kushner,The Flamethrowers
Rebecca Skloot,The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Robert Caro,The Passage of Power
Robert Macfarlane,Underland
Sally Rooney,Normal People
Sam Quinones, Dreamland
Santiago Gamboa, Night Prayers
Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind
Siddhartha Mukherjee,The Emperor of All Maladies
Susan Faludi,In The Darkroom
Svetlana Alexievich, Second-hand Time
Tara Westover,Educated
Tillie Walden,On a Sunbeam
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands
Timothy Snyder,On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twenty-First Century
Tina Fey, Bossypants
Valeria Luiselli,Tell Me How It Ends
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs: A Biography
Yuri Slezkine,The House of the Government

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Best of the Decade: What Books Will We Still Be Reading in 10 Years?

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It's mid-September, 2019, and we're beginning to see the light (or to be slightly more accurate, the infinite pulsing darkness) at the end of the decade. In the coming weeks, we'll be looking back at the ten years that were, as well as forward to the ones to come.

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It's that time of year again. School is starting and backpacks will be filled with new notebooks, pens, and-of course-classics. For those of us who may not be getting new locker assignments, back-to-school is a still a great time to recommit to broadening our horizons and pursuing a lifetime of learning. Whatever stage you're in, Penguin Classics has the curriculum staples and global masterpieces to help you make this fall one for the books.

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Hit the Books with Penguin Classics | Penguin Random House

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It's that time of year again. School is starting and backpacks will be filled with new notebooks, pens, and-of course-classics. For those of us who may not be getting new locker assignments, back-to-school is a still a great time to recommit to broadening our horizons and pursuing a lifetime of learning.

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St. Patrick's Day is a time to honor Irish heritage and culture, whether that means attending a performance of Irish music or dancing, wearing green and searching for four-leafed shamrocks, or sampling some fine Irish whiskey. We at Off the Shelf will be taking the opportunity to revisit some incredible books by Irish authors, from enduring classics to powerful memoirs to contemporary novels that are taking the literary world by storm. So take your pick and spend this March 17th celebrating Ireland through the written word.

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13 Irish Writers to Read this St. Patrick's Day - Off the Shelf

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St. Patrick's Day is a time to honor Irish heritage and culture, whether that means attending a performance of Irish music or dancing, wearing green and searching for four-leafed shamrocks, or sampling some fine Irish whiskey.

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The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker Prize, is one of the most influential annual international literary fiction honors, open to authors of any nationality writing in English. Most recent winners include Lincoln in the Bardo and A Brief History of Seven Killings. How many of these beloved novels have you read?

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The Booker Prize Winning Books | Penguin Random House

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The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker Prize, is one of the most influential annual international literary fiction honors, open to authors of any nationality writing in English. Most recent winners include Lincoln in the Bardo and A Brief History of Seven Killings. How many of these beloved novels have you read?

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Do you remember back in March when I was telling you about the can't-miss debut novels by authors with highly anticipated summer books? I was losing my mind over new novels from writers like Paula Hawkins and Arundhati Roy. Well, now I'm really losing it over the incredibly exciting books coming out this fall. I mean there are new books coming from Jennifer Egan and Dan Brown and Alice Hoffman and Gabrielle Zevin and, well, you get the point. To keep myself together, I'm revisiting old favorites by authors with big books coming out this fall.

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15 Favorite Novels from 15 Favorite Authors

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Do you remember back in March when I was telling you about the can't-miss debut novels by authors with highly anticipated summer books? I was losing my mind over new novels from writers like Paula Hawkins and Arundhati Roy. Well, now I'm really losing it over the incredibly exciting books coming out this fall.

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Where to Start with Octavia Butler | The New York Public Library

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Wayétu Moore on Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Murder in the Cassava Patch

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10 rapid-fire book recs from the author of She Would Be King

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The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club and Book of the Month Club Pick. BOTM Club calls this a "magical tale set in colonial Malaysia. If someone told me there's a book out there that's part history, part love story, part coming-of-age, part magical tale... It sounds too good to be true. But here's the thing: This book exists. This is a book that has something for everyone. There's a central mystery to satisfy puzzle-solving readers. There's a will-they-won't-they love story to tug at the heartstrings of every romantic. There's a touch of magic for fantasy fans; a portrait of colonial Malaysia for history buffs; and enough family drama to please those looking for a moving saga. Equal parts nail-biter and heartwarmer, this book transported me into a world entirely unlike my own." For fans of Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee.

The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A sumptuous garden maze of a novel that immerses readers in a complex, vanished world." -Kirkus (starred review)
From New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo, an utterly transporting novel set in 1930s colonial Malaysia, perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee
Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin plunges into a dark adventure: a mirror world of secrets and superstitions.
Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever.
As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths racks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren's increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.
Yangsze Choo's The Night Tiger pulls us into a world of servants and masters, age-old superstition and modern idealism, sibling rivalry and forbidden love. But anchoring this dazzling, propulsive novel is the intimate coming-of-age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.
"A work of incredible beauty... Astoundingly captivating and striking... A transcendent story of courage and connection." ―Booklist (starred review)

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The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club and Book of the Month Club Pick. BOTM Club calls this a "magical tale set in colonial Malaysia. If someone told me there's a book out there that's part history, part love story, part coming-of-age, part magical tale... It sounds too good to be true.

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Fifty years ago today, Viking Press published S.E. Hinton's now-classic , the story of two rival gangs in Tulsa in the 1960s: the Greasers and the Socs. Since then, the book-which Hinton wrote as a teenager herself-has remained popular, perhaps for its visceral sense of youth, one that feels indelible, unshakable by time. The Outsiders is a YA novel, or would be classified that way today, but since it's now middle-aged itself, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight a few contemporary novels about teenagers written for adults. So please find below some great novels that capture that harrowing anxiety of being a teenager, all of them written in the last twenty years. (And of course, as this is an incomplete list, do suggest your own favorites at will in the comments.)
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
I'm cheating-and right at the beginning, horrors-because Ward's new novel doesn't come out until September. But I can't not include it. The book switches between perspectives, but it hinges on that of 13-year-old Jojo, who goes with his mother to pick his father up from jail, and seems to pick someone else up along the way. The novel is chilling and brilliant, a testament to the many worlds and experiences that are overlaid on our own, whether we can see them or not.
Tana French, The Secret Place
The eponymous Secret Place is a bulletin board at St. Kilda's, where the schoolgirls post anonymous threats, admissions, and, of course secrets. When a boy is killed on campus, the Secret Place may have the answers-and so may any one of the teenage girls fighting for purchase at the center of this novel, each one full to bursting with a power that is only growing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus
Adichie's first novel, published back in 2003, is the riveting story of Kambili Achike, a 15-year-old girl trapped in a home with an abusive, terrifying, and hyper-religious father-until her mother reaches her breaking point and decides to do something about him. One of the best coming-of-age novels in recent memory.
Pamela Erens, The Virgins
Yum yum yum. This is my feeling about this novel of teenage love and lust and voyeurism, as one boy watches and imagines-in the details of the love affair of the girl who has rejected him and the one she chose. Also one of the best narrator-as-villain novels I have ever encountered. Really, it's a marvel.
Julie Buntin, Marlena
Like everyone else you know, I loved this novel, the story of two girls growing up in the bleak Michigan landscape-told by the only one of the two who gets to keep on growing. Fair warning though: this book is seriously mind-wormy-months after reading, scenes still flash before my eyes without warning. Not that I mind, of course.
Charles Burns, Black Hole
"Black hole" is also a good description for what your stomach becomes when you read this graphic novel. Something about the plain black and white makes it deeply harrowing-plus the fact that it's about an STD ravaging a high school. An STD that will give you strange, unpredictable mutations. Like a tail. Beware, human teens!
Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching
Half haunted-house story, half bizarre psychological weaving, this is an intoxicatingly strange novel centered on a pair of twins, Miranda and Eliot Silver, whose mother died when they were 16-but in some ways, is still around. In the UK, the title is Pie-Kah, the pronunciation of Miranda's condition, which causes her to eat non-edible objects, notably chalk.
Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
In this novel, the favorite daughter of an Asian-American family living in a small town in 1970s Ohio is found dead in the lake-but how did she get there? A remarkably delicate and sensitive literary thriller with a hard truth at the core: how little it is possible to truly know anyone, even ourselves.
Ali Smith, How to Be Both
A book split in two: one half a contemporary teenage girl named George, living in England; the other a 15th-century Italian painter. Depending on which copy you buy, you may encounter George first, or Francesco-that's Francesco del Cossa, a real Renaissance artist, whose voice makes up the strangest part of this novel.
Robin Wasserman, Girls on Fire
Wasserman's first novel for adults was actually supposed to be YA-or at least she thought so. But it became something else: a brutal, intense twist on the classic good-girl-bad-girl bond, wearing a worn Pendleton button-down. For everyone who went a little wild for a little while there.

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10 Great Contemporary Novels About Teenagers (For Adults)

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Fifty years ago today, Viking Press published S.E. Hinton's now-classic , the story of two rival gangs in Tulsa in the 1960s: the Greasers and the Socs. Since then, the book-which Hinton wrote as a teenager herself-has remained popular, perhaps for its visceral sense of youth, one that feels indelible, unshakable by time.