Intriguing Books From 30 Countries
Jump start your summer reading with fiction and nonfiction with a spicy international flavor
Are you stuck in a reading rut? Have you read too many Mom Coms about frazzled mothers in deep suburbia or first novels about editorial assistants in Brooklyn living on Ramen noodles?
Jump start your summer reading with this alphabetical list of hammock–ready books from 30 countries. On it you’ll find new and classic novels, short stories, memoirs, travelogues, and more by authors ranging from Nobel laureates to pop-fiction supernovas. After each title, you’ll find a one-or-two sentence review culled from my Around the World in Books series.
1 Australia
The Women in Black. By Madeleine St. John.
Three smart young saleswomen survive the hustle and bustle of a grand Sydney department store in a bittersweet critique of Australian insularity that Hilary Mantel said she gives “to cheer people up.” St. John was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Essence of the Things.
2 Bosnia
Love and Obstacles: Stories. By Aleksandar Hemon.
An uprooted Bosnian man in America narrates short stories about ambiguous loss, or unresolved grief for people who are…
