When we consider novels that transport us across time and place, it’s nearly impossible to not think of some of the most fantastic multigenerational tales of immigrant families. Crossing countries, cultures, sometimes seas, and sometimes decades, the best of them sweep us along in a way that we can’t get enough of. Evoking all the big feels to do with finding one’s way both literally and figuratively, and navigating the unknown — often coupled with at least a little bit of danger — there’s no wonder these books are counted among some of the best we’ve ever known. From Asia to Northern Europe, the United Kingdom to the United States, if you’re looking to be moved while moving along, you’ve found your next read.
The Story of the Forest
by Linda Grant
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize - A Parade Best Book of the Month - A Paste Most Anticipated Historical Fiction for Fall
“Romance, tragedy, war, the horrors of the pogroms, business dynasties, and more make this closely observed novel inspired somewhat by Grant's family story into a page turner.” –Parade
It's 1913 when Mina, the young and carefree daughter of a Jewish merchant, roams into a forest on the edge of the Baltic Sea looking for mushrooms. Instead, she encounters a gang of unruly, charismatic Bolsheviks – an adventure that will become the stuff of familial lore for generations to come. Intending to save her from further corruption, and in an act that forever changes the trajectory of their family's life, Mina and her eldest brother, Jossel, board a ship to England.
There the threat of a different war looms large. When WWI hits, Jossel is sent to the front, where he keeps a severely wounded soldier in his unit alive 'til morning by telling him tales – including that his sister Mina will marry him if he survives. The soldier lives and asks for Mina's hand, their marriage uniting two growing trade dynasties. But over time Mina and Jossel will learn that not everyone in their family has survived the wars and pogroms, even as they and their offspring struggle to build new lives in Liverpool in the midst of ever-shifting discriminations.
Based on the author's own family history and legends, The Story of the Forest is a remarkable record of family lore; a meditation on the power of stories to ground us, particularly in the face of life's inevitable losses, told with a keen wit and a sharp eye to the charms and the foibles of family by masterful British novelist Linda Grant.
Bonus: Check out the Page & Pairing guide to The Story of the Forest.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
A New York Times bestseller - Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction - Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling
New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
"A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently universal . . . Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning." –Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"This is one of the best novels I've ever read . . . Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece." –Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born – a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam – and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
The Mountains Sing
by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The International Bestseller
A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection
A Winner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship
A Best Book of 2020: NPR's Book Concierge * PopMatters * Washington Independent Review of Books * Real Simple * The Buzz Magazine * NB Magazine * BookBrowse * Paperback Paris * Writer's Bone * Global Atlanta
"[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history." -The New York Times Book Review
"A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting." -VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.
Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.
The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's first novel in English.
Behold the Dreamers
by Imbolo Mbue
A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream – the unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy
New York Times Bestseller - Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award - Longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award - An ALA Notable Book
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
NPR - The New York Times Book Review - San Francisco Chronicle - The Guardian - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Chicago Public Library - BookPage - Refinery29 - Kirkus Reviews
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty – and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America and imagine a brighter future.
However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers' façades.
When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende's job – even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America – and the search for what it means to call a place home. - From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
"An expansive, epic love story." –O, The Oprah Magazine
One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
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.
At once powerful and tender, Americanah is a remarkable novel that is "dazzling...funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise." –San Francisco Chronicle
American Ending
by Mary Kay Zuravleff
An Oprah Daily pick for spring 2023
David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction Finalist
A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life.
Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. However, Yelena craves a different path. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?
In this immersive novel, Zuravleff weaves Russian fairy tales and fables into a family saga within the storied American landscape. The challenges facing immigrants – and the fragility of citizenship – are just as unsettling and surprising today as they were 100 years ago. American Ending is a poignant reminder that everything that is happening in America has already happened.
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
In this New York Times bestseller, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan-the inspiration for the television series on Apple TV+.
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger. When she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
Profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty.