Here are 100 books that Leaving the Atocha Station fans have personally recommended if you like
Leaving the Atocha Station.
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Writing is about the metaphysical as well as the rational if it’s any good. As an author, I am always more interested in the wreckage of a crisis than the crisis itself—in the aftermath. Survivors search for purpose above all else. They undertake long sojourns, seek spiritual counsel, or find solace in art or politics. As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path that is shared by all these novels is the discovery of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. There lies meaning.
Sebald’s relatively small collection of novels, which he named “documentary fiction," combines timeless prose with fictional photographic evidence, transporting readers into a haunting archaeology of history, memory, and conflict. In a series of seemingly accidental meetings, the reader is taken on one man’s journey through the Second World War and its aftermath to discover his origins.
The writing is unconventional yet highly traditional and changed how many writers, including myself, approached narrative. There was simply no other stylist like him.
This tenth anniversary edition of W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece includes a new Introduction by acclaimed critic James Wood. Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he…
In the years following his graduation from college, Cole Chen has been back and forth between the U.S. and China, struggling to navigate his transition into adulthood. Estranged from his parents, he returns to Hunan province to work for his friends, while also attempting to write a memoir based on…
As part of a multiethnic, multicultural family who has lived in multicultural and multiethnic cities on three continents, I am at ease in plural communities. It’s no surprise then that I’m fascinated by how different cultures intersect inside American communities. I’m especially drawn to novels that portray something broader: the shared civic spaces where immigrants from many backgrounds and longtime residents live side by side. As a novelist, I’m interested in how that chorus and multitude of voices intersect—sometimes clashing, sometimes connecting—and how ordinary encounters gradually shape a community. The books on this list stayed with me because they capture that living mosaic of cultures that continues to shape the American story.
I admire the quiet, contemplative intelligence of this novel.
Following the narrator, a psychiatrist, on his long walks through New York felt like wandering through a living archive of migration and memory. As he encounters strangers, fragments of stories surface from across the world.
What fascinated me most was how the novel reveals the invisible histories carried by people moving through the same city streets. Reading it reminded me that modern American life is shaped by countless journeys, each voice adding another layer to the cultural landscape.
The bestselling debut novel from a writer heralded as the twenty-first-century W. G. Sebald.
A haunting novel about national identity, race, liberty, loss and surrender, Open City follows a young Nigerian doctor as he wanders aimlessly along the streets of Manhattan. For Julius the walks are a release from the tight regulations of work, from the emotional fallout of a failed relationship, from lives past and present on either side of the Atlantic.
Isolated amid crowds of bustling strangers, Julius criss-crosses not just physical landscapes but social boundaries too, encountering people whose otherness sheds light on his own remarkable journey…
When I first wrote The Sea Elephants, my protagonist (Shagun) and I were both asexual. My writing professor read the novel and said it’s dying to be a gay love story. Eventually, when I came out and rewrote the book from my newfound identity of queerness, I searched for queer stories that, like mine, were set outside the US or had non-American leads. And I realized that this is a significant gap that needs to be bridged. I felt a tremendous sense of solidarity with the books I did find. They made me feel less alone. Later, as an assistant professor of English, I’ve taught all of these books.
There are very few books that capture the particular suffering of loving someone and not being loved back.
Greenwell’s powerful debut novel is one of them. Set in the capital city of Bulgaria, the novel begins with an encounter that the narrator, an American teacher working abroad, has with Mitko, a sex worker. It is written in prose whose beauty, beat by beat, is as achingly beautiful as the unrequited love the narrator has for Mitko. This is one to savor slowly.
My copy is heavily underlined. Garth, a trained opera singer, reads like a dream. Accompany your reading with his readings from the work (they’re on YouTube).
Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
Winner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards. Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.
'A searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire . . . as beautiful and vivid as poetry' - Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace…
In the years following his graduation from college, Cole Chen has been back and forth between the U.S. and China, struggling to navigate his transition into adulthood. Estranged from his parents, he returns to Hunan province to work for his friends, while also attempting to write a memoir based on…
I am the product of a love triangle—an unusual one, between a French Holocaust survivor, an African student from France’s colonies, and a black GI. My parents came of age during really turbulent times and led big, bold lives. They rarely spoke about their pasts, but once I began digging—in the letters they exchanged, in conversations with my grandmother and aunts, with their childhood friends—I realized that all three had witnessed up close so much of the drama and horrors of the twentieth century and that what they had lived together merited being told. My parents’ love triangle is at the heart of my love of love-triangle stories.
This is so much more than a love triangle story that I hesitate to reduce it to merely that. The novel explores interracial relationships, “blackness” in both an African and an African-American context, and the ways in which those worlds collide, etc., etc. At its broadest, the book describes the story of the Nigerian diaspora writ large. But at its core, this is the story of a love triangle—the sort of story I love most.
(I grew up a bit of a mama’s boy, and in our household, we loved love stories…)
As in Ishiguro and Jones, cited above, and in Garcia Marquez, noted next, the characters here submit to pressures and make difficult choices—as thoughtfully as they can, under the circumstances. And those choices have life-changing consequences that the characters eventually come to regret.
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to him, and plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.
I have been asked for decades to share my story. Who would want to hear my story? When we established the fund in memory of beloved sisters Margie and Jane, the doctor connected to the fund told me to write about my sisters so others would know them. After thirty years of suppressing my grief, writing became a venue to let the walls down and let my feelings out and be compassionate to myself and others in their grief no matter the time. Grief is a difficult subject and I hope in telling my story another individual will not be alone in their grief.
I am recommending this work of fiction selected by The Compassionate Friends Sibling Grief Book Club. Ann, with grace, handles not only the sibling loss of a brother, a boy the sole survivor of a plane crash, but the depth and breadth of grief from the aunt and uncle Edward lives with. Edward’s aunt grieving the loss of an unborn child and her sister, says to Edward, “You’re not okay. We are not okay. This is not okay.” I’m certain other bereaved siblings can relate, “he mourns what his brother has lost.” I related to how in a family we handle grief differently and often are unable to communicate how we are feeling.
A transcendent coming-of-age story about the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles: there are 192 people aboard. When the plane suddenly crashes, twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor.
In the aftermath, Edward struggles to make sense of his grief, sudden fame and find his place in a world without his family. But then Edward and his neighbour Shay make a startling discovery; hidden in his uncle's garage are letters from the relatives of other passengers - all addressed him.
During an intensely productive period as a licensed clinical psychologist, I invented virtual reality immersion therapy described in US Patent 6425764 and authored Virtual Therapy: prevention and treatment of psychiatric conditions by immersion in virtual reality environments. UCSF Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Lawrence Lurie wrote: “Ralph’s vision is of the whole world, the context is history from the beginning of time. The author quotes Emerson, Dante, Chaucer, Jung and many more from before and after the invention of the printing press. The originality, language, and world view make this book interesting reading. The story is well told in verse, pictures, quotations, and more. I enjoyed the vast expansiveness of the story and the details of many people’s lives.”
The Power of Concentration is a practical guide for developing concentration. I liked this book because it helped me through graduate school when stress was high. The book contributes to a discussion of positive psychology. Concentration is placed within the grasp of each person. The author links concentration to the development of desirable habits while overcoming bad habits." Theron Q. Dumont noted, "Concentration is paying attention to a chosen thought." His work is relevant today given distractions from many corners of life.
This course of lessons will stimulate and inspire you to achieve success; it will bring you into perfect harmony with the laws of success. It will give you a firmer hold on your duties and responsibilities. All your real advancement must come from your individual effort. Success is assured when you are able to concentrate for you are then able to utilize for your good all constructive thoughts and shut out all the destructive ones. It is of the greatest value to be able to think only that which will be beneficial.
I have always been passionate about Black authors and Black children being writers and writing about their experiences or their children’s experiences since I was a young adult. Ever since the Trayvon Martin incident years ago, these Black history stories and books have been so meaningful to the Black community. I used to read just Urban fiction AA books back in high school, but ever since I became a writer/author I have taken a liking to reading children's books about self-love, fear, and going to college, especially for young black children. I read these books to remind me that we are strong-minded people. That no one can take our light from us.
This book is about using some magic sprinkles one day and falling asleep, but waking up in your dreams as a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or even a firefighter is showing young Black kids that they can be all those things and to not let the color of their skin or how they chose to wear their hair stop them from achieving those goals and dreams.
Black Girl Magic Sprinkles is a story about a young girl named Trinity, who dreams of one day being a teacher. However, she is discouraged because she does not often see women who look like her in successful jobs. She stumbles upon a jar of Black Girl Magic Sprinkles, and is shown endless opportunities. It takes this encounter for her to realize that Black Girl Magic lives within her and she can be anything she wants to be."Even if you haven't seen it, doesn't mean you can't achieve it; because with just a sprinkle of your Black Girl Magic, you…
I grew up in a small village in India. The nearest library was in the next town, two bus rides and a long walk away and comprised of one bookshelf, half full, the books with several pages missing. I read and reread those books, making up my own narratives for the missing pages. I suppose this was the crucial first step in my journey to author. I write stories featuring diverse protagonists. In my books, I explore themes of displacement and belonging, how people brought up in different cultures and during different times respond to challenges, how their interactions and reactions are informed by their different upbringings and values.
This book deals with knife crime and its devastating aftereffects and is told from the point of view of the victim’s mother as she comes to terms with her son’s death. A mother myself, this was a heartbreaking read, very topical and ultimately uplifting. Beautifully written, this is a very powerful book. I think it should be part of the curriculum for teenagers in secondary schools. A truly wonderful book.
Chosen by Bernadine Evaristo as one of her Top 20 Books by Black British Womxn Writers, Yvvette Edwards' second novel, The Mother, tells Marcia's story.
Today, Marcia is heading to the Old Bailey. She's going there to do something no mother should ever have to do: to attend the trial of the boy accused of her son's murder.
She's not meant to be that woman; Ryan, her son, wasn't that kind of boy. But Tyson Manley is that kind of a boy and, as his trial unfolds, it becomes clear that it's his girlfriend Sweetie who has the answers Marcia…
I grew up in a household with a secret at its center, one that I've long suspected held trauma. Long before the formation of the family I was born into, my mother was a divorcee with a young child, my eldest sister (a fact I only found out by finding a photo of my parents’ wedding with my sister in it!). My mother refused to tell my sister anything about her biological father or the circumstances of the divorce, saying only that she “preferred to pretend that part of her life had never happened.” I never did learn the full story. Needless to say, novels that give their protagonist that chance are very close to my heart.
Trust me when I say I’ve never read another story like this one!
To say Rosemary grew up in an unusual household is an understatement, and I love how her circumstances, coupled with the fact that she sees no real reason to find them odd, made me question some of my basic assumptions about family, even what it means to be a human being.
Because this story is told from Rosemary’s point of view, I enjoyed being “on the inside” and given the chance to see life from her perspective, and therefore to accept Fern, her twin sister, with no questions asked. And it’s hard not to love Fern, even when society at large doesn’t agree!
The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this novel that won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she explains. “I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion...she was my twin, my…
I’ve had a passion for poetry since my early childhood, when I fondly remember listening to my elders recite—specifically, my teachers reading rhymes by Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss. As I grew into my adolescence and adulthood, my interest in literature only amplified with my introduction to works by Maya Angelou, R.H. Sin, and Rupi Kaur. Now, as a self-published poet and self-proclaimed enthusiast of the genre, I continue to spend my time browsing shelves, attending readings, and supporting writers/artists debuting work into the world. I hope you enjoy the books on my list.
I love this book for many reasons, but to start, I love that the title is a poetic metaphor, I love that the story is almost a hundred years old but still speaks to the rebellious spirit alive within young readers, and I love that the book is loosely based on Zora’s real life and the real place of Eatonville, Florida.
I love that readers get to experience the past and can envision their own future while reading this book. I laughed, cried, and found pieces of myself within the quotes snitched to this story.
Cover design by Harlem renaissance artist Lois Mailou Jones
When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds ...
'For me, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece…
