Books like The General Retires and Other Stories — picked by fans

The original Vietnamese title of this novel was The Fate of Love. The hero is a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army who fought in The War Against the Americans to Save the Nation. He suffers from PTSD and mourns the loss of his fiancee. The novel proceeds as a series of discontinuous episodes as the hero relives traumatic memories.

In this brilliantly written novel, the unnamed narrator embodies the divisiveness that war causes in individuals and their families, with loyalty to one side conflicting with affection for the enemy.

The novel is based on a real-life double agent who fed accurate (but incomplete) information to American journalists and more complete information to the National Liberation Front. After the war, he was sidelined for being too friendly to Americans.

I love this book because it is a war novel without a single battlefield or battle, except the one for Siegfried Sassoon’s sanity. I became fascinated by WWI as a teenager. I can’t say why this war caught my imagination, but it did, and that fascination has continued for my whole life.

I gobbled up books, movies, and history about the war, and I especially loved the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, a noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to continue fighting in 1917. When I re-read his poetry fifty years later, I found a kinship with that refusal and the boys around me who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.

I was a dreamy, romantic teenager, which is why Sassoon’s words pierced my heart: “Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.” Oh! How I cried over his poems… show more.

I was blown away by the genius of telling a story ostensibly about the end of an era and an empire while the real story, a love story, runs just below the surface. I confess that I am not otherwise much of an Ishiguro fan, but this book is perfection.

I am old enough to have known members of a generation who valued loyalty and propriety above personal desires, and this novel made me both nostalgic for a time when self-sacrifice and self-control were so respected and sad about the happiness forfeited because of these social standards.

I felt every single emotion reading this book and felt as if I’d lived all the decades with Jen and Nick, who met as teenagers and soon became friends.

I love Sarra’s writing style, and I was fully invested in Jen and Nick from the very beginning, and found their complicated, messy relationship, which follows the most winding path, completely believable.

There was so much in this book that was unexpected, and by the end, I was a sobbing puddle of feelings. I know Jen and Nick will always stay with me, and I’m already looking forward to reading it again. 

A book with astonishing imagery and surrealism!

It lurks in the hazy landscape between magical realism and weird fantasy, which is an unusual thing per my reading experience for a coming-of-age story of a girl named Aisha from Mombasa. Her voyage to rescue her father from across an ocean of godlike sharks was a strange and unsettling experience to read.

Certainly one of the most unique (even if, in some fleeting moments, it reminded me of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, which I found strictly okay).

I’m most impressed by the fact that the author, a white American, did meticulous research into Chinese mythology and Daoist practices. The kungfu fight scenes are also arresting.   

Xian Li-Lin, a plucky Daoist priestess with superior martial arts skills who is bent on forging her own way in a male-dominated world of 19th century San Francisco Chinatown, charmed me from the start of the novel (which is a sequel but can be read as a standalone). Beset with personal challenges as a lonely Chinese widow with a harsh father, she still takes it upon herself to fend helpless immigrants from the perils of ghosts, evil spirits, and gangsters.

Dedicated to two essentials that make me jump up and salute: how to write by getting in touch with your unconscious and an amazing way to outline. That's all. Two ideas. But they're two of the most important concepts to master to become a writer who gets paid. 

This book excites me because I know how much aspiring writers need it. From the year I first read it until I left university teaching, I required it in every writing class in my department. If, for decades I made students read it, you can bet I'm delighted for you to put it on your reading list.

I read this whole series as a teenager, and I remember loving it but not following it very well–the story is spread over seven books, each flowing logically and naturally into the next. It was a little too big and complex for me at the time. I’ve started rereading them as an adult, and they are phenomenal.

The four-elements theme of world-building seemed very simple at first, even a little gimmicky, but as I got into it and discovered how the worlds were interconnected, it all fell into place for me: worlds meant to be elegantly interdependent are instead standing–and faltering–alone. I like how the worlds are populated by real people leading real lives, bringing the whole big picture to a more relatable level.

I really enjoyed this novel by Sofía Segovia. She takes us to a mystical world. Exceptionally well described, the main character, Simonopio, sees things nobody else can see, visions of what is to come. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, Simonopio is welcomed by Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt and care for him as if they were their own. His swarm of bees always helps Simonopio, and his mission is to protect his adoptive family from threats, both human and those of nature. For me, this is a fascinating book that shows the beauty of this little boy.