Here are 7 books that The Golden Land fans have personally recommended if you like
The Golden Land.
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Allison Alsup’s debut novel FOREIGN SEED combines beautiful, lyrical writing that transports us to another time and place with a propulsive plot that keeps us turning the page and reading long past our bedtime. The characters are tightly drawn and three-dimensional (even the secondary characters) and the unfolding action, setting descriptions, and dialogue are gripping. The author handles the fraught theme of "ambiguous loss" with grace and elegance. This book is so beautifully written and definitely has cinematic potential. At the beginning, I was getting Casablanca vibes and by the end, I was thinking about another favorite movie, The Year of Living Dangerously.
Set in China as
America gets involved in WWI, Foreign Seed follows newly minted Vice
Consul Samuel Sokobin's first case as he investigates the disappearance of
Frank Meyer (of Meyer Lemon fame), explorer for the U.S. Department of Foreign
Seed and Plant Introduction, when he disappears from a steamship on the Yangtze
River. A rugged, Dutch immigrant, Meyer made a living seeking foreign specimens
as a man without a country, a feeling Sokobin denies as he ticks off one more
year living in temporary housing in China and shielding himself from the
possibility of close friendship. Moreover, Meyer is rumored…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Writing a play within a novel is a daunting task, but Kate Feiffer pulls it off with aplomb. The tangled story of Elise and the cast of colorful characters—real and imagined—in her life had me laughing out loud at times, teary-eyed at others. Feiffer’s prose is sparkling, the wordplay is clever but not too precious, and the situations her characters get themselves into are just this side of plausible. The novel features universal themes—family drama, aging parents, sullen teenagers, horrible dates, work pressures—wrapped in a madcap tale worthy of one of the old movies Elise’s foul-mouthed mother Trudy watches endlessly. Outside my usual reading genre, and I loved every rollicking minute of it.
When her professional and family life collide, a playwright starts journaling every morning to push through her writer's block in this laugh-out-loud and fresh take on family, friendship, and the chaos of midlife.
"[A] winning adult debut..." -Publishers Weekly
"A heartwarming, sometimes hilarious meditation on writer's block, expectations, and the push and pull of constantly shifting identities." -Martha's Vineyard Magazine
Elise Hellman was once heralded by audiences and critics as a "playwright to watch." Then they forgot all about her. When a prestigious theater company unexpectedly offers her a generous commission to write a new play, she has an opportunity…
A very different type of read. ‘Sweeping’ is in this case a most apt description, covering nearly a century of the history of Koreans in Japan as seen through the eyes of one family. This was a topic I knew nothing about, as also I had no idea what pachinko was. I was totally engrossed following Sunja and her family as they navigate their way through the most dreadful of times to reach success, of sorts. It’s not a ‘can’t put down’ but the characters are very real and the tale beautifully told. Highly recommend.
* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club *
'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
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.
Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria,…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
Set in Baghdad in 2002, this book introduced me to a part of the world that I knew little about. The novel is written as a braided narrative of three interconnected women—Huda, Rania, and Ally—each harboring their own secrets and lies as they navigate life under Sadaam Hussein’s authoritarian regime.
I found myself holding my breath as the three women’s lives became increasingly entangled and endangered. This compelling and suspenseful novel asks how much we are willing to compromise our values in order to protect the people we love. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about Iraq in the process.
“Breathtaking…Riveting and profound! I adored this book!” —Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector
“A deeply involving and important novel by a master storyteller.” —Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this moving, suspenseful debut novel, three courageous women confront the complexities of trust, friendship, motherhood, and betrayal under the rule of a ruthless dictator and his brutal secret police. Former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson draws on her own experiences to take readers inside a haunting story of Iraq at the turn of the millennium and the impossible choices faced…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
I was enchanted by this stunning “stranger comes to town” story set in the fictional village of Gost in central Croatia. Duro Kolak lives as a quasi-recluse, numbing himself with rakija and physical labor as he ruminates over past injustices.
When a naïve but hopeful Englishwoman named Laura hires him to restore the old farmhouse she bought, she sets in motion a chain of events that forces him to reexamine his relationship with the past.
I fell in love with these characters, longing for them to make peace with their troubled memories, especially Duro. I also learned a lot about the region's history, including the Yugoslav wars that haunt so many like Duro.
Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived.
A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
I found this novel about a young, widowed mother living through Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War both eye-opening and deeply touching. Having recently moved to Bangladesh myself, I welcomed the chance to learn more about my host country’s history while at the same time being transported into the fictional lives of Rehana and her two adolescent children, Maya and Sohail.
Tahmima Anam’s expert storytelling and razor-sharp observation made me feel as if I were right there with the characters, facing the same impossible choices but also experiencing the same unexpected moments of passion and beauty.
Spring, 1971, East Pakistan. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her beloved children, Sohail and Maya. Her young family is growing up fast, and Rehana wants to remember this day forever. But out on the hot city streets, something violent is brewing. As the civil war develops, a war which will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh, Rehana struggles to keep her children safe and finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma.
