Here are 100 books that The Home That Was Our Country fans have personally recommended if you like
The Home That Was Our Country.
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I have gone through the refugee experience, and it has shaped me. I grew up queer in Syria, became a man in Egypt, a refugee in Lebanon, then an author in Canada. At the expense of romanticizing something so deeply painful, I do believe that the experience has made me a better man. It matured me, offered me a deep connection with others within my community, and built an unmatched appreciation of my culture of home back in Syria and my culture of diaspora here in Canada. As a fiction writer, I am obsessed with writing queer stories about immigration.
I only knew of this book because my British publisher introduced me to it. For that, I’m truly thankful. The book feels honest and unflinching and makes for a great read for both myself as an immigrant as well as for those navigating a world where immigration is a constant daily reality.
I read it over a weekend in 2020 and have read it once more in 2022. I had to return to it, especially when I was faced with microaggressions or felt unheard in my new home in Canada.
What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question many of us do not give much thought, and yet there are more than 25 million refugees in the world. To be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
I love the transparency with which the author describes her family, immigrants who moved to Southern California in the 1970s.
At times, she mocks her family, but ultimately, it is endearing how she describes family love and how tradition can overcome everyday life for immigrants. By including her Uncle, she depicts how much, in the Iranian culture, an extended family can be involved in everyday life. She writes with a great deal of humor, making a heavy topic seem quite light.
NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir
This Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner!
“Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.”—San Francisco Chronicle
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no…
I have gone through the refugee experience, and it has shaped me. I grew up queer in Syria, became a man in Egypt, a refugee in Lebanon, then an author in Canada. At the expense of romanticizing something so deeply painful, I do believe that the experience has made me a better man. It matured me, offered me a deep connection with others within my community, and built an unmatched appreciation of my culture of home back in Syria and my culture of diaspora here in Canada. As a fiction writer, I am obsessed with writing queer stories about immigration.
This book was a safe haven for me. I was feeling uninspired to write nonfiction and unable to focus on the memoir that I had tasked myself with writing. I wanted to write something meaningful and vulnerable yet somehow keep my power and agency to myself.
Truthfully, this book felt like a safety net. Habib manages to write about her upbringing as a Muslim woman and her relationship to her queerness while also allowing the story to meander between power and vulnerability. It taught me a lot, and I am thankful I got to read it.
CANADA READS 2020 WINNER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER 2020 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER ONE OF BOOK RIOT'S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL QUEER BOOKS OF ALL TIME
How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don't exist?
Samra Habib has spent most of their life searching for the safety to be themself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, they faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From their parents, they internalized the lesson that revealing their identity could put them…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I have gone through the refugee experience, and it has shaped me. I grew up queer in Syria, became a man in Egypt, a refugee in Lebanon, then an author in Canada. At the expense of romanticizing something so deeply painful, I do believe that the experience has made me a better man. It matured me, offered me a deep connection with others within my community, and built an unmatched appreciation of my culture of home back in Syria and my culture of diaspora here in Canada. As a fiction writer, I am obsessed with writing queer stories about immigration.
I want to end this list on a strong note: this book by an immigrant to New York felt personal to me. Navigating life in New York is a dream for many immigrants, one that, realistically, I know I shouldn’t keep, but emotionally, I’m still connected to.
Still, this book carries more than just the background of NYC, it also has such a strong case against the idea that undocumented immigrants have nothing of value for the US. After reading this book, I kinda wanted Dan-el to be my friend.
An undocumented immigrant’s journey from a New York City homeless shelter to the top of his Princeton class
Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he arrived in the United States legally with his family. Together they had traveled from Santo Domingo to seek medical care for his mother. Soon the family’s visas lapsed, and Dan-el’s father eventually returned home. But Dan-el’s courageous mother decided to stay and make a better life for her bright sons in New York City.
Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined…
I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. I lived there until I was six. I was a child from America’s Secret War in Laos, a child who knew very little of the outside world before my family sought refuge in America. Much of my life’s work has been devoted to a search for peace, to understand the forces that put families in situations like mine. I have published widely on the topic, written of it in books for both adults and children.
Hosseini's book is timely and important. It is a story inspired by the image of a child washed up on the beach of a foreign shore. It tells the story of another child, whose parent send them off on a vessel across a wide ocean in search of a less turbulent future. The art is sweeping. The words travel far into the heart.
An illustrated book on the refugee crisis that will break your heart in under 48 pages, from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed.
"Intensely moving. . .Powerfully evocative of the plight in which displaced populations find themselves."– Kirkus, STARRED Review
"Hosseini's story, aimed at readers of all ages, does not dwell on nightmarish fates; instead, its emotional power flows from the love of a father for his son."– Publishers Weekly, STARRED BOX Review
A short, powerful, illustrated book written by beloved novelist Khaled Hosseini in response to…
I love music and books about the music industry. Fiction or nonfiction–the drama of a musician’s rise and efforts to sustain a career never gets old to me. I can relate to their determination to make a living doing something they love. Also, as a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, I’m fascinated by the musical history here and often meet people that had ties to the music industry and are now “regular people.” My latest novel Intermissionis about a singing group. I’ve read numerous books in this genre, from Motown bios to the five listed. What a great way to combine my two favorite things–music and books!
This story about a female country singer spans her coming-of-age during the Depression and her struggle to make it as a country musician. Hearing this story from a female point of view is different and interesting. Much of the story is also about her life as a “regular person” after her heyday.
As she embarks on her “farewell tour” she must face the choices she’s made. The story is a good reminder that fame and glamour often come at a great cost.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a “shimmering” (New York Times Book Review) novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman’s rise in country and western music.
It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.
Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and…
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
When my son and son-in-law were getting married back in 2010, my cousin’s four-year-old daughter Emma was excited to be their flower girl. I wanted to buy Emma a book about a flower girl to prepare her for the wedding, but I couldn’t find anything that worked for our situation, since we were having two grooms and no bride—at an otherwise traditional Jewish wedding. Then one day, my cousin called, laughing, and said “Emma said she’s afraid to come to the wedding because of the Ring BEAR!” So I needed to write this for Emma—a story where everything isn’t what the child imagines, but it’s all joyful.
I love this beautiful new two-mommies book which features a little girl who misses a parent who is away on a work trip. That the parent happens to be one of her two moms is not at all the point, which is part of what makes this book so sweet and so relatable to any child who has ever achingly missed someone close.
A little girl stays home with Mama when Mummy goes off on a work trip in this tender, inviting story that will resonate with every child who has missed a parent. For one little girl, there's no place she'd rather be than sitting between Mama and Mummy. So when Mummy goes away on a work trip, it's tricky to find a good place at the table. As the days go by, Mama brings her to the library, they watch films, and all of them talk on the phone, but she still misses Mummy as deep as the ocean and as…
Growing up I was fanatical about football - playing, watching, reading and talking about it. I was also a little obsessed with its numbers, and apparently liked to recalculate league tables and goal differences in my head as the results came in on the BBC vidiprinter. Fast forward to University in the 1980s - a time when studying football’s business aspects was not common - I wrote my dissertation on the ‘Capital structure of Scottish football’. A Scottish perspective has remained present in much of my work, and I hope it also allows a little more distance when reflecting on the success and challenges faced by football in England.
The individual at the heart of this book, the legendary football manager, Brian Clough, had no shortage of either.
However, what is extraordinary about this book is that it introduces the reader to an entirely different version of Clough than the one we are most familiar with from the media.
It is a remarkable and scarcely credible story, one which is moving, and which highlights the kindness of the man, his family, and of many of the then players and employees of Nottingham Forest.
It also reminds us just how distant football, its clubs, and its star players and managers, have become from their people in recent decades.
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2022
Craig Bromfield was just 13 years old when Brian Clough, on a whim, took him and his older brother Aaron in.
They came from Southwick, a depressed area of Sunderland, where they lived with their abusive stepfather, and from where they longed to escape. After initially meeting Clough while out begging for money, Clough later invited the brothers to stay at his house. From there a relationship formed which would see Craig living with the Cloughs for nine years, where he was a first-hand witness to the many…
Science is still assumed to be a ‘male’ subject in which women are a minority. I should know—I was one of those women when I worked as an astrophysicist. But there have always been women in science and their stories are fascinating, whether told in nonfiction or in fiction. Fiction is ideally placed to convey the emotions behind the scientific processes and the way in which human interactions and relationships influence what happens in the lab.
How would it change society if women had access to artificial wombs? I was gripped by the premise of this book and the way in which the author explores all the different ramifications of a technology developed by a woman scientist who has now become a recluse from society.
In lesser hands, the concept of external ‘pouches’ in which fetuses are grown might easily have become a straightforwardly dystopian SF novel, but Helen Sedgwick (a former scientist herself) is very careful at balancing the pros and cons and ensuring each character is well-rounded so that I felt drawn to them all, no matter what their views.
What if anyone could have a baby? A boldly original and unforgettable novel from a rising star.
Now we have equality. Now we've outgrown our biology. With FullLife's baby pouch, women are liberated and men can share the joy of childbearing. Holly's whole family knows the benefits, but Eva doesn't believe society has changed for the better and Piotr has uncovered a secret behind FullLife's glossy facade. What separates them may just bring them together, as they search for the truth about FullLife and each face a truth of their own.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
We all have obsessions in life and one of mine has been my mother and the great love and enmity that ricocheted between us for fifty-seven years. Throughout the decades, my mother went from protector to controller to betrayer to ogre to human to an elderly woman in my care. The love and hate, distance and intimacy, estrangement, and reconciliation that we experienced made me a lifelong student of the mother-daughter bond. I‘ve written about my mother for more than 30 years, and love reading mother-daughter stories, not saccharine sweet ones, but complex multi-layered dramas where there’s no villain and no hero—just two humans struggling to love and understand each other.
I read Wild Game in a weekend—and that’s unusual for me, but I just couldn’t put the book down. Brodeur brought me into a world of treachery, lies, and mother-daughter entanglement that I found absolutely compelling. The mother in this book, Malabar, is a larger-than-life character whose willingness to sacrifice her daughter’s well-being for her own ends was horrifying and believable. I rooted for the daughter all the way through this beautifully crafted book, but it was the mother I found unforgettable.
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.
NAMED A BEST FALL BOOK BY People * Refinery29 * Entertainment Weekly * BuzzFeed * NPR’s On Point * Town & Country * Real Simple * New York Post * Palm Beach Post * Toronto Star * Orange Country Register * Bustle * Bookish * BookPage * Kirkus* BBC Culture* Debutiful
On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set…
