life

Book 43 for 2026: “Déy”, Edwidge Danticat

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Another finalist for the National Book Award, this novel focuses on one Haitian in Miami and her family. But more than that, it focuses on the effects of being in a mass shooting event. Magnolia is a realtor in a mall out shopping for a birthday present for her daughter, Zoe, when she hears gunfire. Along with many other shoppers, she runs and hides in a restaurant. Traumatized, eventually she manages to find her car and drive home. Once there, she does not tell anyone about the shooting, not her daughter, nor her husband who is now living separately from her at her request. For several days, she secretly goes to her computer and researches what happened at the mall, the dead, the living, the one person who saved others at the expense of his own life. She still tells no one that she was there. Because she is behaving a bit differently, people ask her about it and finally just think she is stressed about about her job and her mother who has mental health issues, still living in Haiti and undergoing emergency surgery. Magnolia begins to worry that she is becoming like her mother. She is also worried about the gangs getting closer and closer to where her parents live in Haiti and their home, which her father built himself after selling their farm and investing everything in the house.

Eventually she does tell her husband she was at the shooting; he is horrified that she has been suffering and told no one. Her half brother from an affair her father had calls to say that her mother has survived the surgery but it is no longer safe where they live. With all these events the novel focuses on love and whether it can help a person protect family and self. What wins out in the heart? Optimism or fear? The title, Déy, comes of the Haitian creole word for mourning to focus on the importance of sharing grief rather than holding it in, the importance of family ties as well as the task of living between two cultures.

Book 42 for 2026: “Paradiso 17”, Hannah Lilith Assadi

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I decided to try reading some of the finalist books for The National Book Award. This is the first one on my list. I could not stop reading; it’s touching, lyrically written, and timely. Although this is a novel, it is based on the life of Assadi’s father. Like her father, Sufien, the central character, a Palestinian, was driven from his home in the 1948 Nakba. One day the soldiers just show up and tell the whole family they must leave, abandoning the property that has been in their family for hundreds of years and their house with the blue door. This is the story of the rest of his life, first at a tent camp in Syria until his father finds a good job in Kuwait. As the oldest child in the family he and his father decide he should study abroad–he is brilliant at math. He gets a Visa and goes to Italy to study, runs out of money because father loses his job, starts running a rug shop, meets the person who becomes his best friend for life, Bernardo, a very wealthy Jewish guy trying to escape his mandated life in NYC.

Eventually, Bernardo has to go back to NYC and convinces Sufien to do the same. At times homeless, other times living off money Bernardo gives him, and finally finding that his love for driving can help him make a living, he becomes a taxi driver. Then at a club–he tends to drink alcohol too much–he meets the woman who will become his wife, a Jewish woman whose father owns a factory in Brooklyn. Finally, he feels called to the West, to the Arizona desert, where he lives the rest of his life. The two stay together and have a daughter who attends Columbia University, the place Sufien dreamed of attending but could only go there and wander around and visit the library.

This is the story of a man’s life, a man who, driven from his original home, keeps looking for “home”, a place he feels he belongs. It raises the question of what is home, what does home mean, where and what is it. And to quote Dante, the book begins, “You shall leave behind all you most dearly love, and that shall be the arrow first loosened from exile’s bow. You shall learn how salt is the taste of another man’s bread and how hard is the way, going down and then up another man’s stairs.”–Paradiso canto 17.

Book 41 for 2026: “What Strange Paradise”, Omar El Akkad

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Refugee bodies wash up on the shore of an island in the Mediterranean–from just another ill equipped, overfilled boat. People of all ages from places like Syria, Ethiopia, Palestine. While on the boat they argue, debate, help each other–all the variations of human behavior when people are crammed together in a dangerous situation. Only one survives, nine year old Amir from Syria. He sees soldiers coming and runs. Rescued by Vanna, a local teenage girl whose feeling of alienation comes from dysfunctional parents, angry at their lack of success and struggles, Amir hides from the military personnel searching for him.

In alternating chapters the reader learns about Amir’s life before being washed up on shore and about the friendship between him and Vanna. They do not speak the same language, yet they establish an indelible bond as they attempt to escape the military colonel who is obsessed with finding Amir.

I found this novel and the story of these two children touching and inspiring. Although it details a lot of the worst of human behavior, it also inspires the reader with the kindness and empathy that many people can express even in dangerous and hostile situations.

Book 40 for 2026: “Homegoing”, Yaa Gyasi

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The history of Ghana from the 18th century through the slave trade and the into what occurs to the descendants of two sisters.

Effia and Eli are two half sisters who never met. Effia is married off to a prominent Englishman in what later became Ghana during the time of the slave trade. She lives in comparative luxury at Cape Coast Castle. Meanwhile her sister, Esi, has been captured and is in the dungeon under the castle waiting to be transported. She is shipped off to the United States where her children and grandchildren will endure slavery, later work in the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, and eventually make it to Harlem.

The son of Effia and the Englishman is sent off to England for his education. Later, he and his descendants will endure the warfare between the Asante and the Fante tribes as they battle each other for power in the slave trade and resist colonization. Eventually, the Asante fight the English and lose. One of Effia’s descendants becomes a school teacher in what is now Ghana and eventually makes it to the United States where he is a professor at a community college.

This novel presents details of events in the slave trade and what happens to families through the centuries that follow. Without reading a detailed history book, this novel enables the reader to learn a lot of history through the lives of these two half sisters.

Book 39 for 2026: “Men Without Women”, Haruki Murakami

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Unlike all the other books by this author which I have read, this is a collection of seven short stories. Most of his fiction includes bars, coffee shops, jazz music, and libraries. Sometimes a library is even almost a character. None of these stories contains anything about a library which surprised me. The main characters vary from a lovesick doctor who is sure he would never love a woman but just enjoyed long affairs with them until…; a man who lives in a small apartment and cannot leave so the government has assigned a special woman, a nurse, whose job is to shop for him, acquire books he wants to read, and service his sexual needs; a bar owner who suddenly has strange snakes show up in the tree outside his bar and receives a message regarding what he must do; an actor whose wife has died and he has to hire a driver who happens to be a young woman who says very little; others are lonely men who think they are fine, but are they in reality?

While most of the stories are about men who seem to be perfectly normal men, events occur, and things are said and done which makes the reader think about what is and what is not normal? Who defines normal?

Book 35 for 2026: “Warlight”, Michael Ondaatje

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Many will know this writer from his Booker Prize winning novel “The English Patient” and many have seen the movie even if they did not read the book.

“Warlight” takes place mostly just after WWII but is a totally different angle than any other WWII novel I have read. The scene is England, actually London and locales nearby. Two teenagers, a brother and sister, have their seemingly ordinary life totally upended when their parents announce they are leaving them with the man who lives in rooms at the top of their house. The two teens refer to this man as The Moth. The teens, Nathanial and Rachel, begin to think The Moth and his friends may be criminals given their strange goings and comings. They still go to school. Nathanial finds some jobs via The Moth and meets a girl at one of them. Her brother is in real estate. Nathanial and she hang out and have adventures in the empty for sale houses. The brother and sister do discover that their mother worked with The Moth during the war. Otherwise, they know little.

Eventually, their mother returns with no explaining about where she was or what she was doing. They never see their father again and have no clue what happened to him. Rachel is so angry about this that she has little to do with the mother and only sees Nathanial occasionally. Years later Nathaniel acquires a job where he is able to discover who his mother really is, what she had been doing for years, and what happened to her and others with whom she was close.

This novel reveals how little we sometimes know about others, the effects of their secrets, and how behavior good or bad leads to consequences often unexpected.

I’ve read several of the author’s novels and always find them complex and enlightening, sometimes revealing worlds about which I have little or no knowledge.

Book 32 for 2026: “Together Tea”, Marjan Kamali

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The previous book I read is the author’s most recent novel. This one is her first novel published in 2013. Like the Lion Women novel, this one tells the story of Iranian families. When the novel begins in 1996, an Iranian couple who have lived in NYC for decades are trying to find a man for their daughter to marry. Well, the mother is, not so much the father, who is a successful doctor. He has adapted very well to the US, is into self help books, optimistic and enthusiastic. Although she has a job she likes, she misses Iran.

Part II begins in 1978 when their children are younger–they have two older sons and a younger daughter–and the Shah’s power is crumbling but its sequence is in question. Some of their relatives suddenly become so religious that they hardly recognize them. Then the revolution occurs, their daughter’s school has become all girls with mandatory hijab. Then the Iran/Iraq war occurs and the grandmother is killed by an Iraqi bomb while out buying pomegranates. They cover their windows with aluminum foil so Iraqi pilots cannot see the lights in houses. Finally, in desperation they leave for NYC after medical colleagues the father knows in NYC help them find a place there. While studying to take the test for his US medical license the dad works in a pizza parlor making pizza.

Then back to 1996, the daughter, Mina, decides she needs to visit Iran even though her father does everything he can to dissuade her. Mother, who still misses Iran and her family there, decides it is ok if she goes too. This part of the novel relates their visit to Iran, Mina’s reconnecting to her best friend who never left, how people there manage to live double lives with parties, Western clothes, and alcohol at home, but hijab and conservative behavior in public, including avoiding the morality police.

Like her other novel, this one is a good way to learn recent Iranian history while learning about Iranian food, family, friendship, love, and every day life.

Book 31 for 2026: “The Lion Women of Tehran”, Marjan Kamali

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This novel narrates the lives of two women who became best friends in elementary school in Tehran in the 1950s. One, Elaheh, who has lived in luxury until the death of her father forces her and her mother to move to a poor part of the city. Two, Homa, a rambunctious seven year old who lives nearby. Elaheh’s mother has no choice but to enroll her in the nearby public school where they meet and become best friends against the objection of Elaheh’s mother who thinks the people there are tacky and beneath her. Because Elaheh’s (Ellie) prefers to spend time at Homa’s house where there is an entire family–father, mother, children, who are warm and loving, her mother does various things to keep her from Homa’s family. It does not work and Homa’s mother teaches Ellie how to cook and they treat her as one of the own.

Their happy friendship is disrupted when Ellie’s mother marries her former husband’s brother and they move back to the wealthy part of town and Ellie is enrolled in one of the best schools in Tehran. Ellie works hard at her studies and becoming popular and succeeds. She is very embarrassed when Homa gets a scholarship to this school and shows up. Nevertheless, they reestablish their friendship and everything seems to go well until political turmoil occurs. They finish high school and enroll in the University of Tehran. Then betrayal and disaster ensues.

I could not stop reading because of the story. For those who know little of Iranian history in the last 100 years, through the events in the novel, the reader not only learns how difficult life can be in Iran but also a lot of recent Iranian history. It reveals the determination of Iranians to live the best they can regardless of the circumstances and how life can change instantly because of someone’s misguided words. After I finished this novel, I went to the library and requested Kamali’s other two novels.

Book 28 for 2026: “One Amazing Thing”, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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One afternoon nine people are in a passport and visa office in a US city–a teenager and her Chinese grandmother, an elderly white couple, an African American with a military past, a young Muslim still struggling with the aftermath of 9/11, a young Indian graduate student. Suddenly, an earthquake traps them together with two workers from this office. There is little water and little food. They argue about what is the best strategy to survive. The two young men almost come to blows. Finally, they agree on some strategies on how to share the meager supplies. After a bit they notice a water leak and that the water is slowly rising. They stack chairs on tables as the water rises higher and higher. As tensions increase, the graduate student suggests they tell one amazing thing from their lives to distract them as the water keeps rising.

The novel then relates each person’s story and the reactions of the others to the stories. Some stories are quite heart wrenching of cruel families, others endearing and joyful. The stories enable them to quit most of the bickering and work on their survival

Book 21 for 2026: “Hurricane Season”, Fernanda Melchor

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The inside of the front cover informs the potential reader that this is a novel about a world steeped in mythology and violence, set in a small town in rural southeastern Mexico. The violence part is extreme, the kind of violence that only sometimes pervades a lot of small, rural, poverty ridden towns everywhere in the world. Written in a style reminiscent of Faulkner (I read a translation from the Spanish), each chapter tells the main story from a different perspective, the story leading up to and the death of the Witch who is found floating in the water of a canal. She is called the Witch but no one for sure seems to know her gender, where she attained the money to build such a huge house, and how she manages to entertain with lavish abandon. People both avoid her and are drawn to her.

There is the grandmother who thinks her wayward grandson can do no wrong while blaming her daughter ( the child’s mother) for everything and anything, there is his friend whom he both loves and hates, their is the poor girl he aids and loves who has been groomed and impregnated by her stepfather and has run away because of it, the engineer who loves boys and men, the woman who makes her living as a fancy prostitute to support her disabled husband and on and on it goes–people harming each other out of anger and frustration with their dire circumstances. For some of the characters, the writing is first person so the reader learns the interworkings of those mentally harmed by their life’s poverty and environment from which there appears to be no escape.

This is not a novel for the faint of heart.