Books like

Books like Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

12 books with a reading profile close to Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich. Deep, inward-looking and contemplative; a moderate read.

1

Human Acts

by Han Kang

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

Han Kang’s novel reconstructs the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and its aftermath through seven interconnected perspectives.
2

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

The story centers on Dorrigo Evans, an Australian surgeon and officer held in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the construction of the Burma Death Railway in 1943.
3

Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

This three-volume collection tracks the socio-political evolution of Nigeria through specific family lineages and individual migrations.
4

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

Also deep and contemplative · history, narrative

Nathan Price, a rigid evangelical Baptist, moves his wife Orleanna and their four daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
5

The Known World

by Edward P. Jones

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

Set in antebellum Virginia, the narrative centers on Henry Townsend, a black man who, having purchased his own freedom, becomes a master himself and owns thirty-three slaves.
6

Brotherless Night

by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

Set in Jaffna during the onset of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the narrative follows Sashi, a young woman whose ambitions to become a doctor are redirected by the escalating ethnic conflict.
7

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

by Ayana Mathis

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

In 1923, Hattie Shepherd leaves Georgia for Philadelphia as part of the Great Migration, hoping for a better life.
8

Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

Also deep and inward-looking · history, narrative

In 1945 London, fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his sister Rachel are left in the care of a mysterious figure nicknamed The Moth after their parents depart for Singapore.
9

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Also deep and contemplative · history, narrative

Cora, an enslaved woman on a Georgia cotton plantation, flees her captors alongside a fellow laborer named Caesar.
10

The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

Also deep · history, narrative

In the early seventeenth century, a young servant girl escapes a starving, disease-ridden colonial settlement in North America, fleeing alone into the winter wilderness.
11

The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

Also deep and contemplative · history, narrative

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at a jewel-bearing plant in rural North Dakota in 1953, and also a Chippewa council member.
12

Of Women and Salt

by Gabriela Garcia

Also inward-looking and contemplative · history, narrative

Spanning from nineteenth-century Cuban cigar factories to a modern-day detention center in Texas, the narrative follows five generations of women linked by blood and migration.

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