Books like

Books like The Known World

12 books with a reading profile close to The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

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.
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

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.
4

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.
5

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.
6

The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

Also deep and thought-provoking · 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.
7

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.
8

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.
9

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

by Anthony Marra

Also contemplative and thought-provoking · history, narrative

In a rural village in war-torn Chechnya, Akhmed rescues an eight-year-old girl named Havaa after her father is abducted by Russian soldiers.
10

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.
11

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.
12

Wandering Stars

by Tommy Orange

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

Wandering Stars traces a lineage of a Cheyenne family from the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and the forced assimilation at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to the present day.

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