Books like

Books like The Night Watchman

12 books with a reading profile close to The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Deep, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

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.
2

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.
3

Brotherless Night

by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Also deep and contemplative · 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.
4

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.
5

The Known World

by Edward P. Jones

Also deep and contemplative · 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

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.
7

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.
8

How Much of These Hills Is Gold

by C Pam Zhang

Also deep and thought-provoking · history, narrative

Set against the declining years of the American Gold Rush, the novel follows Lucy and Sam, two orphaned siblings of Chinese descent, as they carry their father’s decomposing body across a harsh western landscape.
9

Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Also deep and contemplative · history, narrative

This three-volume collection tracks the socio-political evolution of Nigeria through specific family lineages and individual migrations.
10

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Also contemplative and thought-provoking · history, narrative

Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind girl living in Paris, flees to Saint-Malo with her father to escape the Nazi occupation, carrying a precious and potentially cursed diamond from the Museum of Natural History.
11

Of Women and Salt

by Gabriela Garcia

Also contemplative and thought-provoking · 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.
12

The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

The novel follows the life of Harrison Shepherd, a man navigating the political upheaval of mid-twentieth-century Mexico and the United States.

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