Born in Nigeria and raised in England, Noo Saro-Wiwa avoided visiting her native country after her father, a prominent political activist, was killed there for speaking out against government corruption. Years later, Saro-Wiwa, a travel writer, decided to return to Nigeria and explore her love-hate relationship with her homeland. Her journey both reinforces and calls into question her ethnic identity: a visit to her home village means that ... Read More

The reference to “six granddaughters” in the title of this dark, complex novel is deceiving: two are dead. One dies as an infant and pulls a shroud of everlasting grief over the family, and the other narrates the entire novel from beyond the grave while she floats in an afterlife. At the heart of the novel is Cecilia, a beautiful poet who is perceived as being the most talented and attractive among the granddaughters. ... Read More

This is the story of a Palestinian family in Gaza coping with the hell of living in a warzone. The book is informative, exciting, and thorough—all you have to do is get through the first 60 cumbersome pages, and then the story flies along until the end. Dabbagh’s main characters are 27-year-old Iman and her twin brother Rashid, and their story opens with a bombing raid. While Rashid is hanging out on his roof, stoned out of his ... Read More

In Marbles, cartoonist Ellen Forney’s life-altering journey though mental illness is graphically exposed in more ways than one. The Forney we see at the start of the story is experiencing her most sexual, creative, and manic period, which is followed by a big crash that leads to her bipolar diagnosis at 30. Here, her story evolves into the struggle not only to come to terms with medicating herself, but also to find the right formula ... Read More

In 1980s Romania, Carmen Bugan’s father wrote anti-Communist propaganda, an illegal act that led to the family having to flee the country in 1989. But of course, as a kid, Bugan had no idea what was going on. It wasn’t until she started searching for answers as an adult that she learned of her father’s secret. This is the retelling of her discovery. Bugan uses short, concise sentences that pack in all the emotional details ... Read More