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Books for and about Expats

I usually have a lot to say about the books I’ve been reading, but right now I have to admit that none were either especially memorable or important for expats and prospective expats. In my e-mail, however, I discovered messages from an e-group catering to expats, abroadview@yahoo.com (the group is an offshoot of the excellent website talesmag.com) with messages about books they’d been reading and would recommend to others. I began making a list of books I’d like to read and decided to pass it along.

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is a novel about a Baptist minister who takes his family to the Belgian Congo in 1959. One of the many well known books I haven’t gotten around to reading. It’s sometimes compared to The Mosquito Coas,by Paul Theroux, which, as I recall, was excellent.

For something different, there is Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran, which promises to be interesting.

Pulitzer prizewinner Jhumpa Lahiri has written The Namesake, a novel about a young man who comes to America from India to study.

Another memoir, this one by Sarah Macdonald, is Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, a young Australian woman’s account of following her journalist boyfriend to India. One reviewer called it “a wonderful roller coaster ride on the road to enlightenment.” I definitely want to read it.

In Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, an Englishman of Afgani descent moves to an ancient house in Casablanca with his pregnant wife and young daughter. Although everything that can go wrong does, readers find this book extremely funny.

Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted by Annie Hawes is a travel memoir in which two English sisters set out for a village just two miles from the Italian Riviera. Note: the author has remained in Italy.

Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa is a well received novel by Francesca Marciano, narrated by an Italian woman who goes to Kenya.

Since I started making this list, I’ve started reading The Savage Garden by Mark Mills, a mystery narrated by an Englishman who goes to Tuscany. I’ll have more to say about it next time.