I’m taking a non-western literature class. My professor assigned a midterm essay where we must read a short story or book and write a 5-page-max essay analyzing it. I’d like to hear what your absolute favorite books and short stories from non-western countries are; ie Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Indian, Central/South American etc.
If you could give a brief description of what the story’s deal is, that would be appreciated as well, but not necessary.
by ghostuser689
4 Comments
*Weep Not Child* (Kenya)
*The Home and the World* (India)
*Like Water for Chocolate* (Mexico)
*Silence* (Japan)
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z Hossain
The world is big. What do you like?
Japan has great literary traditions, both historical and contemporary. The Tale of Genji is probably covered elsewhere in your syllabus, but what about Haruki Murakami or Kazuo Ichiguro?
For sci Fi, Cixin Liu is one of China’s (and the West’s!) most celebrated modern SF authors and he has a few short story collections.
Nalo Hopkinson is afro-caribbean/Canadian. In addition to her novels, she edited a nice postcolonial sci-fi short story collection called So Long Been Dreaming which features quite a few “non-Western” authors. Caribbean lit is one of my faves.
Does indigenous American lit count as Western? If not, the Way to Rainy Mountain might be a nice choice, Momaday passed recently.
My favorite African-authored books are Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood about the Senegal labor movement, and any of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s works.
Haruki Murakami’s short story Sleep is amazing, free to read online, and has so much substance from which to craft an essay. In fact, I’ll link an episode from one of my favorite podcasts where a philosopher and a psychologist talk about this story for about an hour.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yMlKwDFy3gOWx6zMa8jMI?si=MZ4wEWfWTAyGbFpFI6U67w