Fiction of Development: Literary Representation & the Developing World
Explore the 'Fiction of Development' through powerful literary works that depict the developing world. Discover top books on development fiction, postcolonial narratives, and global socio-economic themes in literature.
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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
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Brick Lane
by Monica Ali
“A book you won’t be able to put down. A Bangladeshi immigrant in London is torn between the kind, tedious older husband with whom she has an arranged marriage (and children) and the fiery political activist she lusts after. A novel that’s multi-continental, richly detailed and elegantly crafted.” —Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Sisterland After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how must she comfort the naïve and disillusioned Chanu? As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos. Monica Ali’s splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvelous and the terrifying spiral together.
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Rushing to Paradise
by J. G. Ballard
The rise and fall of a cult leader. After losing her medical license, Dr. Barbara Rafferty turns environmentalist to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific. The campaign attracts media attention, money flows and she sets up a commune on an atoll, an experiment which ends in bloodshed
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The Day of Creation
by J. G. Ballard
At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches as his clinic fails and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation and sets out for the river’s source.
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Labyrinths
by Jorge Luis Borges
Readers are invited to take a new look at "Labyrinths," the classic by Latin America's finest writer of the 20th century--a true literary sensation--with a new introduction by cyber-author William Gibson.
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A Good Man in Africa
by William Boyd
In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment. After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.
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Brazzaville Beach
by William Boyd
In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . . Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.
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The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country¹s last emperor. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON
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The Plague
by Albert Camus
“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.
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Belle Du Seigneur
by Albert Cohen
A League of Nations official has an affair with a Genevan woman through which he attempts to achieve the Absolute. A love story, it is also a satiric commentary on middle class manners.
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Segu
by Maryse Conde
“Condé’s story is rich and colorful and glorious. It sprawls over continents and centuries to find its way into the reader’s heart.” —Maya Angelou “A wondrous novel” (The New York Times) by the winner of the 2018 New Academy Prize (The Alternative Nobel prize in literature) and author of The Gospel According to the New World The year is 1797, and the kingdom of Segu is flourishing, fed by the wealth of its noblemen and the power of its warriors. The people of Segu, the Bambara, are guided by their griots and priests; their lives are ruled by the elements. But even their soothsayers can only hint at the changes to come, for the battle of the soul of Africa has begun. From the east comes a new religion, Islam, and from the West, the slave trade. Segu follows the life of Dousika Traore, the king’s most trusted advisor, and his four sons, whose fates embody the forces tearing at the fabric of the nation. There is Tiekoro, who renounces his people’s religion and embraces Islam; Siga, who defends tradition, but becomes a merchant; Naba, who is kidnapped by slave traders; and Malobali, who becomes a mercenary and halfhearted Christian. Based on actual events, Segu transports the reader to a fascinating time in history, capturing the earthy spirituality, religious fervor, and violent nature of a people and a growing nation trying to cope with jihads, national rivalries, racism, amid the vagaries of commerce.
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Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
Dark allegory describes the narrator's journey up the Congo River and his meeting with, and fascination by, Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. Masterly blend of adventure, character development, psychological penetration. Considered by many Conrad's finest, most enigmatic story.
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Nostromo
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad's 1904 adventure novel, set amid the mist-covered mountains of a fictional South American republic, spins a colorful tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion. The story begins halfway through the revolution, employing flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men — corrupting and destroying some, revealing the strengths of others. Conrad's deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique are at their best in Nostromo, one of his greatest works.
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Beyond the Horizon
by Amma Darko
This is a natural storyteller's compelling and sobering account of the ruthless exploitation of women in Africa and Europe.
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The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
by Louis de Bernieres
This rambunctious first novel by the author of the bestselling Corelli's Mandolin is set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny. "Walks a precarious edge between slapstick and pathos, never once losing its balance."--Washington Post Book World.
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Diamond Dust and Other Stories
by Anita Desai
This is a collection of stories where the protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or back where they started from. A beloved dog brings chaos, and a businessman sees his own death.
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The Siege of Krishnapur
by J.G. Farrell
Winner of the Booker Prize. An insightful and thrilling novel about the British Empire in India during the Great Mutiny of 1857, as seen through the eyes of a young, love-struck idealist. India, 1857—the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years. Farrell’s story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion—at once brutal, blundering, and wistful—is soon revealed. The Siege of Krishnapur is a companion to Troubles, about the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, which takes place just before World War II, as the sun begins to set upon the British Empire. Together these three novels offer an unequaled picture of the follies of empire.
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A Passage to India
by Edward Morgan Forster
Adela Quested arrives in Chandrapore, prepared to meet and marry a city magistrate who exemplifies the narrow-minded, anti-Indian prejudices of the imperial bureaucracy, but an expedition, led by the charming Dr Aziz, ends in an incident which quickens the pulse of Anglo-Indian mistrust.
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Homo Faber
by Max Frisch
Loneliness and despair invade the world of an engineer who comes to realize that he has failed as a friend, husband, and father.
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Christopher Unborn
by Carlos Fuentes
Mexico, 1991: Black acid rain falls on "Makesicko City", the most polluted, most populated city in the world. Amid this apocalyptic landscape a prize is being offered to the first child born on the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America. That child is the narrator of this passionate, savage novel by one of the world's preeminent writers.
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The Good Doctor
by Damon Galgut
When Laurence Waters arrives at his post in a rural hospital in new South Africa, and convinces Dr. Ruth Ngema, head of the hospital, to set up clinics in the villages, the crime and corruption that follow put everyone involved in danger.
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Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez
Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza, a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years, on the day of her husband's funeral. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the BuendĂa family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
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The Blacks
by Jean Genet
An English translation of Genet's symbolic drama which was first performed in Paris in 1959.
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The Conservationist
by Nadine Gordimer
"This is a novel of enormous power' New Statesman 'Gordimer is a great writer ... It is Turgenev that she most brings to mind' -- New York Review of Books The Booker Prize winning political novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son, and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm.
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The Quiet American
by Graham Greene
The relentless struggle of the Vietminh guerrillas for independence and the futility of the French gestures of resistance become inseparably meshed with the personal and moral dilemmas of two men and the Vietnamese woman they both love. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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The Palace of Dreams
by Ismail Kadare
When it was first published in the author's native country, THE PALACE OF DREAMS was immediately banned. The novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.
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The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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Kim
by Rudyard Kipling
Kim, the poor orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, searches for his identity and learns to move between the two cultures, becoming the disciple of a Tibetan monk while training as a spy for the British secret service.
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The Suns of Independence
by Ahmadou Kourouma
The "Suns of Independence" considered a masterpiece of modern African literature, enables the reader to gain unique insight into African culture and conflicts. Through Fama and Salimata, the husband and wife at the heart of the story, Kourouma conveys the confusion that torments many Africans when a traditional and a later, more materialistic culture collide. The last of the Dumbuya princes who had reigned over the Malinke tribe before the European conquest, Fama seeks a place for himself within the new hierarchy of bureaucrats and border guards. Salimata, haunted by memories of a ritualistic excision and a brutal rape, searches for the means to have a child who will pass on the Dumbuya legacy to future generations. Interwoven with tales and proverbs from the ancient Malinke traditions, this modern novel brilliantly captures the struggles, desires, and dreams of a people in a West African country living through the tumultuous days of Independence. -- Publisher description.
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Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals
by Ahmadou Kourouma
Originally from the CĂ´te d'Ivoire, Ahmadou Kourouma spent much of his life working in the insurance industry and living in France and in political exile elsewhere in Africa before returning to Abidjan in 1993. His earlier novels are The Suns of Independence and Monnew. Carrol F. Coates is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University-SUNY and has translated numerous books, including Jacques Stephen Alexis's General Sun, My Brother (Virginia).
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Allah is Not Obliged
by Ahmadou Kourouma
ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED TO BE FAIR ABOUT ALL THE THINGS HE DOES HERE ON EARTH.These are the words of the boy soldier Birahima in the final masterpiece by one of Africa’s most celebrated writers, Ahmadou Kourouma. When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Raw and unforgettable, despairing yet filled with laughter, Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.
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Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
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The City of Joy
by Dominique Lapierre
Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.
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The Constant Gardener
by John le Carre
Now a major motion picture from Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of City of God The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well. A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle--amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat--discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.
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The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
by Amin Maalouf
The author has combed the works of contemporary Arab chronicles of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants. He retells their story and offers insights into the historical forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.