Read Around North America Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.
Best books from North America (2064)
811.
Half a Life: A Novel by V. S. Naipaul EN
Country: North America / 
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul has produced his finest novel to date, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity. The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, wh... continue
812.
The Beast of Beswick by Amalie Howard EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Lord Nathaniel Harte, the disagreeable Duke of Beswick, spends his days smashing porcelain, antagonizing his servants, and snarling at anyone who gets too close. With a ruined face like his, it's hard to like much about the world. Especially smart-mouthed harpies—with lips better suited to kissing than speaking—who brave his castle with indecent proposals. But Lady Astrid Everleigh will stop at nothing to see her younger sister safe from a notorious scoundrel, even if it means offering herself up on a silver platter to the forbidding Beast of Beswick himself. And by offer, she means what no hi... continue
813.
A Bend in the River by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Widely hailed as the Nobel Prize-winning author’s greatest work, this novel takes us into the life of a young Indian man who moves to an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. • "Brilliant." —The New York Times In this haunting masterpiece of postcolonial literature, short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979, Naipaul gives us a convincing and disturbing vision of a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past. Salim is doubly an outsider in his new home—an unnamed country that resembles the Congo—by virtue of h... continue
814.
Dreams Beyond the Shore by Tamika Gibson EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
"Seventeen-year-old Chelsea March and was pretty satisfied with her life. Until recently. Willing to play the dutiful daughter as her father's bid to become Prime Minister of their island home brings her family into intense public scrutiny, Chelsea is swept along by the strong tidal wave of politics and becomes increasingly disturbed by her father's duplicity. She finds a reprieve when she meets Kyron, a kindred spirit encased in low riding blue jeans. The two share a bond as he too struggles to get beyond his father's shadow. But when Chelsea discovers an even darker more sinister side to her... continue
815.
816.
817.
Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting by Shivanee Ramlochan EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Ramlochan's poems take the reader through a series of imaginative narratives that are at once emotionally familiar and compelling, even as the characters evoked and the happenings they describe are heavily symbolic. Her poems reference the language and structural patterns of the genres of fantasy or speculative fiction, though with her own distinctive features, including the presence of such folkloric Trinidadian figures as the Duenne, those wandering lost spirits whose feet point backwards.
818.
Passiontide by Monique Roffey EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Four women spark a revolution on a Caribbean island – the electrifying new novel from the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch. ‘Vital, enraging and brilliant. I loved it’ SARAH WINMAN ‘Beautiful and important’ SAFIYA SINCLAIR Early one morning, at the close of St Colibri’s carnival, a young female steel-pan player is found dead beneath a cannonball tree. It is a discovery that will transform the lives of everyone on this small island. As the days pass, this shocking event draws together four women. There’s Sharleen, a journalist with an eye for the real story. Her childhood frie... continue
819.
La Saison des certs-volants by Elizabeth [VNV] Walcott-Hackshaw FR
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
L'une a caressé le rêve américain durant ses études et sait que, si sa famille enrichie par le pétrole règne sur la capitale, ses privilèges s'évaporeraient aux États-Unis à cause de sa couleur de peau.
Une autre est obsédée par la peur des enlèvements, et malgré les bouledogues dans le jardin de son père, celui-ci a disparu.
Une mère anéantie traverse la ville - vitres closes pour maintenir la misère à distance - direction l'aéroport, d�... continue
820.
The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul EN
Country: North America / Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
The Nobel Prize-winning author distills his wide experience of countries and peoples into a moving account of the rites of passage endured by all people and all communities undergoing change or decay. • "Naipaul's finest work." —Chicago Tribune "A subtly incisive self-reckoning." —The Washington Post Book World The story of a writer’s singular journey – from one place to another, and from one state of mind to another. At the midpoint of the century, the narrator leaves the British colony of Trinidad and comes to the ancient countryside of England. And from within the story of this journey – of... continue