Coming of age (131)
1.
A LONG WAY FROM DOUALA by Max Lobe EN
CameroonDescription:
On the trail of Roger, a brother who has gone north in search of football fame in Europe, Choupi, the narrator, takes with him the older Simon, a neighborhood friend. The bus trip north nearly ends in disaster when, at a pit stop, Simon goes wandering in search of grilled caterpillars. At the police station in Yaounde, the local cop tells them that a feckless boza who wants to go to Europe is not worth police effort and their mother should go and pleasure the police chief if she wants help! Through a series of joyful sparky vignettes, Cameroon life is revealed in all its ups and downs. Issues ... continue
2.
JordanDescription:
Turki al-Hamad's explosive novel Adama became an unlikely bestseller in the Middle East, selling more than 20,000 copies despite being officially banned in several countries, including the author's native Saudi Arabia. A compelling coming-of-age story, it also offers a rare and stunning inside look at the hidden roots of dissent in the modern Arab world. In his tranquil middle-class neighbourhood, eighteen-year-old Hisham doesn't quite fit in. He's a budding philosopher who spends his days reading banned books and developing his political ideals. His Saudi Arabia is a nation embroiled in inter... continue
3.
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu EN
EthiopiaDescription:
In Uganda, two young men get caught up in a revolt against the post-colonial regime in the early 1970s. As the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart - one of them into the deepest peril. In a quiet town in the American Midwest, an exotic stranger arrives: an exchange student from Africa called Isaac. Helen, the social worker asked to help him settle in, quickly falls for him, though she soon learns to keep their affair hidden from prejudiced eyes. And she soon realises that Isaac is haunted by his mysterious past. Switching back and forth... continue
4.
All that's left unsaid by Tracey Lien EN
AustraliaDescription:
2022 LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Phenomenal Book Club Pick! For fans of Everything I Never Told You and The Mothers, a deeply moving and unflinching debut following a young Vietnamese-Australian woman who returns home to her family in the wake of her brother’s shocking murder, determined to discover what happened—a dramatic exploration of the intricate bonds and obligations of friendship, family, and community. Just let him go. These are the words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger broth... continue
5.
All This Could Be Different : A Novel by Sarah Thankam Mathews EN
IndiaDescription:
2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick “One of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” —Vogue “Dazzling and wholly original...[written] with such mordant wit, insight, and specificity, it feels like watching a new literary star being born in real time.” –Entertainment Weekly From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America Graduating into the... continue
6.
Anger Is My Middle Name : A Memoir by Lisbeth Zornig Andersen EN
DenmarkDescription:
An empowering memoir of resilience and redemption, and the rage that helped a girl escape the darkness of a harrowing childhood. Born to a violently dysfunctional home in working-class Denmark, Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her three older brothers were bounced between foster care and state-run institutions, then back again to their chemically dependent mother and sadistic stepfather. For Lisbeth, it was a childhood without perimeters. It was blighted by poverty, sexual abuse, neglect, betrayal, and further victimization by the broken Danish social services system that forced Lisbeth to live whe... continue
7.
Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero EN
SpainDescription:
Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almodóvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the class struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid in the last decades of the twentieth century. "I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels." Told in the heartrending voice of a girl trapped within the body of a boy, Bad Habit is a story of coming-of-age in working class Madrid-in a godforsaken neighborhood ironically named after a saint. Alana S. Portero's spunky protagonist struggles ... continue
8.
Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Carullo Bobis EN
Country: Asia / 
Philippines
Philippines
Description:
In her lush, luminous debut novel, Merlinda Bobis creates a dazzling feast for all the senses. Richly imagined, gloriously written, Banana Heart Summer is an incandescent tale of food, family, and longing—at once a love letter to mothers and daughters and a lively celebration of friendship and community.
Twelve-year-old Nenita is hungry for everything: food, love, life. Growing up with five sisters and brothers, she searches for happiness in the magical smell of the deep-frying bananas of Nana Dora, who first tells Nenita the myth of the banana heart; in the tantalizing scent of Manol... continue
9.
Before the Queen Falls Asleep by Huzama Habayeb EN
KuwaitDescription:
Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy's clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father. Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her daughter a story from her life. As Malika prepares to leave home to attend university abroad, her mother revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up. Huzama Habayeb weaves a richly observed and affectionate portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their ... continue
10.
Benevolence by Julie Janson EN
Description:
"How good it is to hear a Darug voice speaking of Darug history."--Kate Grenville, author of The Secret River, winner of the Commonwealth Prize Blending the mythical power of Téa Obreht and the epic scope of Min Jin Lee, a searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done before--a beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world. For all known time, Muraging's peo... continue