Former US President, Barack Obama might be a voracious reader but he is certainly not a selfish one.
Recently, the first African-American President of the United States, who described his lifelong affection for literature in his book “Dreams From My Father” thus: “When I wasn’t working, the weekends would usually find me alone in empty apartment, making do with the company of books”, recommended a range of books he had enjoyed while in a literature discussion with New York Times Chief book critic, Michiko Kakutani.
So, if you’ve been looking for the right book to start on this month, here’s a list of some great ones, according to President Obama:
“Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison
In this book, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his Rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.”
“Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn
“On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media — as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents — the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behaviour. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter — but is he really a killer?”
“Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff
“A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of 24 years.”
“A Bend in the River” by V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man — an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation.
Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love — in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as “magical realism”.
