6 Books About Globalism And Identity
We live in a world where moving is almost inevitable, and where there is an itinerant sense of being caught between various places and cultures, even for those who aren’t constantly in motion. Though there are many classics that touch upon this phenomenon, the way it’s evolved in recent decades is more striking. So what better place to start reading than from this selection of contemporary novels and memoirs - deeply insightful and powerful reflections on globalisation, immigration, identity and the many stories within.
Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
Navigating between Indian traditions and the baffling new world of America, Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching debut collection was a phenomenon that has stood the test of time. As if to reinforce the strange paths globalisation takes us on, Lahiri has written or translated her last two works from Italian, has taught in America, and still appeals to a generation of Indian readers. This is a collection of short stories well worth exploring, regardless of national origins.
Olga Tokarczuk - Flights (2007)
The winner of the 2018 Man Booker International prize, and the work that made Olga Tokarczuk a global literary figure even before her Nobel Prize, Flights is a fragmentary novel that is also a "philosophical rumination on modern-day travel". Set between the 17th and 21st centuries, structured as a series of vignettes that go between various eras and geographies, Flights is a novel that is perpetually in motion and raises interesting questions about the interconnected and daunting world we live in.
Andrew Sean Greer - Less (2017)
Less is a satirical comedy that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Following writer Arthur Less as he travels the world on a literary tour to numb his loss of the man he loves, it goes between various countries and cultures while remaining rooted to America, and is a story as much about heartbreak and queerness as about going from place to place while longing for what you can never quite have.
Sara Suleri - Meatless Days (2018)
Meatless Days is a searing memoir of life in newly-created Pakistan, which evolves into personal crisis and a wider meditation on universal questions: about being a woman when you're too busy being a mother or a sister or a wife, about starting life in a new language, about her Welsh mother teaching Jane Austen in Pakistan, and about belonging to different places and identities.
Nadia Owusu - Aftershocks (2021)
A wonderfully poetic, heartfelt and meaningful work that blends memoir with cultural history, Nadia Owusu’s Aftershocks is about her growing up all over the world, feeling a sense of confusion about her accent, identity and self that intensifies when she is alone in New York and reflecting on the early loss of her father, as well as her estrangement from her birth mother. The book goes beyond the personal to explore trauma, black womanhood and the meaning of home, and it’s no surprise Owusu won the Whiting Award for her writing.
Katie Kitamura - Intimacies (2021)
A novel set in the Hague about a translator who is caught between various cultures and selves, Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies feels truly global and deeply incisive. She goes about her life in Holland as an outsider, in love with a married man and working in the International Court of Justice on a case where she has to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. But more than plot, this is a book that explores the spaces between identity and nations, a book about being adrift in a confusing global world.