Novels

Novels obviously have to be treated with caution as a way for learning about another culture – but so, less obviously (and perhaps more dangerously), does every other genre of writing. There is no getting away from the reality that every author’s work is shaped by their own beliefs, values, preconceptions, and blind spots. And if what you want to understand is how other people think – their beliefs, values, preconceptions, and blind spots – then the stories they tell can provide a wonderful richness of insight. Literature, after all, is the way we talk about the things we can’t talk about any other way.

I personally found the following novels both enjoyable and thought-provoking. They are listed in alphabetical order, with no particular recommendations implied by the ordering.

Rajaa Alsanea, Girls of Riaydh: A Novel (2005). First published in Arabic, Girls of Riaydh purports to tell the stories of four young women searching for love and satisfaction in 1990s Saudi Arabia – all through the eyes of a mysterious narrator who has created a Yahoo group and sends out weekly emails every Friday. The novel created quite a sensation throughout the Arab world and is now available in English. It is written adequately well, but what makes it truly interesting is the author’s portrayals of how Saudi women and men are trying to take advantage of the freedom and technology of the modern world while negotiating the constraints of their society.

Tamim Ansary, The Widow’s Husband (2009). This novel starts in a small village in Afghanistan in 1841, the year the British occupied Kabul, but then as now ruling Kabul was not the same thing as ruling the countryside. This is a story of love and yearning. It is a story of religious mystery. It is a story of how ordinary people’s lives are touched and sometimes transformed by big historical forces. The characters tend to be a bit one-dimensional, and it’s clear that Ansary constructed this novel as a medium for communicating his understanding of a key time in the history of Afghanistan. But if you’re interested in Afghanistan and you like historical fiction that helps you understand how people of another time and place understood and experienced their lives, you should know about this book.

Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). This unusual and powerful novel portrays a one-sided conversation in which a Pakistani man, Changez, tells his life story to an American whom he meets in a cafe in Lahore. Changez experienced youthful success as an immigrant to the United States: he graduated from Princeton, landed a job with an elite firm in New York City, and fell in love with an American woman. September 11 and its aftermath, however, changed his understanding of himself, the United States, and his place in the world. Tightly written and compelling, The Reluctant Fundamentalist explores the depths of love and fear.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2004). This gripping novel is both a coming-of-age story and a political/cultural history of Afghanistan during the tumultuous years when the Taliban came into power. It tells the story of the relationship between Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy Kabul businessman, and Hassan, the son of his father’s servant and a member of the Hazara ethnic group, a Shiite people who have long been oppressed in Afghanistan. Their story is intertwined with the story of their changing world. The novel explores the tensions within Afghani society, but in a way that deepens the novel’s psychological insight rather than burdening or detracting from it. Complex, illuminating, and at times quite disturbing, The Kite Runner is one of the most memorable novels I have ever read.

Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007). Hosseini’s second novel, also set in Afghanistan and also alert to how history plays out in the lives of individuals, tells the stories and Mariam and Laila, the two wives of their husband Rasheed. All too often facing the brutal realities of misogyny and war, Laila and Mariam nevertheless refuse to be dehumanized. I personally don’t think A Thousand Splendid Suns is quite as good a novel as The Kite Runner, but others feel differently, and it is certainly a novel worth reading.

See also: Memoirs