( Source : Quora/Buzzfeed/Yahoo Answers/GoodReads )
If you are a book lover, and if you’re visiting this link we’re presuming that you are, the books on this list should have already been consumed by you. If you haven’t had the pleasure of devouring them yet, we hope you appreciate the recommendation. These books are not only must reads, but if you are only going to read a fixed number of books in your life, these books should be the only ones you read.
Its always a joy to find books to read that you’re going to love, and with this list, we’ve compiled the ones you HAVE to read before you die.
1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
First published in: France
What it’s about: A pilot crashes his plane in the Sahara Desert and meets an alien boy he calls “the little prince.” Once their kinship is established, the little prince tells him of the asteroid he calls home and the rose he loves.
2. Kartography by Kamila Shamsie
What it’s about: Karim and Raheen grow up together as friends in Karachi, Pakistan, aware that their parents were once engaged to one another until they swapped fiancées. The secret behind the exchange illustrates larger national struggles and changes the course of their relationship.
3. Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
What it’s about: Oskar’s life is changed by his friendship with Eli, his mysterious neighbor who is revealed to be a 200 year old vampire.
4. Your Name Shall Be Tanga by Calixthe Beyala
What it’s about: Tanga is dying in a West African prison cell, while her fellow inmate Anna-Claude may be going insane. By not allowing Tanga’s story to die with her, Anna-Claude’s identity begins to meld with hers.
5. Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
What it’s about: Mari is high school dropout, stuck working in her mother’s run-down hotel when she meets a middle-aged translator and is drawn into a sadomasochistic affair with him.
6. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
What it’s about: In post-war Spain, a father takes his son to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. When Daniel selects The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax, he must protect the book for life.
7. The Path to the Spiders’ Nests by Italo Calvino
What it’s about: During World War II, Pip comes of age after stealing a Nazi soldier’s gun and becoming entangled in the Italian resistance movement.
8. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
What it’s about: Bound by familial traditions, Tita cannot marry Pedro, who marries her sister to remain close to her. Tita expresses her love and desire for him through her cooking, which has unexpected consequences.
9. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
What it’s about: While a turf war unfolds in Jellicoe between children at a boarding school and the visiting cadets, Taylor Markham is preoccupied with the disappearance of her guardian Hannah, who has only left an incomplete manuscript concerning five children who lived on Jellicoe Road twenty years earlier.
10. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
What it’s about: Reverend Stephen Kumalo leaves for Johannesburg to help his sister and search for his missing son. There he encounters the harsh realities of pre-Apartheid South Africa..
11. Brothers by Yu Hua
What it’s about: Spanning over the course of forty years, Brothers follows the lives of Baldy Li and Song Gang against the backdrop of the turbulent and changing landscape of twentieth century China.
12. Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh
What it’s about: Wild Thorns examines life in Palestine after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip through the eyes of Usamah al-Karmi, a translator who is a member of the resistance movement.
13. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
What it’s about: Okonkwo, a leader in the fictional Nigerian village of Umuofia, attempts to balance his cultural values and beliefs during the arrival of Christian missionaries and British colonists.
14. The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
What it’s about: After the death of his lover, the narrator encounters his lover’s cousin Carlos Argentino Daneri, a poet who hopes to write a poem that encompasses the entirety of the universe.
15. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
What it’s about: In her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Jhumpa Lahiri illustrates various intersections between Western and Indian cultures, most memorably in the titular short story.
16. The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz
What it’s about: The Cairo Trilogy follows the family of Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad through the turbulent years of the British occupation of Egypt.
17. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
What it’s about: During a taxi ride, Aomame realizes she is living in a parallel universe. She calls it “1Q84,” which in Japanese is a play on the homophonic letter ‘q’ and the number 9.
18. Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
What it’s about: Angel Tungararza works not only as a masterful baker, but as a comforter and mother-figure to her customers and neighbors in Rwanda, six years after the genocide.
19. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
What it’s about: Allan Karlsson has dined with Winston Churchill and Harry Truman, but he’s not content to leave his adventures in the past. On the occasion of his 100th birthday celebration at the nursing home, he decides he’s had enough and leaves for a new journey.
20. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin
What it’s about: When 69 year old So-nyo goes missing in a busy Seoul train station, her children are forced to confront their failure to care for their mother.
21. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
What it’s about: Deeply philosophical, The Unbearable Lightness of Being focuses on the intertwining lives of faithful and unfaithful lovers against the climate of political unrest in Prague.
22. The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
What it’s about: Asya Kazanci lives with her mother, grandmother and aunts. Their family life is interrupted by a visiting Armenian-American cousin, who has come to learn about her past.
23. Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
What it’s about: Written mostly as a dialogue, Kiss of the Spider Woman explores the relationship between two inmates in an Argentinian prison.
24. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
What it’s about: Renée is the concierge of a rich apartment building in Paris; there, she hides her intelligence behind her work until a tenant’s child, Paloma, forms a bond with her.
25. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
What it’s about: The tragic lives of twins Rahel and Estha and their family illuminate the socio-economic hardships of the Indian caste system in the 1960s.
26. Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
