Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi . Americanah. 2014.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977-) is a Nigerian author of novels, short stories and nonfiction. She graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University in 2001 and completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. She has won several prizes over the years, such as British Book Award's Author of the Year, and Kasseler Burgerpreis “Prism of Reason” Award. Her debut novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) was highly praised as well as Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). In 2014 Adichie published Americanah, a novel about race and cross-continental relationships and an exploration of being African in America. In Dear Ijeawele Or A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions (2017), the best-selling author shines light on gender issues, feminism and equality.
Ali, Monica. In the Kitchen. 2009.
Monica Ali is lauded by the critique as one of the best young novelists in Britain. She comes from two different ethnic backgrounds, as her parents are English and Bangladeshi. Her debut novel was Brick Lane (2003), in which a Bangladeshi family embodies the immigrant experience, and which was recreated in the big screen in 2007. Her following novels, Antelejo Blue and In the Kitchen, were published in 2006 and 2009 respectively. Her latest novel, Untold Story, was published almost a decade ago, in 2011.
Anaya, Rudolfo. The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. 2016.
Rudolfo Anaya is an eclectic writer whose interests covered different types of novels, plays and children’s books. Anaya was concerned about human conditions and was keystone in Chicano culture and literature. Among his publications, it can be highlighted his first novel Bless Me, Ultima (1972) and the last one, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso (2016).
Aw, Tash. Five Star Billionaire. 2013
Tash Aw was born in Taiwan but raised in Malasya. He moved to England where he completed his education. There, he studied in Cambridge, Warwick and worked as a lawyer. After having studied Creative Writing in the University of East Anglia, Aw published his first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory in 2005, and The Face: Strangers on a Pier in 2016, a narration in which modern Asia is explored through the author’s own experiences of migration and adaptation with his family. In 2013, he won the O. Henry Prize with Sail, a short-fiction piece.
Bakalar, A. M. Madame Mephisto: A Novel. 2012.
A.M. Bakalar is a Polish writer graduated inEnglish Literature. She has lived in several countries, such as Sicily, Canada, Germany, and France. Her main interests are postcolonial and contemporary Nigerian, Zimbawean, and Polish literature. Among his writings, Bakalar wrote Madame Mephisto (2012) and Children of Our Age (2017). In the latter, whose protagonists are a family of Polish immigrants in Britain, the author exposes the contrast between a Polish past and a British future, and the transformations they suffer as individuals.
Binchy, Chris. Open Handed. 2008.
Chris Binchy is an Irish novelist who studied English and Spanish at University College Dublin and later graduated from the Master's course in creative writing at Trinity College Dublin. His debut novel was The Very Man in 2003 and was shortlisted for the Hughes & Hughes Sunday Independent Irish Novel of the Year award. This novel was followed by People Like Us (2004). In 2008 he published his breakthrough Open-handed, in which is a portray of the present-day Dublin and of the story of some characters who get involved in a web of politics, property, sex and violence. Two years later, Binchy wrote his last novel, Five Days Apart (2010) which plot unfolds themes of social isolation, workplace politics and romantic triangles.
Bissoondah, Neil. Postcards from Hell. 2009.
Blasim, Hassan. The Madman of Freedom Square. 2009
---, ed. Iraq + 100: Stories from a Century after the Invasion. 2016.
Bolger, Dermot. Tanglewood. 2015.
Cao, Lan. The Lotus and the Storm. 2014.
Cole, Teju. Open City: A Novel. 2012.
Courtney, Polly. Poles Apart. 2008.
Dimbo, Ifedinma. She Was Foolish? 2012.
Enright, Anne. The Green Road. 2015.
Evaristo, Bernardine. Girl, Woman, Other. 2019.
Fontes, Patrick. Maria’s Purgatorio. 2016.
Gee, Maggie. The Driver. 2009.
Maggie Gee (1948-) is an acclaimed British postmodern novelist and professor of creative writing, currently leading the Bath Spa's Empathy and Writing research group. Her educational background includes two degrees in English by the Sommerville College, Oxford. Her debut novel was an experimental black comedy entitled Dying, in Other Words published in 1981. A year later, Gee was one of the selected women on the Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists. Her latest novel Blood (2019) is a Gothic black comedy set in the Brexit Britain in which Gee invites the reader to reflect on meaningful questions about contemporary life. Recently, she has participated in the writing of May Hobbs (2017), a story dealing with the real-life night cleaners’ strike.
Gunaratne, Guy. In Our Mad and Furious City. 2018
Guy Gunaratnet (1984-) is a London-based journalist, filmmaker and writer whose first novel In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) won several prizes, such as the International Dylan Thomas award for writers, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. This novel is inspired by a real murder case of a British soldier. It depicts a frenzied modern present- day London and the disparities underneath the image of a prosperous place. Though he is based in London, where he studied current affairs journalism in the City, University of London, Gunaratnet travels worldwide to post-conflict areas.
Haddad, Saleem. Guapa. 2016.
Saleem Haddad (1983-) is an author born in Kuwait City currently living in London where he combines his career as a writer with aid works with Médecins Sans Frontières and other international organizations. His first novel Guapa (2016), which was awarded a Stonewall Book Award, is a queer novel that focuses on both the political and personal affairs of ayoung homosexual man living in an unknown Arab place through the Arab Spring in 2011 and his process of rediscovering his real identity.
Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 2007.
---. How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel. 2014.
---. Exist West. 2017
Mohsin Hamid (1971-), a British Pakistani author, is considered one of the most talented writers of his generation. His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages. The political thriller, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), made into a movie in 2012, recounts the story of the live of a Pakistani immigrant in America, his love affair with an American woman and his abandonment of the country. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and received several awards such as the Asian American Literary Award. Other of his bestselling books were Moth Smoke (2000), How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2014) and Exit West (2017) in which he explores the struggles of refugees and emigration. In all his works Hamid deals with the themes of ethnic identity, class disparity and mass urbanization.
Hamilton, Hugo. Hand in the Fire. 2010.
---. Dublin Palms. 2019
Hugo Hamilton (1953-) is an Irish writer of German ascendancy who also worked as a freelance journalist and in the music business. He knows Irish, English and German language, three cultures that Hamilton intertwines in his fiction. His best-selling novel The Speckled People (2003) is a German-Irish memoir while The Last Shot (1991) is set in the final days of the Nazi Regime and of the Second World War. In his more recent works, Hamilton explores, in the form of a memoir, the modern Ireland as in Dublin Palms (2019) and meditates on the issue of identity and the sense of belonging.
Hobbs, Will. Crossing The Wire. 2007
Will Hobbs (1947-) is an American award-winning author living in Durango, Colorado. He graduated by the Stanford University and is a former language arts teacher. He has written over 20 novels for young readers of which seven of them have been chosen by the American Library Association as Best Books for Young Adults of the 20th century. Novels such as Downriver (1991) and Crossing The Wire (2007) can be highlighted among his greatest productions. Both stories have fifteen-year-old boys as the main characters. The former deals with the whitewater adventures of a group of teenagers through the Grand Canyon whereas the latter portrays the story of a fifteen-year old boy who heads north in an attempt to cross from Mexico to the United States to find a job and send money to his family. His last novel, City of Gold (2020) is a historical western fiction that narrates the adventures of a farmer family in the real Wild West.
Huerta, Javier O. American Copia: An Immigrant Epic. 2012.
Javier O. Huerta (1973-) is a Mexican-American and Chicano poet born in Tamaulipas, Mexico who later immigrated to Houston, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at El Paso, where he graduated in the bilingual MFA program and is currently teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. For Huerta, the immigration and bicultural experience are pivotal topics in his writing as it can be observed in his first collection, entitled Some Clarifications y Otros Poemas (2007), which received the 31st Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California, Irvine, and in more recent works such as American Copia: an Immigrant Epic (2012).
Khair,Tabish. How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position. 2012.
---. Just another jihadi jane. 2016.
---. Night of Happiness. 2018.
Tabish Khair (1966-) is a contemporary Indian-English writer and academic political commentator born in Gaya, India and currently based in Denmark. His creative narrative includes novels and poetry collections for which he has won several prizes including the First Prize in All India Poetry Prize, awarded by the Poetry Society and the British Council in 1995. In works such as How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (2012), Just Another Jihadi Jane (2016) and Night of Happiness (2018) Khair writes about racism, the misunderstanding of poor and rich, and the identity of minority groups such as Muslims in Denmark.
Lewycka, Marina. Two Caravans. 2007.
Marina Lewycka (1946-) is a Ukrainian and British novelist currently living in England. She attended Keele University and worked as a lecturer in Media Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. Lewycka's debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005) received the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. Her second novel, Two Caravans (2007), was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing. This story portrays the Eastern Europeans as it follows the lives of characters who are legal and illegal migrant workers in the agricultural industry in England.
Martínez, Demetria. The Block Captain’s Daughter. 2012.
---. Mother Tongue. 2010.
Demetria Martínez (1960-) is a poet, novelist and a committed social activist born in Albuquerque. After finishing her studies, she worked as a journalist at the Albuquerque Journal and in the National Catholic Reporter. She graduated from Princeton University and she is currently involved with immigrant’s right issues and teaches in the annual June workshop writing for social change. In her works, she combines the themes of gender, religion and ethnicity as it can be observed in her first novel Mother Tongue published in 2010 which won the Western States Book Award and in The Block Captain’s Daugther (2012).
Mehmood, Tariq. You’re Not Proper. 2015
---. Song of Gulzarina. 2016
Tariq Mehmood (1956-) is an award-winning author and film-maker who was born in Pakistan and grew up in Bradford, UK. He is currently teaching at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. His novels deal with the topics of migration, war, identity, longing, love and loss. Among his works, we can highlight Hand On The Sun (1983), While There Is Light (2004), which focus on the experience of Asian in Britain, and You’re Not Proper (2015) the winner of the Francis Lincoln award for children’s fiction. In the latter as well as in Song of Gulzarina (2016), Mahmood brings to light the themes of identity and religion, class and politics affecting young people today in the UK. Regarding his film production, the multi-award-winning Injustice (2001) should be highlighted which brings light into the unacceptable number of deaths in British police custody. In 2020 he released its follow-on Ultraviolence continuing the same theme as in Injustice showing a corrupt system failing UK citizens.
Mun, Nami. Miles from Nowhere. 2009.
Nami Mun (1968-) is an Korean American writer of novels and short stories. She was born in Seoul in South Korea and raised in the Bronx. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley as well as from the University of Michigan. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University. Mun wrote Miles from Nowhere in 2009, a story that focuses on the live of a Korean immigrant living in the Bronx and exposes her life difficulties and which received several awards like a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize.
Naqvi, H. M. Home Boy. (2010) 2011
M. Naqvi (1974-) is a novelist born in London and based in Karachi, Pakistan. He graduated from Georgetown University with degrees in economics and English literature. He won the Phelam Prize for poetry. His debut novel, Home Boy(2010) achieved commercial success and recognition. The story unfolds in New York after the 9/11 attacks when three Pakistani men experience the limitation of their power to define their identities after the terrorist attack.
Rowlatt, Bee and Witwit, May. Taking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. 2010.
May Witwit is an Iraqi academic expert in Jane Austen, Chaucer and other aspects of English Literature. Bee Rowlatt is a British writer and BBC World Service journalist. Witwit is particularly interested in the representation of Arab women in The British press. Together, in 2010, they cowrite the best-selling novel Taking About Jane Austen in Baghdad, the plot unravels the lives of two women who share their fears, joys and sadness and who plan the escape of May from the bombings and war in Baghdad. Rowlatt then published her second book in 2017, In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys, inspired by the life of Mary Wollstonecraft and her treasure hunt across Europe in the 17th century.
Sahota, Sunjeev, The Year of the Runaways. 2016.
---. China Room. 2021
Sunjeev Sahota is a British novelist whose Indian origins have inspired his work after reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children. His debut novel was Ours Are the Streets and it was followed by the awarded with a European Union Prize for Literature The Year of the Runaways, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Sahota’s last novel China Room published in 2021. Just as the two previous ones, China Room deals with the sense of belonging and identity in characters connected to India.
Salvador Treviño, Jesús. Return to Arroyo Grande. 2015.
Jesús Salvador Treviño is an award-winning American director of Mexican descent. His firs contact with filmmaking was as a student, when he started documenting the Chicano Movement. Over the course of his career, Raíces de Sangre (1979), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), Voyager (1995-2001), Bones (2005), and Prison Break (2005) are among the multiple series and films directed by him. Furthermore, Salvador Treviño is also the writer of three collections of short stories The Fabulous Sinkhole and Other Stories (1995), The Skyscrapper that Flew (2005), and Return to Arroyo Grande (2015). Part of his most recent work includes collaboration with the website Latinopia, to which he has donated unedited interviews in order to complete this space of Latino Arts, History, Music, Literature, Cooking, and Cinema.
Shamsie, Kamila. Burnt Shadows. 2009.
---. Home Fire. 2017
Kamila Shamsie is an awarded Pakistani and British novelist. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College in Clinton, where she has also taught Creative Writing. Shamsie also has a MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Moreover, she also writes articles for The Guardian, The New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect magazine. Her first novel was In the City by the Sea, which won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her second novel, Salt and Saffron, allowed her to become part of the Orange's list of '21 Writers for the 21st Century. Her novel Burnt Shadows was published in 2009, making her the winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction. The last novel she wrote is Home Fire, in which as in all her previous ones, she portrays Muslim people difficulties and deals with Pakistani identity.
O’Brien, Edna. The Little Red Chairs. 2016.
---. Girl. 2019
Edna O’Brien is an Irish novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work deals with the portrayal of women in contemporary society usually in an Irish location. This is the main topic in The Little Red Chairs, in which a woman in rural Ireland has an affair with war criminal who is hiding. Through this character, O’Brien also explores the experience of immigration in Ireland and how it is perceived by Irish natives. In 2019, the author published Girl, her last novel. Its plot was inspired by the kidnapping of Chibok schoolgirls by members of Boko Hara. Although O’Brien does not focus on Ireland in this novel, she keeps focusing on women and the emotions of those girls, something which she does by narrating the story through the voice of a fictional victim.
O’Donnell, Mary. Where They Lie. 2014.
Mary O’Donnell is an Irish novelist, poet, and journalist. She studied German and Philosophy at National University of Ireland. O’Donnell’s work has a key role in the expanding horizons of the traditionally male-dominated literary space in Ireland. In Where They Lie, someone calls Gerda to tell her they have information about the bodies of two disappeared brothers in Ireland. The novel deals with religion, depression, traumatic experiences and how they are feced. O’Donnell an award-winning author who has received a Hennessy Literature Award, an Allingham Award, and several prizes from the Fish International Short Story Competition and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition.
O’Donnoghue, Domhnall. Colin and the Concubine. 2019.
---. Crazy for You. 2020.
Domhnall O’Donnoghue is an Irish former actor who now works as a journalist and as an author. In his novel Colin and the Concubine, the main character Colin is always annoyed by his brother. He decides to participate in the Housewife of the Year competition, so he has to look for a wife. Colin thinks about his neighbour Azra, a Turkish concubine, and the cultural shock between both explores Irish and Turkish identities.
O’Malley, Sheila. Chicano. 2014.
Sheila O'Malley is an author living in Aspen who has a BA of Arts Degree in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she also studied International Relations and Spanish. Her novel Chicano tells the story of a young boy who starts the journey of his life from his home in Mexico to San Pedro River, through the Arizona desert, and to Colorado. Finally, he comes back to his home city. This is not only a physical journey, but a spiritual one in which he becomes Chicano. The author combines two languages and two cultures while she explores their relationship.
Ryan, Donal. From a Low and Quiet Sea. 2018
Toporov, Yusuf. Jihadi. A Love Story. 2015
Vassanji, M. G. The Magi of Saida. 2013.
V.V.A.A. Dublin: Ten Journeys, One Destination. 2010.
---. Refugee Tales I. 2016
---. Refugee Tales II. 2017
---. Refugee Tales III. 2019
Waldman, Amy. The Submission. 2011.
Wassell, Elizabeth. Sustenance. 2011.
Yassin-Kassab, Robin. The Road from Damascus. 2009.