Johnson County Community College LibGuides - Aging: International and Multicultural Novels

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Please Note: This is not a comprehensive list of novels on the subject of aging. It is a bibliography based on the holdings of the Johnson County Community College. Like most bibliographies, it is a work in progress. New books will continually be added, and titles which become unobtainable will be removed from the list.

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Novels

Ending Up - Amis, Kingsley (Great Britain)
Call Number: PR6001.M6 E5
In this black comedy portrait, five eccentric old people who are becoming senile sharing a home in London.
Bless Me, Ultima - Anaya, Rudolfo (Chicano)
Call Number: PS3551.N27 B58 1972
A young boy learns about wisdom and evil from an old, wise woman who is a curandera with magical powers.
A Very Easy Death - Beauvoir, Simone de (France)
Call Number: PQ2603.E362 M613
A daughter observes the death of her mother.
Mr. Sammler's Planet - Bellow, Saul (USA)
Call Number: PS3503.E4488 M5
A seventy-year-old man walks the streets of New York reflecting on his life and suffering the indignities of the city and age. The author won a Nobel Prize in literature.
Cold Sassy Tree - Burns, Olive (USA)
Call Number: PS3552.U732 C6
An old man astonishes his family when he marries a very young woman after the death of his beloved wife.
Sunday Jews - Calisher, Hortense (USA)
Call Number: PS3553.A4 S86
The large family of a mixed marriage between an Irish Catholic philosophy professor and a Jewish anthropologist grapple with what makes a person Jewish or non-Jewish and examine how assimilation in America reduced people's belief in God. The novel is also an elegant portrait of great love in a marriage and how a family deals with the dementia of a beloved relative.
Age of Iron - Coetzee, J.M. (South Africa)
Call Number: PR9369.3.C58 A7
A white woman is dying of cancer as the South African situation deteriorates.
The Lost Dog - De Kretser, Michelle (Australia, Sir Lanka, India)
Call Number: On Order
When a college professor loses his dog in the Australian outback, his search takes him not only through the wilderness, but also through his own personal history and that of his close friend, an artist with a scandalous past.
In Custody - Desai, Anita (India)
Call Number: PR9499.3.D46515
A poor, failing academic is manipulated into interviewing an old man known as the greatest living Urdu poet and finds he has taken on much more than he bargained for.
Mistress of Spices - Divakaruni, Chitra Bannerjee (India, USA)
Call Number: PS3554.I86 M47
A wonder-working Indian woman who runs a spice shop in Oakland discovers to keep her vows she must give up love and love matters more.
Middlesex - Eugenides, Jeffrey (Greece, Turkey, USA)
Call Number: PS3555.U4 M53
The grandchild of Greek immigrants, who fled the massacre of Greeks in Turkey in the 1920's, has been raised female, only to discover when he hits puberty that he is actually male. This novel also chronicles the history of Detroit from the 20's to the 80's, from labor strikes to race riots and is an affectionate portrait of the Greek American community.
The Death of Artemio Cruz - Fuentes, Carlos (Mexico)
Call Number: PQ7297.F793 M813
An old man, who has chosen wealth rather than compassion throughout his life, lies dying and reflects on his choices.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman - Gaines, Ernest (Africa, USA)
Call Number: PS3557.A355 A85
A 110-year-old woman, whose life has spanned the years from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement, recounts the important incidents in which she was involved.
A Gathering of Old Men - Gaines, Ernest (Africa, USA)
Call Number: PS3557.A355 LG3
A southern sheriff must determine which of several self-confessed murderers actually killed a hated bigot.
Aguero Sisters - Garcia, Cristina (Cuba)
Call Number: PS3557.A66 A73
Two sisters, one in New York and one in Havana, try to make sense of their past and the politics that divided them.
Dreaming in Cuban - Garcia, Cristina (Cuba)
Call Number: PS3557.A66 D74 1993
A Cuban family is bitterly divided by politics. They work out their destinies in Havana and New York.
Love in the Time of Cholera - Garcia Marquez, Gabriel (Colombia)
Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 A813
This novel is the tale of a grand love affair of unrequited passion that waits more than fifty years to be consummated.
Family Markowitz - Goodman, Allegra (USA, Jewish)
Call Number: PS3557.O5829 F3
This is a series of interconnected stories about an American Jewish family.
Kaaterskill Falls - Goodman, Allegra (USA, Jewish)
Call Number: PS3557.O5829 K3
While their Rabbi is dying, an American community of Orthodox Jews tries to find fulfillment in their personal lives within the constraints of their religion.
Remind Me Who I Am Again - Grant, Linda (Great Britain, Jewish)
Call Number: RC521.G726
In this non-fiction narrative, a British journalist attempts to reconstruct her family's history as she and her sister deal with her mother's ever increasing dementia.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Hijuelos, Oscar (Cuba)
Call Number: PS3558.I376 M36
Two Cuban refugee brothers gain and lose success with a mambo band in New York.
The Summer of the Big Bachi - Hirahara, Naomi (Japan)
Call Number: PS3608.I76 S86 2004
What happened fifty years ago during the destruction of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb in World War II becomes crucial to a Japanese family's inheritance. The key to the knowledge is held by an aging Japanese American gardener in Los Angeles. Despite his wish to remain uninvolved, he finds himself the reluctant detective as old scores are paid back and old wrongs righted.
Too Loud a Solitude - Hrabal, Bohumil (Czech Republic)
Call Number: PG5039.18.R2 P713
An old man, who works at a garbage incinerator, loves the books he is supposed to destroy and often rescues and reads the best ones. He is now facing obsolescence as automated equipment is scheduled to replace him.
Losing Julia - Hull, Jonathan (USA)
Call Number: Johnson County Library
This novel is about an elderly man who lives in a nursing home, remembering his experiences in World War I where he lost his closest friends. He also meditates on his brief love affair with a woman who also lost her lover during the war. This is an excellent depiction of the indignities of old age.
The Prince of West End Avenue - Isler, Alan (Jewish, USA)
Call Number: PS3559.S52
A man, living in a New York senior citizen apartment, comes to terms with his actions during the Holocaust as he and his neighbors work on a production of Macbeth.
The History of Love - Krauss, Nicole (USA)
Call Number: PS3611.R38 H57 2005
In New York a lonely old man, who survived the Holocaust, discovers that a novel he wrote in Poland before the war has survived and been published by another man in South America.
A Gesture Life - Lee, Chang-rae (Japan, Korea, USA)
Call Number: PS3562.E3347 G4
A Japanese man of Korean descent, living in a comfortable New England town, muses about the failures in his life, his estrangement from his adopted daughter, a failed romance, and his experiences in the Japanese army during the war.
Sweetness - Lindgren, Torgny (Sweden)
Call Number: PT9876.22.I445 H8513
A visiting lecturer to a small northern Swedish town spends the night with an old man dying of cancer who refuses to die before his brother dies of a heart condition. Due to a snowstorm and because of her interest in the two feuding old men, she ends up staying for several weeks.
Sugar Street - Mahfuz, Najib (also spelled Mafouz, Naguib) (Egypt)
Call Number: PJ7846.A46 S913
A Nobel Prize winning author chronicles the fate of an Egyptian family from 1917 to 1944 in a trilogy of which this is the third volume. He presents a dynamic account of Egypt's social and political development. Each of the three novels can be read separately.
The Cigar Roller - Medina, Pablo (Cuba, USA)
Call Number: PS3563.E24 C54
As he lies paralyzed and unable to speak in a Florida nursing home, the aged Amadeo Terra recalls his life, his many infidelities, his wife and children. Having lived without restraint, he is now dying alone. The novel also explores the Cuban immigrant community in Florida.
The Distinguished Guest - Miller, Sue (USA)
Call Number: PS3536.I421444 D57
An aging writer stays with her son's family during the last year of her life, causing each family member to reassess his/her relationships.
The Old Man and the Medal - Oyono, Ferdinand (Cameroon)
Call Number: PQ3989.09
A satire on the African colonial situation where an old man who has tried to accommodate the French ends up humiliated, losing everything he valued.
All Over Creation - Ozeki, Ruth (USA)
Call Number: PS3565.Z45 A55
Returning to Idaho to care for her aged parents, the troubled daughter of a potato farmer and his Japanese wife, finds her family and neighbors caught up in a protest against genetically altered potatoes spearheaded by a group of itinerate protesters intent on making her father their guru and opposed by the slimy PR representative of a big chemical corporation - a man who had seduced her 25 years earlier when he was her junior high school teacher.
The Shawl - Ozick, Cynthia (Jewish, USA)
Call Number: PS3565.Z5 S5
To a survivor of the Holocaust living in the United States, a shawl symbolizes all that was lost.
Out Stealing Horses - Petterson, Per (Norway)
Call Number: PT8951.26.E88 U813
In this lyrical novel, an old man remembers the summer of his fifteenth year in 1948 when life as he knew it irrevocably changed. His coming-of-age is marked by knowledge of what his father's role was in World War II and of how little we know the people we love. The novel won several international prizes.
Here's to you, Jesusa! - Poniatowska, Elena (Mexico)
Call Number: PQ7297.P63 H313
This is a fictionalized account of the life of a real Mexican woman who fought along side men in the Mexican Revolution, survived a brutal marriage, endured poverty and degradation in Mexico City, and yet developed an ability to survive and a belief in a spiritual dimension to her existence.
Quartet in Autumn - Pym, Barbara (Great Britain)
Call Number: PR6066.Y58 Q3
Four elderly people in England face retirement and old age without assistance.
Gilead - Robinson, Marilynne (USA)
Call Number: PS3568.O3125 G55
This novel is written in the form of a letter from a dying seventy-six-year-old minister to his seven-year-old son. In the letter the minister writes of his life and family history and his deeply felt Christianity, which has informed every action in his life. The novel is also a paean to small town life in Iowa in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty - Sandlin, Tim (USA)
Call Number: On Order
In 2020 a group of senior citizens, tired of being treated condescendingly by the staff of the senior facility in which they live, stage a rebellion reminiscent of those they participated in during the sixties.
As We Are Now - Sarton, May (USA)
Call Number: PS3537.A832 A83
This novel is written in the form of a journal kept by a 78-year-old woman placed in a brutal nursing home against her will. Seemingly powerless, she finds a way to avenge the injustices of her criminally unkind caregivers.
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing - Sarton, May (USA)
Call Number: PS3537.A832 M77
This is a portrait of the artist as a tough old lady.
Damascus Nights - Schami, Rafik (Syria)
Call Number: PT2680.A448 E713
A group of old friends gather together each night and tell each other stories that are both fanciful, and real.
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories - Sepulveda, Luis (Ecuador)
Call Number: PQ8098.29.E585 V5413
An old man living in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle is forced to become part of a hunt for a man-eating ocelot.
Burning Patience Also entitled The Postman - Skarmeta, Antonio (Chile)
Call Number: PQ8098.29.K3 A7317
A young man whose job it is to deliver the mail to the distinguished poet Pablo Neruda learns about life, love and metaphor from the old man as Chile moves from democracy to dictatorship.
Memento Mori - Spark, Muriel (Great Britain)
Call Number: PR6037.P29 M4
A group of London's wealthy and intellectual seniors are receiving strange phone calls reminding them not to forget to die. Is it a prankster or is it death making the calls?
As Man Grows Older - Svevo, Italo (Italy)
Call Number: PQ4841.C482 S413
The protagonist of this novel is only middle-aged but suffering from a kind of senility because he sees nothing ahead in his life. This novel by an author championed by James Joyce is a masterpiece of introspection.
Celebration: a novel - Swados, Harvey (USA)
Call Number: PS3569.W2 C4
A famous old man, about to celebrate his 90th birthday, is accused by his angry son of being co-opted by the establishment after a life of radicalism.
The Diary of a Mad Old Man - Tanizaki, Junichiro (Japan)
Call Number: PL839.A7 F83
A dying old man thinks of sex and death as he writes a journal of his last days.
The Old Man - Trifonov, Yuri (Russia)
Call Number: PG3489.R5 S713
An old man reflects on betrayals and counter-betrayals that occurred during the war years after the Russian Revolution and attempts to set history straight even though he himself is guilty of false memories.
The Ladder of Years - Tyler, Anne (USA)
Call Number: PS3570.Y45 L33
An unhappy woman walks away from her demanding family and creates an entirely new life for herself.
Medea and her Children - Ulitskaya, Ludmilla (Russia)
Call Number: PG3489.2.L58 M413
This novel examines the marriages and infidelities of a large, eccentric and loving family of ethnic Greeks who have lived on the Crimean coast for thousands of years. It follows the family from before the Russian revolution into contemporary Russia.
The Optimist's Daughter - Welty, Eudora (USA)
Call Number: PS3545.E6 O6
A daughter must come to terms with her father's death.
The Five Seasons - Yehoshua, A.B. (Israel)
Call Number: PJ5054.Y42 M5513
A middle-aged Israeli civil servant learns to live again after the long illness and death of his wife.