Intercultural Communication Fiction: Home

This moving short novel describes the difficulties faced by a Pakistani immigrant whose husband is killed in the World Trade Center bombing. She must adjust to a new hostile America, widowhood, and life with a severely handicapped child who was born after her husband's death.

A tribal leader must deal with the changes brought about by modern life.

This novel describes the effects of the Korean War on an idyllic village when UN troops set up a base near the village. The author contrasts the old values of the village headman with the realities of life during war.

In this novel the younger son of a Tibetan warlord tells the story of the Chinese occupation of his country. Although the young man is generally considered to be an idiot by his family, his is the wisest voice as he watches the Chinese destroy his culture.

The experiences of a group of young northwest Indians who form a rock band.

This novel is about a young Bangladeshi woman who lives a dutiful life in an arranged marriage in London until she discovers the possibilities of life in a less restrictive country.

Four sisters from the Dominican Republic lose touch with their culture in the process of becoming Americanized.

This beautifully written novel looks at the lives of a group of Egyptian doctors doing advanced study at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. Some have left Egypt for better opportunities in the US; a few have left for political reasons; one is in the employ of the Egyptian government and is keeping track of the behavior of the others. In all, the novel looks at the difficulties of adjusting to a vastly different culture; the prejudices Muslims face and the ethical choices

This charming novel tells the story of an elderly curmudgeon who at heart is a good man. When new neighbors move in he grudgingly helps them and reveals his true self

This novel follows the adventures of a family of Latvian Jewish émigrés who have been able to leave the Soviet Union are adrift in Italy while they wait for a country to give them visas. It is a wonderful depiction of the period when the Soviet Union began to allow its Jewish citizens to leave for the west.

In this novel a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York in the 1920's, gives up a comfortable life and heads west across the United States to Alaska in an attempt to get to Sibera and locate the daughter she thought was killed during a pogrom. Along the way her adventures and perseverance are astonishing.

In a series of letters to his mother, a Chinese immigrant to Thailand describes his new life and the family he builds. However, despite his desires, the children do not turn out the way he planned.

Sascha is a teenager whose family emigrated from Russia to Germany. She is dealing with the grief of having seen her mother murdered by her stepfather and trying to make sense of her life. Bronsky's amazing first novel describes Sascha's complicated coming-of-age as an orphan in an adopted country who has an unbreakable will to survive and succeed.

An unhappy New York composer undertakes an assignment to discover primitive musical instruments in the Amazonian jungle. There he finds people who live in harmony with their environment and a renewed creativity that civilization could not offer him.

A bright Korean-American college graduate is forced to take a job in a Korean owned grocery store in an African American neighborhood. Despite his initial contempt for his employers he eventually is caught up in the violence that surrounds them.

Twin Chinese sisters growing up in Oregon deal with working in the family restaurant, high expectations from their grandmother, their sexuality, and ethnic prejudice in a zany mixture of reality and Chinese ghost stories.

Returning to his native village in Morocco from a long period of time in the West, the popular author of a series of detective novels must juggle slavish adulation from his countrymen, writer's block, his wife's pregnancy, his children's adjustment to Morocco, his growing debts, and most of all- his Scottish in-laws visit.

This three generation tale of a large boisterous Mexican American family who move back and forth from Chicago to Mexico City is told from the point of view of the only daughter of the youngest generation.

Interlocking short stories about a young Hispanic girl in the Chicago slums.

This novel tells the story of a Nigerian girl who survives the massacre of her village and makes it to England as an illegal immigrant. Parts of the novel are brutal and none of it portrays governments in a good light.

A family of Dominican immigrants to the United States tries to make a good life for themselves despite the perils of New York's mean streets where the best-intentioned young man might end up in the juvenile corrections system and a mother's unrealistic dream of having a life like the Dallas TV show is constantly thwarted.

During World War II, an honest idealistic Iranian landowner is murdered for opposing the British occupation, tearing his family apart.

A German-Jewish refugee from the Holocaust ends up in India. There he is no more at home as a foreigner in India than he was as a Jew in Germany.

The fate of an unattractive older daughter is explored in this novel about the tyranny of aged Indian parents who will not allow their daughter any life except that of catering to their whims. In the meantime their son is emotionally at sea, living and studying in suburban America.

An orphaned young woman is sent to live with the grandfather she never met in a remote area of India bordering on Nepal. Together they endure a nationalist uprising against India which costs each of them the individual they love the most. At the same time their cook's son tries to make a success as an illegal immigrant in New York City. The novel won the Booker Prize.

An ESL teacher in New York marries one of her Chinese students so that he can gain US citizenship.

As the Germans march through Europe, a Gypsy family in Czechoslovakia sees their way of life destroyed as they became part of the Nazis' "Final Solution."

When an Iranian refugee living in Califorina buys a house at auction, he unwittingly becomes involved with its previous owner, a recovering addict, who feels the house was seized unfairly and wants it back. Her boyfriend escalates the violence in this tragic confrontation between cultures and values.

A fictionalized account of the attempts of Catholic missionaries to bring Christianity to Japan in the sixteenth century, and the political forces that destroyed them.

A young Bedouin woman, who having become pregnant before marriage, must flee her village to avoid being murdered by her brother as the tribal code of honor killings demands. She ends up in England where she creates a new life for herself, but cannot escape the past.

This modern Chinese novel satirizes the history of foot binding, using it as a parable for the frenzy and excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

In an attempt to assimilate the Plains Indians at the end of the nineteenth century, the US government embarks on a plan to exchange 1,000 troublesome white women for horses.

The daughter of a rich white banker falls in love with a black mechanic, an illegal immigrant to South Africa, and follows him to his homeland where she finds purpose in her life although her husband only wants to leave.

A young Chinese woman spends a year in England in order to learn English. She meets a man, discovers her sexuality, and learns a good deal about life. At times the novel is unblinkingly graphic.

Michael Devlin, the Irish-Catholic son of a widow, befriends a Rabbi who is a survivor of the Holocaust living in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Michael becomes the Rabbi's Shabbos Goy, performing tasks for the Rabbi that Jews are forbidden to perform on the Sabbath. When an anti-Semitic gang of hoodlums, terrorizes the Rabbi and the young boy and his mother, Michael strikes back, creating a Golem like the ones the Rabbi told him about, with predictable results.

What happened fifty years ago during the destruction of Hiroshima during World War II becomes crucial to a Japanese family. 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.

A successful American writer of Afghani descent returns to Kabul to rescue the son of a childhood friend whose parents have been executed by the Taliban. In the course of his journey he must make amends for the betrayals of his youth.

A Korean-American woman in search of a career in the New York fashion industry is actively trying to thwart her mother's attempts to find her a husband in a hilarious novel about immigrant culture in the United States

Two West African princes are brought from their Ashanti homeland to the Netherlands where they are educated. While one dreams of returning to Africa, the other takes a post with the Dutch government. For neither man do things turn out as they had hoped. The novel is based on a true story.

A Chinese-American girl growing up in an affluent New York Suburb examines the cultural conflicts between her Chinese heritage and American life.

A young Chinese refugee tries to capture the American dream.

The author examines the impact of India on two women; one, the wife of an English official in the twenties; the other, the granddaughter of the official who has come to India to discover the truth about her scandalous ancestor.

A scholarly writer comes to Crete to open a mine. There he meets an exuberant old man who teaches him how to live life fully.

A young Korean immigrant is forced to take over care of her household and her unambitious father when her mother deserts them.

This haunting narrative follows a young Korean boy through the years of World War II when the Japanese introduced their culture, religion and will over native Koreans. It is a story of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

A young woman who has rescued and adopted an abandoned baby girl is asked to return the child to her Native American relatives.

When his daughter disappears while backpacking in Indonesia's Spice Islands, Francisco travels to look for her. His acquaintance with the country's president unwittingly sets off a chain of events that proves catastrophic. At the same time two Scandinavian journalists, who are making a film about a remote tribe, cynically twist the details to make them more dramatic. This novel demonstrates how very little Westerners know about Indonesia and its ethnic tensions.

Two Czech exiles return to Prague, having fled twenty years before. The country they find is both very similar and incredibly different from the one they deserted. This exploration of exile and return is an artistic meditation on the truism that you can't go home again.

This novel is an hysterically funny portrait of the most wealthy of the wealthy in Singapore, Taiwan, and other countries in Asia. Their wealth makes them impervious to people from ordinary backgrounds which in this case includes the financee of one young man.

A professional espionage agent is asked to infiltrate the political organization of a prominent Korean-American politician. At the same time the agent is trying to reconcile with his wife from whom he has been estranged since the death of their son.

A young Chinese nanny bonds with the little girl in her care. The girl's parents are white Americans, but the child is a Chinese adoptee.

When an elderly Ukrainian widower in England decides to marry a Ukrainian woman younger than his daughters, the daughters try to intervene to prevent the marriage and save their father's pension from the money-hungry young woman. The novel is a hilarious comedy of manners where a woman from the former Soviet Union is looking for a way to get a few creature comforts like a new gas stove.

This story is about a Chinese-American son who disappoints his parents by becoming a chef rather than a doctor and marrying his pregnant American sweetheart instead of his Hong Kong picture bride. Then he learns to cook Chinese food and parodies himself on a TV cooking show in an interesting look at assimilation and father-son relationships.

The Italian assistant of a Jewish shopkeeper gradually becomes exactly like his boss.

A young man preparing for the civil service examination, finds a group of friends from the expatriate milieu, all of whom are searching for a deeper meaning to life and hope to find it in India.

An illegal immigrant from India makes her way in the United States.

This is an intricately plotted novel that weaves myth, art and real life situations as a young married woman is swept up in an affair with an American writer-an affair that parallels one her uncle, a famous Kathakali dancer, conducted years ago.

After his father's death, a forty-year old African American man goes to the Netherlands in search of the mother he never knew. The journey of discovery is made more difficult by the struggle he has had to remain sober after a lifetime of alcohol abuse.

A young Chinese American woman who has just graduated from Columbia University returns to the Queens to live with her Old World family for the summer.

Vietnamese American sisters Van and Linny fall into the roles of smart sister and pretty popular sister. Eventually when dealing with a family crisis, they come to discover that they share personality traits; and as short women, both are striving to reach up to the American standard.

This novel describes the life of a Japanese-American family of four who are uprooted from their California home and send to a relocation camp during World War II.

A documentary filmmaker takes a job filming typical American families eating meat to promote the eating of beef in Japan.

This novel is a witty rewrite of Jane Eyre. Now Jane is a half-Korean half-American girl living in the Queens who takes a job as an au pair when she fails to get a job with a financial firm and doesn't want to continue working in her uncle's grocery store. The book sheds light on the NYC Korean community .

An American woman discovers that her Saudi husband has taken a second wife. This act causes destruction of the family and the life she has created

A group of terrorists take as their hostages a world-renowned opera singer and her audience at the home of a South American diplomat who is honoring a visiting Japanese industrialist. The terrorists and the hostages form an unlikely community as they learn to know each other.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a daughter of the royal family is in exile with her father in Germany. She attempts to reconcile life in the west with her Islamic upbringing with varying degrees of success.

The American daughter of an Armenian mother and Turkish step-father goes to Istanbul to visit her large eccentric Turkish family comprised of only women. She is looking for answers about the Armenian genocide and hoping to connect with her relatives. The author was charged, but not convicted of insulting "Turkishness" when the novel was published.

This novel follows the downward spiral of three foreign graduate students living in Boston. Filled with bittersweet humor, the men struggle to make sense of their world and the women to whom they are attracted. At times they are aloof from the temptations, at others they dive into all the allures of their new home, usually with disastrous results.

This novel follows the adventures of the unambitious son of a Russian Jewish immigrant family. The young man becomes involved with the Russian mafia and has a series of misadventures in Prague. The novel is a very funny send-up of materialist values.

Short stories about Japanese foreign students in Europe.

The partition of India is viewed through the eyes of an eight-year-old girl from a Parsi family in Lahore. Ethnic and religious hatreds are exposed.

A young woman interviews the maids in her social circle in Jackson, Mississippi in order to write a book. The maids reluctantly participate although they know that exposure could result in their losing their jobs, or worse. The novel is set against the background of the early 60's, when integration protests and sit-ins were in the news and activists like Medgar Evers were being murdered by segregationists and reveals how African American maids were treated

A Chinese immigrant uses history and ghosts to save her American sister's marriage.

At the beginning of the twentieth century this novel describes how a young woman from a fishing village is married to a wealthy aristocrat, only to discover that when she has a child, the marriage is only a "practice marriage" and she will be separated from her baby and discarded.

A Croatian exile to The Netherlands is teaching Yugoslavian literature at a university in Amsterdam. Her class serves as a kind of group therapy for other exiles and way for the author to express her loss of her homeland.

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.

Tanya, a young Russian émigré tries to emulate the woman who inspired the great Russian novelist Dostoevsky. Tanya moves in with a semi-famous American writer and tries to inspire him to greatness. Although she does not succeed, she later discovers that she inspired an altogether different artist.

A man finds his school friend has become the storyteller for a primitive tribe.

A tale of how ordinary lives were changed during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

This novel looks at the lives of a group of Japanese expatriates living in Shanghai during the 1920's. All of them trying to make a living while China, lacking a cohesive government, is a pressure cooker about to explode.