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Esi Edugyan's Reading List

Esi Edugyan's Washington Black has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2018. Her previous novel, Half Blood Blues , won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor-General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize, and the Orange Prize. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Esi Edugyan will chair the panel of the 2023 Booker Prize .

By the Book: Esi Edugyan (2025)

NYT By the Book column (2025-07-24).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Change

Édouard Louis · Buy on Amazon

"He writes about how the abandonment of modest roots for a more privileged life can enact a kind of violence on intimate relationships. I read everything he writes."

Anna Karenina

Unknown · Buy on Amazon

"I was 18 when I started reading "Anna Karenina," and I continue to read it every few years."

The Cave

Tim Krabbé · Buy on Amazon

""The Cave," by the Dutch author Tim Krabbé, is an elegant puzzle of a novel."

The Family Fang

Kevin Wilson · Buy on Amazon

"Kevin Wilson's "The Family Fang" is an utter delight."

Single, Carefree, Mellow

Katherine Heiny · Buy on Amazon

"Katherine Heiny's "Single, Carefree, Mellow" was also a singular pleasure."

10:04

Ben Lerner · Buy on Amazon

"Ben Lerner's exquisite "10:04," which I've somehow only just come to."

Obasan

Joy Kogawa · Buy on Amazon

"Joy Kogawa's "Obasan," about the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II."

Greenwood

Michael Christie · Buy on Amazon

"Michael Christie's era-spanning "Greenwood.""

Books That Influenced Her (2018)

Scraped from fivebooks.com (2018-10-11).

Source: fivebooks.com

Beloved

Toni Morrison · 1987 · Buy on Amazon

"“I watched the old grey-haired slave turn, and meeting her powerful golden eyes I was suddenly flooded with pain, horrified and confused.” I was introduced to this book by an English professor in my first year of university and was shocked by the blunt force of its subject matter and its exquisitely torqued prose. It remains one of my most adored novels."

Middlemarch

George Eliot · 1871 · Buy on Amazon

"I came to this at exactly the right moment in my life. I was in my early twenties and hungry for long, character-driven narratives. Dorothea Brooke was a wonder to me—Tolstoyan in her richness, truly good without a forced or irritating saintliness."

In a Free State

V.S. Naipaul · Buy on Amazon

"This was the first book of his I came to, and it remains for me his most shocking and blistering. I’ve probably read the opening suite of stories twenty times, while flinching away from the painful novella of the title. Naipaul’s work can be harsh, but it is nearly always moving."

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy · 1985 · Buy on Amazon

"It’s another difficult read that I savour for its wondrous prose and stark vision of humanity. I have read it a few times now, and I’m still trying to puzzle out how he fit those strands together so beautifully. It is a miracle of a novel."

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann · Buy on Amazon

"Days of Rage by Brian Burroughs, about domestic terrorism in 1970s America. I’ve only just started and I’m gripped."

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