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Julia Alvarez's Reading List

The author of novels including "In the Time of the Butterflies," just reissued for its 25th anniversary, has always been taken with Milton's Satan: "Sorry, God, but he got the better part."

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By the Book: Julia Alvarez (2019)

NYT By the Book column (2019-04-11).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Go, Went, Gone
Jenny Erpenbeck · Buy on Amazon
"A stunning novel about a retired classics professor who slowly becomes conscientizado — aware and involved in the plight of refugees from Africa camping out in a square in Berlin. The novel is lyrical, absorbing."
Cover of The Quiet American
The Quiet American
Graham Greene · 1955 · Buy on Amazon
"I was left with great admiration for the economy and assurance of the writing, as well as the depiction of how Americans and other outsiders meddle with a culture."
Cover of Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · Buy on Amazon
"Say I need help throwing a dinner party while at the same time focusing on an intense one-on-one conversation; I'll reread 'Mrs. Dalloway'"
A Flag for Sunrise
Robert Stone · Buy on Amazon
"A torture scene, I go to Robert Stone's "A Flag for Sunrise""
Heating & Cooling
Beth Ann Fennelly · Buy on Amazon
"It was full of such little explosions of language and awareness."
The Feast of the Goat
Mario Vargas Llosa · Buy on Amazon
"Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Feast of the Goat" owes much to the riveting nonfiction account by Bernard Diederich"
The Farming of Bones
Edwidge Danticat · Buy on Amazon
""The Farming of Bones," by one of my favorite writers, the Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat."
Open Veins of Latin America
Eduardo Galeano · Buy on Amazon
"The incomparable Eduardo Galeano's books, most saliently "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent""
Cover of The Buddha in the Attic
The Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka · Buy on Amazon
"I'm in love with a form I call 'the short poetic novel'… Novels like … Julie Otsuka's 'The Buddha in the Attic'"
Our Souls at Night
Kent Haruf · Buy on Amazon
"I'm in love with a form I call 'the short poetic novel'… Kent Haruf's 'Our Souls at Night'"
Cover of Four Quartets
Four Quartets
T.S. Eliot · 1943 · Buy on Amazon
"Every January, I like to reread Eliot's "Four Quartets.""
On Elizabeth Bishop
Colm Toibin · Buy on Amazon
"Most recently, everything by Elizabeth Bishop with the superb guidance of Colm Toibin's "On Elizabeth Bishop.""
The Arabian Nights
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"My auntie, Tití, who was the reader in the family, gave me a picture book version of "The Arabian Nights," and I was smitten."
Hope in the Dark
Rebecca Solnit · Buy on Amazon
"Rebecca Solnit — whose book "Hope in the Dark" I've read three times since the last election."

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