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Laila Lalami's Reading List

The author, most recently, of the novel “The Other Americans” first read Zora Neale Hurston five years ago: “I was knocked out by her eye for detail.”

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By the Book: Laila Lalami (2019)

NYT By the Book column (2019-03-21).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Cover of Milkman
Milkman
Anna Burns · 2018 · Buy on Amazon
""Milkman," by Anna Burns, an intelligent and thoroughly engrossing novel about a girl who's forced into a relationship with a powerful man."
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable · Buy on Amazon
"A superbly written and carefully researched biography of the civil rights icon... I can't recommend it highly enough."
Cover of Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · Buy on Amazon
""Their Eyes Were Watching God," which I read for the first time only five years ago, and which made me fall in love with Zora Neale Hurston. I was knocked out by her eye for detail."
Wrapped in Rainbows
Valerie Boyd · Buy on Amazon
"I loved Valerie Boyd's excellent biography of her, "Wrapped in Rainbows.""
Cover of As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner · 1930 · Buy on Amazon
"I went back to old favorites — William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" and Toni Morrison's "Paradise.""
Paradise
Toni Morrison · Buy on Amazon
"I went back to old favorites — William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" and Toni Morrison's "Paradise.""
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Ben Fountain · Buy on Amazon
"I also read a mix of novels... war novels (Ben Fountain's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk")."
Cover of The Sympathizer
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen · 2015 · Buy on Amazon
"novels on identity and belonging (Sigrid Nunez's "A Feather on the Breath of God" and Viet Thanh Nguyen's "The Sympathizer")."
Happiness
Aminatta Forna · Buy on Amazon
"From Aminatta Forna's novel "Happiness," I learned that foxes have largely adapted to urban habitats."
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Fatema Mernissi · Buy on Amazon
"Another writer I came across in my teens, and who was a huge influence on me, was the late, great Fatema Mernissi, the feminist scholar and sociologist."

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