Paul Yoon, a 2014 Young Lions Fiction Award winner for his novel Snow Hunters, and a Cullman Center Fellow (2015-16), shares his reading list for his students at the Michener Center for Writers.

 

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

Arriving in Toronto in the 1920s from the Canadian wilderness, Patrick Lewis experiences a series of adventures as he makes a living searching for a missing millionaire, tunnels beneath Lake Ontario, and falls in love.

 

 

 

 

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

A forested property on a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin lies at the heart of this darkly sensual, elegiac novel. Encompassing over one hundred years of German history, from the nineteenth century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath, Visitation offers the life stories of twelve individuals who seek to make their home in this one magical little house. The novel breaks into the everyday life of the house and shimmers through it, while relating the passions and fates of its inhabitants. Elegant and poetic, Visitation forms a literary mosaic of the last century, tearing open wounds and offering moments of reconciliation, with its drama and its exquisite evocation of a landscape no political upheaval can truly change.

 

To the Wedding by John Berger

Ninon, a European bride-to-be, recalls her parents' marriage, her childhood, her first romance, her discovery that she is HIV-positive, and her initial rejection of Gino, her future husband.

 

 

 

 

 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Deciding to renounce eating meat in the wake of violent dreams, Yeong-hye, a woman from a culture of strict societal mores, is denounced as a subversive as she spirals into extreme rebelliousness that causes her to splinter from her true nature and risk her life.

 

 

 

 

Submergence  by J.M. Ledgard

James More, held captive by jihadists, and Danielle Flinders, diving in a submersible to the ocean floor, each remember the love they shared and the Christmas they spent together the year before.

 

 

 

 

The Ten Thousand Things  by Maria Dermoût

A pregnant Felicia returns to her home in the Indonesian islands to the side of her powerful grandmother and encounters mysterious occurrences tied to events and people from the past.

 

 

 

 

 

The Dew Breaker  by Edwidge Danticat

A scarred Brooklyn resident remembers his past life as a Haitian torturer in the 1960s, a period during which he waged personal and political battles before moving to New York, where his past continued to haunt him throughout his marriage and parenthood. By the award-winning author of The Farming of Bones.

 

 

 

 

Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro

A reunion with two childhood friends draws Kathy and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the English countryside, and a confrontation with the truth about their childhoods.

 

 

 

 

So Long, See You Tomorrow  by William Maxwell

Haunted by a memory of human failure, an aging man recalls his friendship, as a boy, with a tenant farmer's son and forces himself and others to recall the causes of a bloody murder and its consequences.

 

 

 

 

Speedboat  by Renata Adler

Gives voice to the experiences and feelings of discontinuity in modern life through a series of vignettes which follow the life and travels of Jen Fain, a beautiful and intelligent journalist.

 

 

 

 

 

Counternarratives by John Keene

Summoning slavery and witchcraft, a beguiling collection of novellas and stories, spanning the 17th century to the present and crossing multiple continents, Counternarratives draws upon memoirs, detective stories, interrogation transcripts and more to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present.

 

 

 

The Naked Eye by Yoko Tawada

The Naked Eye is a novel that is as surprising as it is delightful—each of the thirteen chapters titled after and framed by one of Deneuve's films. “As far as I was concerned,” the narrator says while watching Deneuve on the screen, “the only woman in the world was you, and so I did not exist.” By the time 1989 comes along and the Iron Curtain falls, story and viewer have morphed into the dislocating beauty of both dancer and dance.

 

 

 

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Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.

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