Okay here's a list:

1. The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
(there's also Lady Murasaki with The Tale of Genji if you don't like that one)
2. Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale
3. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
4. The Lover by Marguerite Duras
5. The Diaries of Anais Nin (I think they're as fictional as they are factual.)
6. Labyrinths by Borges
7. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
8. Hopscotch by Cortazar
9. Rebecca by Du Maurier
10. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
11. The Charioteer by Renault
12. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
13. All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque (chosen because there aren't many books written about the German side in WWI)
14. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
15. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
16. A Personal Matter by Kezaburo OE *
17. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
18. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (chosen for subversive)
19. Wide Saragasso Sea by Rhys (we could read this one after {if} we read Jane Eyre since it's the story of the madwoman in the attic)
20. The English Teacher by R.K. Narayan

We could also look into something by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. I didn't add him because I wasn't sure which of his novels would be good.

Has anybody read The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta?

Oh, and I didn't know if Rusdie was too contemporary.


You can search through these and combine the usual classics with some of them. Maybe make a theme. If we're talking about man v.s. man we can have a NWM give his POV and then a PoC. If the classic isn't overly long we could even make a comparative reading. That may be too much, but just throwing it out there-- Thanks!