Immigrant Stories: Fiction

Try these fictional stories of long journeys, culture clashes, resilience, and adaptation

Updated June 5, 2023
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Little Bee
Cleave, Chris.
Paper Book
Millions of people have read, discussed, debated, cried, and cheered with Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee girl whose violent and courageous journey​ puts a stunning face on the worldwide refugee crisis​. "Little Bee will blow you away." --The Washington...
Well-behaved Indian women
Dave, Saumya
Paper Book
A Lilly's Library Book Club Pick! "A sparkling debut."-Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author From a compelling new voice in women's fiction comes a mother-daughter story about three generations of women who struggle to define themselves as they pursue...
What strange paradise
El Akkad, Omar
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * From the widely acclaimed, bestselling author of American War--a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. "Told from...
A replacement life : a novel
Fishman, Boris
Paper Book
Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Winner of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a...
Hella
Gerrold, David
Paper Book
A master of science fiction introduces a world where everything is large and the problems of survival even larger in this exciting new novel. Hella is a planet where everything is oversized--especially the ambitions of the colonists. The trees are mile-high, the...
Band of sisters
Gohlke, Cathy.
Paper Book
Maureen O'Reilly and her younger sister flee Ireland in hope of claiming the life promised to their father over twenty years before. After surviving the rigors of Ellis Island, Maureen learns that their benefactor, Colonel Wakefield, has died. His family, refusing to own his Civil War debt, casts...
The map of salt and stars
Joukhadar, Jennifer Zeynab
Paper Book
This powerful and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart--a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and an adventurous mapmaker's apprentice--"perfectly aligns with the cultural moment" (The...
The girl in the tangerine scarf : a novel
Kahf, Mohja
Paper Book
Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. Along with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends, Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets exploring the fault...
Searching for Sylvie Lee : a novel
Kwok, Jean
Paper Book
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick & Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick! NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY New York Times * Time * Marie Claire * Elle * Buzzfeed *...
Deep river : a novel
Marlantes, Karl
Paper Book
Karl Marlantes's debut novel Matterhorn has been hailed as a modern classic of war literature. In his new novel, Deep River, Marlantes turns to another mode of storytelling--the family epic--to craft a stunningly expansive narrative of human suffering, courage, and reinvention. ...
LaGuardia : a very modern story of immigration
Okorafor, Nnedi
Paper Book
Set in an alternative world where aliens have come to Earth and integrated with society, LaGuardia revolves around a pregnant Nigerian-American doctor, Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka who has just returned to NYC under mysterious conditions, who smuggles an illegal alien plant named 'Letme Live' through...
Memoirs of a polar bear
Tawada, Y¿ko
Paper Book
The Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as "Yoko Tawada's magnificent strangeness"--Tawada is an author like no other. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East...
No ocean too wide : a novel
Turansky, Carrie
Paper Book
Between the years of 1869 to 1939 more than one hundred thousand impoverished British children were sent across the ocean to Canada with the promise of a better life. Those who took them in to work as farm laborers or household servants were told they were orphans -- but was that the truth?
Into the beautiful North : a novel
Urrea, Luis Alberto.
Paper Book
Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US when she was young. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village - they've all gone north....
Snow hunters
Yoon, Paul.
Paper Book
A haunting literary debut of a Korean POW learning to adapt to a new life in Brazil from the novelistNew York Magazine calls a "quotidian-surreal craft-master." Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean...

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