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
The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide in this page-turning #1 New York Times bestseller and book club favorite from Chris Cleave. We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to...
Well-behaved Indian women
Dave, Saumya
Paper Book
Simran has always felt harshly judged by her mother, Nandini, and when a highly respected journalist careens into her life, she begins to question everything. Nandini has strived to create an easy life for her children, so much so that she's let herself slip away. Mimi failed her daughter, Nandini,...
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...
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...
World and town : a novel
Jen, Gish.
Paper Book
From the much-loved author of Who’s Irish? and The Love Wife, a world-sized novel set in a small New England town. Hattie Kong—the spirited offspring of a descendant of Confucius and an American missionary to China—has, in her fiftieth year of living in...
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...
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...
No ocean too wide : a novel
Turansky, Carrie
Paper Book
Between the years of 1869 to 1939 more than 100,000 poor 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? After the...
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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