True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

This book is presented as a story written by Ned Kelly (the famous Australian outlaw, whose last stand was also made into a short story in Armored) for his unknown, infant daughter, telling the story of his life and how he came to be an outlaw. I think I enjoyed this book so much because Carey gives Kelly such a distinctive voice--it's full of quirks and I found it to be very believable. Even though Kelly is practically illiterate, this book presents his desire, above all else, as only to be heard, as if to be heard will justify all his wrong-doings, murders, and robberies. And in this book, it might at that.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

This book tells the intertwining stories of Sai, an orphan, who lives with her grandfather, a retired judge, in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains and Biju, the son of their cook, who is trying to make it as an illegal immigrant in the restaurants of New York City. There are beautiful scenes here, and the book is very attentive to the problems of colonialism, but the plot was a little meandering for my tastes--it took a long time for me to figure out quite where it was going. Winner of the Booker Prize, 2006.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This book is the story of Saleem Sinai, one of 1,001 so-called Midnight's Children, people born during the first hour of India's independence. Saleem grows up with the nation, and must face a variety of betrayals as he navigates his life in India and Pakistan, and as he narrates his family history before Indian independence. The magical realism works very well in this book--it adds to the beauty and power of Saleem's experiences. Between Saleem's job in the pickle factory, and his love for his sister, I could see antecedents of plot points in The God of Small Things. It's a really great story that masterfully juggles the intimate and personal with the national. Winner of the Booker Prize, 1981, and twice voted the best of the Booker winners.

Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said

This book in some ways picks up where Orientalism left off, but in other ways it is far more universal in its reach. Said contends that empires generally--and especially the British, French, and American empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--do not exist as merely political and economic formations, but must also be supported and reinforced by the culture of the metropole. Similarly, though, resistance to imperialism, as it arises, also bears a cultural mark. This book combines a great idea with compelling close readings ranging from Austen to Conrad to C.L.R. James and beyond. As I read, I realized that lots of my ideas about both empire and how we can use literature and other cultural productions to understand, reinforce, and contest empire, come from this monumental study. This study gives critics a standard to which to aspire both in its content and its style.

Collected Poems, 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott

This collection of poetry shows off Walcott's virtuosity and skill. He has a fine ear for the English language and shows its richness and its beauty throughout this volume. Walcott also uses his poetry to think through colonialism, exile, and the United States empire in really productive ways, turning to classical myth and religion on one hand and the rhythms of Calypso and the Caribbean on the other to help with the work.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

As I read this book, I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of Okonkwo. While he has a number of flaws (his temper, for example), he definitely fills the role of a tragic hero for me. This book, like Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God definitely has an anthropological bent--but here that bent turns metafictional as the narrator reflects on masculine and feminine stories. Finally the book's critique of colonialism is both scathing and heart-rending.

Selected Poems and Four Plays by William Butler Yeats

This collection contains most of Yeats's most familiar poetry, organized by original book, and four of his short plays. I really enjoyed watching Yeats's interest in Irish mythology and Irish politics develop and fade. I thought the plays were quite good--and the poetry definitely took on more of an interest in drama as time went on. Finally, I enjoyed the classical allusions (especially to topics related to Troy).

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

This book is interested in the way we produce and understand history--a word that ambiguously stands both for what happened and how we talk about it. Trouillot contends that while history is not just constructed, it is also more complicated than a set of facts that can be revealed. He uses three case studies (the execution of Sans Souci, the disappearance of the Haitian Revolution in the historical record, and Columbus's voyage to the Americas) to make his points. His history is both interesting and provocative, and his larger argument is very compelling. Altogether his book is a very worthwhile read.

Haiti, Hegel, and Universal History by Susan Buck-Morss

This book contends that Hegel's ideas about the relationship between masters and slaves is not rooted in ancient philosophy, but in his own observations of the unfolding Haitian Revolution. Buck-Morss is interested in the connections between freemasonry and the Haitian Revolution as well. I found her arguments fairly convincing, especially in lining up Hegel's reading and newspaper coverage of the Haitian Revolution.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

This book does an excellent job juggling several different plots at the same time. First, there's Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, the two lone survivors of a terrorist hijacking of a plane over London, who are transformed into an angel and a devil during their fall back to earth. Then there are the Satanic Verses themselves--Mahound, the prophet, struggles with the decision of whether to acknowledge the goddesses Allat, Uzza, and Manat. Ayesha's pilgrimage on foot to Mecca was also striking. The book is also very well embedded in a world literary scene: references to other works abound. I look forward to re-reading this book, as it is the kind of book that richly repays the attention put into it. Booker shortlisted, 1988

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad

This book is organized geographically and covers a remarkable range of Third World history. Prashad argues that the Third World, in its attempts to organize itself, offered, at least temporarily, a viable alternative to the standoff between First World capitalism and Second World socialism. While he argues that this potential was lost through exploitative lending practices and other pitfalls, he suggests that what's needed is for some people to take up the banner of the Third World. This book is an impressive collection and analysis of history. It looks with equal clarity and criticism at the both United States and the First World and the USSR and the Second World. Nor does it romanticize the goals of the Third World. I learned a lot about a period of history that was not very well covered in my education.

Orientalism by Edward W. Said

This book contends that in Western nations--especially Britain and France, historically, but also the United States in more recent times--a type of scholarship and attitude towards the other, and more specifically, toward what these Europeans class as Oriental. Said does a really nice job of showing how these Orientalists (people who study the Orient) aid in the imperial projects of these European countries--and how the West can learn more about itself from its views on the Orient than it can about the Orient. This book is a model of interdisciplinary and nuanced scholarship.

People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

This book tells the story of a group of characters, led by Fernando de la Fe whose wife's desertion leads him to decide to go to war against the author, known to the characters as Saturn, who is himself in the throes of grief after being deserted by a woman. The book uses post-modern and post-colonial methods to question everything from religion to immigration to the authority of authors. With all sorts of techniques and innovations that put me in mind of Tristram Shandy (black spaces, words excised from the text, multiple columns), the book tells its story by words and by form. I will certainly return to this playful and beautiful text.

Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism from the Revolution to World War II by John Carlos Rowe

In this book John Carlos Rowe investigates a variety of American cultural texts, from Charles Brockden Brown to Zora Neale Hurston, to examine the relationship between US imperial projects (both at home and abroad) and the literary work of these texts. Although this book is fairly wide-ranging, Rowe does a sophisticated job of categorizing each author's relationship to imperialism, always demonstrating that America's imperial history is closer than we usually remember and also more continuous (our colonization of the Other within our borders is related to our imperialist gestures beyond our political bounds). I think that he dismisses Brockden Brown's and Poe's use of the Gothic as a formal element (and one that obstructs our ability to read the texts as imperialist) too quickly.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

In this book Tituba tells her own story, which deconstructs the book's title--Salem's only a part of the tale, and not the most important part in Tituba's own mind. The story has a sly sense of humor--it introduces anachronistic concepts like feminism and racism and even brings Hester Prynne to a Salem Jail cell at the same time as Tituba. Although I found the book's tone disconcerting at first, I grew to like it more and more as I thought about it. It's definitely a book you have to accept on its own terms.