This year's theme is international books! There are some truly amazing books this year, so I wanted to quickly highlight them in case any of you wanted to use this as a future reference:
Division one: Pre-colonial and colonial literature.
-Literature written before and during the time of modern colonialism. The modern colonial period lasted from around 1500 to 1945.
1) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russia)
2) Kebra Nagast (Ethiopia)
3) The Odyssey by Homer (Greece)
4) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spain)
5) Beowulf (England)
6) One Thousand and One Nights (various countries including India and Persia)
7) The Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (China)
8) Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (France)
Division two: Postcolonial fiction
-Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly or current colonialized countries. It is generally agreed that postcolonial literature really began to take off after 1945, though there were some examples before that time.
1) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
2) While Gods Are Falling by Earl Lovelace (Trinidad)
3) The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand)
4) The White Book by Han Kang (South Korea)
5) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
6) Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Ireland)
7) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (India)
8) Arabesques by Anton Shammas (Palestine)
Division three: Nonfiction
-International books that are classified as nonfiction
1) Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha (Palestine)
2) How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic by Ariel Dorfman (Chile)
3) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney (Guyana)
4) Decolonization Pathways: Postcoloniality, Globalisation, and African Development by Jimmy Spire Ssentongo (Uganda)
5) Warrior Princess: Fighting for Life with Courage and Hope by Princess Kasune Zulu (Zambia)
6) Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar (India)
7) Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (South Africa)
8) The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō (Japan)
Division four: Children and Teen
-International books written for youth audiences. These books can be from any time pre-colonialism to modern day.
1) The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Iran)
2) The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France)
3) Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o (Kenya)
4) The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré (Nigeria)
5) Barefood Gen by Keiji Nakazawa (Japan)
6) Albie on His Way by Jutta Bauer (Germany)
7) Code Name: Butterfly by Ahlam Bsharat (Palestine)
8) Alpha by Bessora Barroux (Belgium)