Book List

Our readings this semester will span eight decades and five continents (sorry, Australia and Antarctica). We'll proceed in chronological order through the following ten texts, which offer a mix of shorter books with a few well-chosen longer novels:

• Albert Camus (Algeria) — The Stranger (1942; ISBN: 9780679720201) tr. Matthew Ward
• Clarice Lispector (Brazil) — Near to the Wild Heart (1943; ISBN: 9780811220026) tr. Alison Entrekin
• Françoise Sagan (France) —  A Certain Smile (1955; ISBN: 9780226733470) tr. Anne Green
• Bessie Head (South Africa/Botswana) — When Rain Clouds Gather (1968; ISBN: 9781478607595)
• Heinrich Böll (Germany) — The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1974; ISBN: 9780143105404) tr. Leila Vennewitz
• Milan Kundera (Czeckoslovakia) — The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984; ISBN: 9780061148521) tr. Michael Henry Heim
• Banana Yoshimoto (Japan) — Kitchen (1988; ISBN: 9780802142443) tr. Megan Backus
• Marjane Satrapi (Iran) — Persepolis (2000; ISBN: 9780375714832) tr. Anjali Singh
• Zadie Smith (England) — White Teeth (2001; ISBN: 9780375703867)
• Valeria Luiselli (Mexico) — Faces in the Crowd (2014; ISBN: 9781566893541) tr. Christina MacSweeney 

Copies have been ordered at both the UC Bookstore and DuBois Bookstore, however you should be able to find plentiful used copies via Amazon, ABE Books, Powell's, etc. Towards that end, I offer two pleas:

1. Just buy the damn book! Part of the joy of being an English major is having a relatively cheap book bill compared to your friends in more technical fields. I am sympathetic to the paltry finances of undergrads and respect, but there are relatively low-cost ways to get your hands on a copy — buy it used, find a pirated e-book version, locate a local library copy via WorldCat and borrow it, share a copy with a classmate, etc. — and if you're not doing the work then what's the point of being here?
2. Pay careful attention to editions/translators: This won't be an issue with the later books, but a few of our earlier selections have multiple versions available. It won't make a huge difference, but it's to your advantage to use the same editions as the rest of the class. Take note of the ISBNs and translators' names listed above and make sure you're getting those books if you're not going through UC's bookstore.