Books

Neil Gaiman's American Gods spins an expansive yet subtle mythos of the Old Gods and the New Gods. Caught between diametric sides seemingly bound to clash, former convict Shadow is set on a reality-bending path, guided by the enigmatic Wednesday.

Read for: expansive subtext

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is non-fiction masterpiece which artfully details the 1959 Holcomb murders. A Kansas farming town is shattered by the grisly murder-robbery of a local family of four. Capote engages with the depths of individual town residents, creating a moving picture of communal grief.

Read for: peak true-crime thriller

Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism is a poetic reflection on the realities and legacies of colonialism. The examination considers how the colonial dynamic impacts on both the population of the colonial metropole and the colonized. Césaire was an originator of the critical notion that the violence of colonialism debased the colonizer.

Read for: Fanon before Fanon

Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes is a surreal meditation on being trapped. An insect-collecting schoolteacher misses the last train back on an excursion to the dunes. He finds shelter in a strange village: houses dug deep into pits within the sea of sand. Spending the night with a widow in one such pit, he awakes to find himself trapped by the villagers, to be wed to the widow. As time progresses, his resistance waxes and wanes. Abe's contemplation is worth reading.

Read for: a dreamlike weekend escape