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Tag: Coming of age

  • Pather Panchali

    Pather Panchali, published in 1929, is set in Nischindipur, a village in rural Bengal. Harihar Ray is a poor priest and would-be writer who drifts in search of work, leaving his wife Sarbajaya to stretch scraps into meals and to keep up appearances among better-off neighbours. Living with them is Indir Thakrun, an aged and dependent relative whose presence the harried mother resents.

    The heart of the book is the childhood of Apu and his elder sister Durga, who roam orchards and bamboo groves, steal fruit, watch a travelling theatre troupe and dream of seeing a train. Bibhutibhushan renders the natural world, the seasons and the small events of village life with unusual tenderness, so that poverty and wonder exist side by side on almost every page.

    There is little conventional plot; the novel moves by episodes and moods. Its achievement is to make an obscure family's struggles feel universal without romanticising hardship. Satyajit Ray's 1955 film adapted the first part, and with its sequel Aparajito the book forms the basis of the celebrated Apu trilogy. It remains a cornerstone of modern Bengali prose.

    Book details

    AuthorBibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
    First published1929
    Original languageBengali
    Translated byT. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)320
    SettingNischindipur village, rural Bengal, early twentieth century

    Themes

    • Childhood
    • Rural poverty
    • Nature
    • Sibling bond
    • Wonder and loss

    Who should read it

    Readers who love gentle, observant novels of childhood and village life, and admirers of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy.

    If you liked this, try

    • Aparajito
    • Aranyak
    • Swami and Friends

  • The Namesake

    Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli leave Calcutta for Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s, he as a graduate student and she as a homesick young bride. When their son is born, a delayed letter from her grandmother means the boy is registered under a pet name, Gogol, chosen by Ashoke for reasons connected to a train accident he survived in India.

    The novel follows Gogol from childhood birthdays through Yale, an architecture career in New York and relationships with women who represent different escapes: a wealthy Manhattan family, and a fellow Bengali American with her own restlessness. Renaming himself Nikhil, he keeps his parents at a distance, until life forces him to reckon with what they carried.

    Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel is understated and observant, built from meals, rituals and long silences rather than dramatic plot. It is one of the best-known novels of the South Asian diaspora in America, and Mira Nair's 2006 film with Irrfan Khan and Tabu brought it to a wider audience.

    Book details

    AuthorJhumpa Lahiri
    First published2003
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)291
    SettingCambridge and suburban Massachusetts, New York and Calcutta, 1968 to 2000

    Themes

    • Diaspora identity
    • Names and selfhood
    • Parents and children
    • Assimilation
    • Grief

    Who should read it

    Anyone who has felt caught between their parents' homeland and the country they grew up in.

    If you liked this, try

    • Interpreter of Maladies
    • The Lowland
    • Sister of My Heart

  • The Catcher in the Rye

    Sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield has just been kicked out of Pencey Prep, another school in a series he has failed at. Rather than go home and face his parents, he leaves early and spends a couple of days wandering Manhattan in the weeks before Christmas, checking into a seedy hotel, visiting bars, calling old acquaintances and dodging the reckoning he knows is coming.

    Holden narrates in a restless, slangy, digressive voice, dismissing almost everyone he meets as phony. Beneath the sarcasm lies grief for his younger brother Allie, who died of leukaemia, and a fierce protectiveness toward his little sister Phoebe, the one person he trusts completely. His encounters with a former teacher, a girlfriend and strangers reveal how lonely and fragile he is.

    Salinger's novel caught the inner life of adolescence with startling honesty: the hunger for authenticity, the dread of adulthood and the wish to shield innocence. It was banned in many schools for its language and frankness, which only deepened its cult status. Readers still argue over whether Holden is a perceptive critic of society or a boy in crisis who needs help.

    Book details

    AuthorJ. D. Salinger
    First published1951
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)234
    SettingPennsylvania prep school and New York City, late 1940s

    Themes

    • Adolescence
    • Alienation
    • Grief
    • Loss of innocence
    • Authenticity

    Who should read it

    Readers who want the definitive novel of teenage disaffection, told in one of American fiction's most distinctive voices.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    • A Separate Peace
    • The Bell Jar

  • To Kill a Mockingbird

    Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout, grows up in the sleepy town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression with her older brother Jem and their widowed father, the lawyer Atticus Finch. Their summers are spent with their friend Dill, playing games and daring each other to approach the house of the reclusive neighbour Arthur Radley, known to the children as Boo, about whom wild rumours circulate.

    The children's world changes when Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of assaulting a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. As the trial approaches, the Finch family faces hostility from neighbours and classmates, and Scout and Jem begin to see the prejudice and fear beneath their town's polite surface.

    Narrated by an adult Scout recalling her childhood, the novel blends humour and warmth with a serious examination of racial injustice, moral courage and empathy. Published in 1960, at the height of the civil rights movement, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and became a staple of school reading lists, though its treatment of race is now also debated.

    Book details

    AuthorHarper Lee
    First published1960
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)281
    SettingMaycomb, Alabama, 1933-1935
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction 1961

    Themes

    • Racial injustice
    • Moral courage
    • Childhood
    • Empathy
    • Prejudice

    Who should read it

    Readers of all ages who want a moving, accessible novel about justice and growing up in the American South.

    If you liked this, try

    • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    • The Help
    • Go Set a Watchman

  • Born a Crime

    Trevor Noah was born in Johannesburg in 1984 to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father at a time when their relationship was illegal under apartheid's Immorality Act. His very existence was evidence of a crime, so as a small child he was often kept indoors and could not be seen in public with his father.

    The memoir is organised as a series of linked essays rather than a strict chronology. Noah recounts life in Soweto with his grandmother, being too light-skinned for Black neighbourhoods and too dark for white ones, using language to slip between groups, running a pirated CD business as a teenager in Alexandra township, and brushes with the police. Each chapter is introduced by a short explanation of the history or politics behind it.

    At the centre stands his mother, Patricia, a devout, independent woman who refused to let the system define her son. The book is laugh-out-loud funny yet unflinching about poverty, racism and domestic violence. It won the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor and has a young readers' edition.

    Book details

    AuthorTrevor Noah
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)304
    SettingJohannesburg and Soweto, South Africa, 1980s-2000s
    AwardsThurber Prize for American Humor 2017

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Race and identity
    • Mothers and sons
    • Poverty
    • Language

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand apartheid's legacy through a personal story that is as funny as it is moving.

    If you liked this, try

    • Long Walk to Freedom
    • Educated
    • The Glass Castle