The “other” makes a handy antagonist in literature and too often in life, but literature (and life) can also present opportunities to bridge our divides, to make the stranger less strange. This week’s recommended titles include a handful of books about conflict or conciliation between opposing groups. There’s Colum McCann’s new novel, “Apeirogon,” based on the true-life friendship between an Israeli man and a Palestinian man who both lost young daughters to Middle Eastern violence. There’s Jeff Sharlet’s “This Brilliant Darkness,” a book of photographs and short essays documenting his encounters with strangers. There’s Kim Ghattas’s political study “Black Wave,” about the regional power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And there are books about the consequences of demonizing the other: Philippe Lançon’s “Disturbance” is a memoir of his recovery after surviving the terrorist attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s historical novel “The Mercies” revisits the real-life Vardo witch trials of 17th-century Norway, while Candacy Taylor (“Overground Railroad”) and Gretchen Sorin (“Driving While Black”) both look at the harrowing steps black travelers had to take to navigate, literally, the roads of Jim Crow America.
New York Times: 11 new books we recommend this week
People look at books in a library, during the classical music festival " Folle Journee ", on Jan. 31, 2020 in Nantes, western France.
