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Books to celebrate International Education Week

International Education WeekNov. 13-17, 2023, “celebrates the benefits of international education and exchange.” IEW Committee members and their colleagues created this recommendation list of books that helped their readers better understand the world.

Stop by the library during the month of November to check out the International Education Week book display on level 1.


Book recommendations

  • “Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World” by Anu Taranath
  • “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
  • “Around the World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne
  • “Hegemony or Survival” by Noam Chomsky
  • “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • “Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya”
  • “Drown” by Junot Diaz
  • “Quesadillas/Si Vivieramos en un Lugar Normal” by Juan Pablo Villalobos
  • “68” by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
  • “Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
  • “Why Islam? American Revert-to-Islam Answers” by Sherman K
  • “The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman” by Davi Kopewana
  • “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson
  • “In an Antique Land” by Amitav Ghosh
  • “The Nutmeg’s Curse” by Amitav Ghosh
  • “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner
  • “Yukon Ho! A Calvin and Hobbes Collection” by Bill Watterson
  • “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
  • “The Martian” by Andy Weir
  • “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee
  • “Grapefruit” by Yoko Ono
  • “Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna” by Stefan Van Raay,
    Joanna Moorhead, Teresa Arcq, et al.
  • “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • “Hilma af Klint: A Biography” by Julia Voss (Author), Anne Posten (Translator)
  • “In Praise of Shadows” by Yasunari Kawabata
  • “The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa (Essential Poets)”
  • “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • “The Little Paris Bookshop” by Nina George
  • “I am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai
  • “The Unheard” by Josh Swiller
  • “Persepolis: Volumes 1 & 2” by Marjane Satrapi
  • “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Moshin Hamid
  • “Iran Awakening” by Shirin Ebadi
  • “No god but God” by Reza Aslan
  • “The Yacoubian Building” by Alaa Al Aswany
  • “In the Country of Men” by Hisham Matar
  • “Zealot” by Reza Aslan

About International Education Week

From the Global U IEW website, “This annual event—an initiative of the U.S. Departments of State and Education—invites educational institutions to showcase and promote international programs that prepare students for a global future.

At the U, this means a full roster of events that showcase a variety of ways our community can “Go Global.” Join us for a full week of ways to become a more globally-minded citizen while at the U.”