<p><em>1. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys<br /><br /></em></p>.<p><em>This slim book took many years to make. It’s compelling, painful and exquisite. Here’s the story of the Creole heiress who leaves the Caribbean for a life in England as the first wife of Mr Rochester. (Jane Eyre is the second.) Unpicking her like a hidden jewel from the weave, the author releases a minor character from a major text. She is a migrant bride, a misrepresented outsider, ‘the other woman’, a mad thing in the attic...<br /><br /><em>2. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka<br /><br /></em>“We looked at ourselves in the mirror and did not like what we saw: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy.” This haunting story is about people who are caught forever as outsiders: Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War as enemy aliens. From the mother’s ritual burning of treasures (letters, photographs, kimonos) to the children’s self-protective mask of equanimity, I love the quiet way this book captures the crisis of lost identity. Nowhere is home.<br /><br /><em>3. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell<br /><br /></em>What is it about George Orwell? I think he could write a shopping list and I’d love reading it. Here, he migrates to the slums and lives with “a floating population, largely foreigners, who used to turn up without luggage, stay a week and then disappear again.” Orwell takes us deep into the dirt and poverty beneath the dazzling surface of our luxuries. As relevant as ever.<br /><br /><em>4. The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag<br /><br /></em>In a story that positively heaves with collections of things, Sontag relishes describing the diplomat’s entourage. Sir William Hamilton is not the solitary émigré clutching a shabby suitcase, but a different kind of migrant altogether. He’s as possession-prone as a Jules Verne hero — and Naples might as well be the Centre of the Earth. It’s a place of volcanic eruption, ritual slaughter and wild seductions. Hamilton writes like so many other migrants: “Letters to encourage letters... Letters that say: I am the same... This place has not changed me, I have the same home-bred superiorities, I have not gone native.” And he lives the eternal equivocation: “Sometimes it felt like exile, sometimes it felt like home.” It’s no accident that this novel is written in tenses that constantly mangle the present and past.<br /><br /><em>5. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich<br /><br /></em>The heroine lives as a man, and pretends to be a priest. If that isn’t migration enough, Father Damien Modeste travels to the remote reservation of Little No Horse, where s/he settles with the Ojibwe people for more than half a century. There is mischievous joy here in foreignness, as different cultures rub together to create miraculous sparks. I love the convent built of bricks, each one etched with the maker’s name: Fleisch. And who can resist The Deadly Conversions?<br /><br />(Elise Valmorbida’s latest novel The Winding Stick features Terry who works in an all-night London garage where all the other workers are all Tamil. )</em></p>
<p><em>1. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys<br /><br /></em></p>.<p><em>This slim book took many years to make. It’s compelling, painful and exquisite. Here’s the story of the Creole heiress who leaves the Caribbean for a life in England as the first wife of Mr Rochester. (Jane Eyre is the second.) Unpicking her like a hidden jewel from the weave, the author releases a minor character from a major text. She is a migrant bride, a misrepresented outsider, ‘the other woman’, a mad thing in the attic...<br /><br /><em>2. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka<br /><br /></em>“We looked at ourselves in the mirror and did not like what we saw: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy.” This haunting story is about people who are caught forever as outsiders: Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War as enemy aliens. From the mother’s ritual burning of treasures (letters, photographs, kimonos) to the children’s self-protective mask of equanimity, I love the quiet way this book captures the crisis of lost identity. Nowhere is home.<br /><br /><em>3. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell<br /><br /></em>What is it about George Orwell? I think he could write a shopping list and I’d love reading it. Here, he migrates to the slums and lives with “a floating population, largely foreigners, who used to turn up without luggage, stay a week and then disappear again.” Orwell takes us deep into the dirt and poverty beneath the dazzling surface of our luxuries. As relevant as ever.<br /><br /><em>4. The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag<br /><br /></em>In a story that positively heaves with collections of things, Sontag relishes describing the diplomat’s entourage. Sir William Hamilton is not the solitary émigré clutching a shabby suitcase, but a different kind of migrant altogether. He’s as possession-prone as a Jules Verne hero — and Naples might as well be the Centre of the Earth. It’s a place of volcanic eruption, ritual slaughter and wild seductions. Hamilton writes like so many other migrants: “Letters to encourage letters... Letters that say: I am the same... This place has not changed me, I have the same home-bred superiorities, I have not gone native.” And he lives the eternal equivocation: “Sometimes it felt like exile, sometimes it felt like home.” It’s no accident that this novel is written in tenses that constantly mangle the present and past.<br /><br /><em>5. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich<br /><br /></em>The heroine lives as a man, and pretends to be a priest. If that isn’t migration enough, Father Damien Modeste travels to the remote reservation of Little No Horse, where s/he settles with the Ojibwe people for more than half a century. There is mischievous joy here in foreignness, as different cultures rub together to create miraculous sparks. I love the convent built of bricks, each one etched with the maker’s name: Fleisch. And who can resist The Deadly Conversions?<br /><br />(Elise Valmorbida’s latest novel The Winding Stick features Terry who works in an all-night London garage where all the other workers are all Tamil. )</em></p>
