Looking to jump ship? Read these 11 novels about the ex-pat experience.
It’s been a big book year for ex-pats. For perhaps obvious reasons, a lot of Americans seem to be getting off on the idea of fleeing the coop.
Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, a ruthless depiction of two PMC EU citizens trying on the bobo life in Berlin, has made the International Booker shortlist. (And read a lot of us for filth.) A recent episode of The New Yorker’s “Critics at Large” pod surveyed “Les Américains à Paris,” from Wharton to Baldwin to the infamous Emily. And in a piece earlier this summer for The Nation, Oscar Dorr categorized the phenomenon of “neo Ex-Pat Lit.”
Beyond the obvious escapist impulse, what is the appeal of writing home-away-from-home? To get to the bottom of this question, I’ve gathered up a few fascinating ex-pat novels for your radar. (Old and new.)
Helen Oyeyemi, Parasol Against the Axe
Oyeyemi, who is herself an ex-pat living in Prague, writes about her adopted city in this whimsical novel told in stories. True to form, this book is a Rubik’s Cube made of marzipan, from one of our more glorious weirdos.
Initially following two pals who converge on the Czech Republic for a “Hen weekend,” and wind up on a most unpredictable adventure, this one offers a playful spin on the new-in-town theme. Because sometimes, you leave home for the story.
Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch
Paris is generally overrepresented as a setting in ex-pat lit. Henry James, Edith Wharton, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin all followed that siren’s call over the Seine.
Hopscotch, a pyrotechnic language feat and scavenger hunt of a novel, is one of the genre’s weirder descendants. Starring an Argentinean intellectual on an existential spiral, the book is structured like a puzzle box. The non-linear structure turns static ideas about home and abroad topsy-turvy.
Lily King’s The Pleasing Hour
King-hive, as you prepare to rise up for her gutting, glorious latest—coming to an indie near you this fall—consider revisiting this early jewel. Rosie is an American au pair working for a family that lives on a houseboat. Over one magical summer, she falls in and out of love with her borrowed town and family.
In her characteristically elegant prose, King captures the feeling of being 19 and spiritually and literally adrift.
William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face
Full disclosure: this one’s still on my radar, currently making eyes from the nightstand. A 2021 NYRB Classics selection, this novel follows Simeon Brown, a young Black journalist who decamps to France in the early 60s in search of, well—less racism.
Our hero’s disenchanted on that front, but discovers international love and solidarity while abroad, thanks to a new friendship with an Algerian radical. I was thrilled to hear of an ex-pat story that directly engages the legacy of colonialism. Book club, anyone?
Andrew Lipstein, Something Rotten
This newer entry was the chief subject of Dorr’s review. Following Reuben and Cecilie, two American Millennials trying to make good in Copenhagen, this contemporary novel’s been described as a refreshing comedy of manners, with interesting things to say about modern masculinity, the nitty-gritty work of co-parenting, and America’s uniquely bonkers relationship to ambition.
Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts
Lahiri famously flew the coop to Italy a few years back and adopted a language along with the postal code. This 2018 novel, the author’s third, carries us flâneur-style through three vignettes in an unnamed Italian woman’s life.
Though this meditative, sublimely written story’s not about an ex-pat, it comes from one. Lahiri translated the book into English after initially publishing it in Italian.
Norman Rush, Mating
There was an uncanny moment two summers back when all the literati seemed to simultaneously rediscover this 1991 National Book Award winner. Mating follows a young research anthropologist working in the field outside Gaborone. She tumbles into a complex affair with a charismatic intellectual, and all hell (and heaven) breaks loose.
Erudite, witty, and refreshingly frank about matters of the heart, I love this novel for its voice. Nothing escapes our narrator. She’s here to sight-see.
Janice Y. K. Lee, The Expatriates
Lee’s novel announces its theme in the title—and was so well-received on its 2017 release that it was made into this arguably ill-timed Amazon series. Following three Americans trying to hatch homes in Hong Kong, this slyly told dramedy of manners offers an intimate look at the stranded-abroad psyche. (And is very fun to read.)
Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado
And speaking of fun! This ex-pat novel—a personal favorite— is all delight. Our hero, Sally Jay Gorce, is an American bon vivant abroad who’s determined to slurp up Paris with gusto and glamour. Refreshingly, Sally is neither trying to find herself or escape trauma. She’s truly in town to have fun.
Cara Hoffman, Running
Set in Athens in the 80s, Running seduces for its thriller features and its less-familiar milieu. When a set of young radicals adrift in Greece get swept up in an act of political violence, the ramifications follow them far beyond state borders.
Suitable as we approach landing, this ex-pat novel dares to ask—what happens when you stay too long at the fair?
Nell Zink, Sister Europe
Zink, another actual ex-pat, makes her adopted country the centerpiece of this latest novel, which unfolds around a motley ex-pat crew over one nutty night in Berlin. Paired with Perfection, this neo-entry joins a fleet of Berlin-based books that romanticize or elegize the city from a foreigner’s perspective.
In a piece for The Baffler written early this year, Alex Cocotas considered the origins and intentions of this “boomlet of Berlin literature written by expats.” Books like Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts, Aria Aber’s Good Girl, and Christina García’s Here in Berlin cap a trend we might trace to Darryl Pinckney’s Black Deutschland. (Or, honestly? Isherwood.) There’s clearly still something in the Rhine.
Happy reading, fellow travelers. May you find what you’re looking for, in the stacks and on land.
