There are books capable of stealing our hearts, of moving us as if we were, firsthand, experiencing the events narrated. If you are looking for a reading of this type to delve into the depths of your feelings, continue reading our article.
We asked you, on our Facebook page, which books have most moved you lately. The answers were multiple. Some have even been repeated several times, as if to demonstrate the fact that universally emotional books exist.
Below, we list 10 of the books you suggested.
10 books to read capable of conveying strong emotions
“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
One of the most cited books is the masterpiece that made Khaled Hosseini an internationally renowned author. No wonder: this book never ceases to excite and raise valuable questions in those who read it.
At fifteen, Mariam has never been to Herat. From her wooden “kolba” at the top of the hill, she observes the minarets in the distance and anxiously awaits the arrival of Thursday, the day when her father visits her and talks to her about poets and wonderful gardens, about rockets landing on the moon and the films he shows in his cinema.
Mariam would like to have wings to reach her father’s house, where he will never take her because Mariam is a “harami”, a bastard, and it would be a humiliation for his three wives and ten legitimate children to host her under the same roof.
“Every Morning in Jenin” by Susan Abulhawa
This work has been called “The Kite Runner of Palestine”. Like that of Khaled Hosseini, Susan Abulhawa’s novel strongly excites. We recommend it if you love intergenerational books, which also help you understand the contemporary world.
It sensitively and calmly tells the story of four generations of Palestinians forced to leave their homeland after the birth of the state of Israel and to experience the sad condition of “homelessness”.
Through the voice of Amal, the brilliant granddaughter of the patriarch of the Abulheja family, we experience the abandonment of her ancestors’ home of ‘Ain Hod, in 1948, for the Jenin refugee camp.
We witness the dramatic events of his two brothers, forced to become enemies: the first kidnapped as an infant and become an Israeli soldier, the second who instead dedicates his existence to the Palestinian cause. And, in parallel, Amal’s story unfolds: childhood, love, bereavement, marriage, motherhood and, finally, her need to share this story with her daughter, to preserve her greatest love. .
“Zuleika opens her eyes” by Guzel’ Jachina
We are still on the subject of books that tell stories of peoples oppressed by violence with “Zuleika opens your eyes”, a little-known novel but capable of providing great emotions.
This novel is not just a glimpse into a period of Russian history, nor is it just the extraordinary story of a filial love as strong as few in the contemporary literary panorama.
Zuleika opens your eyes and is history within history, in a mixture so rarefied and intense that it catapults us out of time, among ancient customs, deep-rooted abuses, a mother-in-law-harpy, a husband-despot and Zuleika-Cinderella.
It is difficult to believe that behind this acclaimed and award-winning novel-revelation there is a debut writer, but so it is: in her literary debut, Guzelʼ Jachina succeeds in her aim of grafting into the Soviet coils of a history as devastating as the dekulakization of the 1930s ( with its hundreds of thousands of deportees) the small – banal, but exemplary – story of a woman like many others.
“Changing Water for Flowers” by Valérie Perrin
With her books, Valérie Perrin never misses a beat. Always among the best-selling authors, she creates extraordinary works, which make emotion one of her main characteristics.
Violette Toussaint is the guardian of a cemetery in a small town in Burgundy. During visits to their loved ones, many people come to visit this beautiful, cheerful, big-hearted woman in her house, who always has a kind word for everyone, she is always ready to offer a hot coffee or a cordial.
One day a policeman arrived from Marseille shows up with a strange request: his mother, who recently passed away, has expressed her desire to be buried in that distant village in the tomb of an unknown local gentleman.
From that moment on, things take an unexpected turn, hitherto silent bonds emerge between the living and the dead and certain souls who seemed black reveal themselves to be luminous.
“Fontamara” by Ignazio Silone
Among the books that most moved you there are also some classics of Italian and international literature, such as “Fontamara” by Ignazio Silone.
In “Fontamara”, a work interwoven with a precise historical truth and marked by an alternation of registers, Ignazio Silone manages to merge popular ballad, evangelical parable and political satire in a rhythmic choral score that becomes a violent denunciation of every injustice.
“A Life Like Many” by Hanya Yanagihara
There are books that, ever since they came out, have aroused wonder and impression in those who have approached them. “A life like many” is one of these, which quickly became a beloved best-seller despite the difficulty of the topic covered and the size of the volume.
In a lively and sumptuous New York live four boys, former college classmates, who have always been close to each other. They moved to the metropolis from a small New England town, and at first they are supported only by their friendship and ambition. Willem, with a kind soul, wants to be an actor.
JB, shrewd and sometimes cruel, pursues access to the world of art. Malcolm is a frustrated architect at a prestigious firm. Jude, a brilliant and enigmatically reserved lawyer, is their center of gravity.
“The skin” by Curzio Malaparte
It is certainly not the lightest title that we present to you in this book review. Yet, it is one of the most exciting, for sure.
A terrible plague has been spreading in Naples since the day, in October 1943, when the allied armies entered it as liberators: a plague that corrupts not the body but the soul, pushing women to sell themselves and men to trample on respect of himself.
Transformed into a hell of abjection, the city offers visions of an obscene, heartbreaking horror: the plague – this is the unspeakable truth – is in the compassionate and fraternal hand of the liberators, in their inability to see the mysterious and dark forces that in Naples they govern men and the facts of life, in their belief that a defeated people can only be a people of guilty people.
Nothing else remains then except the fight to save your skin…
“Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo
Who hasn’t shed a few tears for the amazing books that make up Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”?
A grandiose human comedy, an epic and encyclopedic novel, visionary and sententious, “written for all peoples” by a “patriot of humanity” fighting against the injustices of society.
The pranks of chance and the imperatives of destiny, guilt and redemption are embodied in a gallery of exemplary types, from Jean Valjean to the generous bishop, from the good prostitute Fantine to the cruel policeman Javert. And also bourgeois and revolutionaries, orphans and convicts, angels and monsters…
In an alternation of dark and bright colours, Hugo summarizes his vision of the world and history.
“The dreamed road” by Valeria Della Valle
Among the most exciting books read recently there were also some lesser-known ones, such as “The Dreamed Road”.
It is an atmosphere lost forever, the one that Valeria Della Valle returns to us in all its light. The happy and dramatic loves, the dark air of certain living rooms and the light air of certain terraces, the gloomy years of fascism and the difficult ones of the war, then the life that is reborn.
Creativity seems to flourish spontaneously in that niche of the historic center of Rome which has gone down in history as “the street of artists”: in the threads stretched between these stories there is all the charm of an era, the one that goes from De Chirico to Savinio, from Mafai to Fellini, and the enchantment of a city that finds its dimension in the affectionate memory of those who never forget it.
A dive behind the scenes of a world parallel to the fairy-tale and Hollywood one of Roman Holiday.
“The Symmetry of Desires” by Eshkol Nevo
Finally, one of the most beautiful and exciting books by Eshkol Nevo, who in his works never fails to touch on profound themes that make the soul leap.
Four friends watch the 1998 World Cup final on television. They are not yet thirty years old, and they have shared youth, studies, the army, adventures, dreams and difficulties, hopes and loves. They are united by an intense bond, by the profound need to talk and discuss everything, without shame, facing tears and joy, life in all its aspects…
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