Conquest of PagesBooks by North American authors: a reading list by country
For this challenge North America includes the United States and Canada, Mexico and the whole of Central America, and the Caribbean islands. It is a region of immigrant stories, indigenous voices, magical realism, Caribbean poetry and the modern American novel, in English, Spanish, French and Creole.
How to use this list
North America has 23 countries in the read-around-the-world challenge. Below is one well-loved book by an author born in 13 of them — a place to start, not a verdict. Because an author counts for the country they were born in, many writers who made their careers in the United States or Canada count for somewhere else. That is part of the fun of reading by birthplace.
A book to start with, country by country
| Country | A place to start |
|---|---|
| Antigua and Barbuda | Annie John — Jamaica Kincaid |
| Canada | The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood |
| Cuba | Before Night Falls — Reinaldo Arenas |
| Dominica | Wide Sargasso Sea — Jean Rhys |
| Dominican Republic | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Díaz |
| Guatemala | The President — Miguel Ángel Asturias |
| Haiti | Breath, Eyes, Memory — Edwidge Danticat |
| Jamaica | A Brief History of Seven Killings — Marlon James |
| Mexico | Pedro Páramo — Juan Rulfo |
| Nicaragua | The Inhabited Woman — Gioconda Belli |
| Saint Lucia | Omeros — Derek Walcott |
| Trinidad and Tobago | A House for Mr Biswas — V. S. Naipaul |
| United States | Beloved — Toni Morrison |
Your pick
No single obvious starting point for these — any author born in the country counts. Search a library catalogue for “literature of” the country, or look at its national prize winners.
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Belize
- Costa Rica
- El Salvador
- Grenada
- Honduras
- Panama
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Keep going
Other regions: Africa · Asia · Europe · South America · Oceania. The whole challenge is explained on Read around the world.
In Conquest of Pages each book you finish plants a forest where its author was born, so a list like this one turns into a map you can watch fill in. It is free, and your library stays on your device.