Global Programs Booklist | Global Dimensions

Inspired by the first NYU Bookstore display collaboration between the Office of Marketing Communications and the Office of Global Programs, this list of books representing NYU’s global locations promises to broaden your perspective and enrich your knowledge.

NYU Abu Dhabi

Temporary People
By Deepak Unnikrishnan

The skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are recognizable around the world by their resplendent glittering towers—but how did they get there? Deepak Unnikrishnan, an Indian-born writer raised in the United Arab Emirates and associate arts professor of literature and creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi, knows the answer: a foreign labor force was brought in to construct them. Using a series of clever and surreal linked stories, Unnikrishnan gives voice to a humanitarian crisis that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

NYU Accra

The Hundred Wells of Salaga
By Ayesha Harruna Attah

Based on a true story, The Hundred Wells of Salaga tells the tale of two women from very different backgrounds whose lives converge in an unexpected way. It’s a novel that will entangle you emotionally, while offering you crucial insight into precolonial Ghana, particularly the slave trade and its impact on a people.

NYU Berlin

No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989–Today
Edited by Heiko Hoffmann and Felix Hoffmann

History books offer what we think is a full story, but this photography book provides a peek into the city’s after-hours culture through the club scene that blossomed in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s not only a delightful visual romp but also a history book in its own right, telling the story of a city in transformation, one party at a time.

NYU Buenos Aires

The Aleph and Other Stories
By Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges might seem like an obvious choice for Argentina—for a country that produced so many famous writers, he is arguably the most famous. Still, who can deny this selection? The brilliant, inventive tales of The Aleph and Other Stories will surprise and stimulate, and they are must-reads for diving into Argentine culture. Borges, after all, makes magic happen in the most unexpected ways.

NYU Florence

The Monster of Florence book cover featuring a close-up image of Giambologna's The Rape of the Sabine sculpture

The Monster of Florence: A True Story
By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

The Monster of Florence has developed a bit of a cult following in recent years, and for good reason—it’s a wild ride. American Douglas Preston moved to Florence with his family and quickly discovered that their olive grove was the site of one of Italy’s most infamous double murders. As he works with investigative journalist Mario Spezi, a Florentine, to get closer to the truth, things really begin to spiral. The Monster of Florence is a propulsive thriller that offers valuable, and often shocking, insight into the Italian justice system.

NYU London

White Teeth
By Zadie Smith

White Teeth is a rare novel that is entertaining while simultaneously layered with so much richness, one might want to read it all over again as soon as it’s over. Starting with two unlikely friends whose stories blossom into a poignant yet funny family saga, Zadie Smith’s debut novel keenly witnesses the immigrant experience in London, traveling to other continents as well while navigating the relationship between tradition and change.

NYU Los Angeles

Slow Days, Fast Company book cover featuring a distorted image of a woman

Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.
By Eve Babitz

This slim book offers stories as wild and wanton as Los Angeles itself. Unapologetically hedonistic, Slow Days, Fast Company is also a clever, windy ride through the Los Angeles of the 1960s and 1970s. It has all the usual Angeleno archetypes, but Eve Babitz elevates them with her incisive and acerbic insights into life in Hollywood. Isn’t it funny that, decades later, so much has changed but so much remains the same?

NYU Madrid

Ghosts of Spain book cover featuring images of Spain

Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past
By Giles Tremlett

Worth a read to understand a post-Franco Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a well-rounded, curious, and admittedly fun romp through the country, albeit prompted by the author’s questions about its devastating civil war. British author Giles Tremlett combines keen cultural reporting with memoir and quirky sidebars that add levity to what begins as a serious interrogation. While it’s intellectually critical, it’s also a love letter to Spain. After all, there’s a reason Spain is Tremlett’s adopted country.

NYU Paris

The Years book cover featuring an image of a woman looking at the viewer with the silhouette of a person looking down a hallway

The Years
By Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux’s whole oeuvre is masterful, but many critics cite The Years, first published in 2008, as her magnum opus. In this brilliant collage of a memoir, Nobel Prize winner Ernaux examines her life and the generation that she grew up in, favoring “we” over “I.” The result is a personal history tied to the collective experience of a generation in France during the 20th century. Ernaux weaves her memories into a story that offers cultural notes on topics from consumerism and immigration to unemployment and the threat of nuclear war.

NYU Prague

Havel: A Life book cover featuring an image of Václev Havel with his hand atop his head

Havel: A Life
By Michael Žantovský

In many ways, Václav Havel’s life mirrors the zeitgeist of Prague: it’s political, literary, antiauthoritarian, surreal, and somehow, even at its most serious moments, darkly humorous. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because Havel, like the city itself, was a complex figure. Michael Žantovský was a trusted friend, so this biography reads as an intimate and true portrait (faults and all) of a man loyal to his people, his values, and his art. Žantovský succeeds in showing the many dimensions of the iconoclast—playwright, political dissident, prisoner, president—who, in the end, was just as human as the rest of us.

NYU Shanghai

Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade
By Anna Greenspan

This brilliant book contextualizes China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city through the lens of modernity. Author Anna Greenspan, an associate professor of contemporary global media at NYU Shanghai, reexamines the changing landscape of the city as it steps well into the 21st century and takes its place on the world stage.

NYU Sydney

Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections
By Vanessa Berry

A fun and unexpected romp, Mirror Sydney takes us on a tour of the harborside city via engaging essays and clever hand-illustrated maps. Based on a blog Vanessa Berry started more than a decade ago, Mirror Sydney is clearly more than a mere guidebook—it’s too much fun to be that typical. Moreover, it tends to direct the reader to the kinds of places the average tourist wouldn’t care to know about or explore anyway.

NYU Tel Aviv

The Bibliomaniacs: Tales from a Tel Aviv Bookseller
By J.C. Halper

On Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, J.C. Halper—originally from New Jersey but now an Israeli for four-plus decades—runs the city’s most popular secondhand bookshop, containing a dazzling 60,000 books. And in 2022 he published this book of clever, often funny short stories from the point of view of a shop owner. While the stories are allegedly fiction, one can’t help but wonder if we’re learning more about real locals than the author lets on.

NYU Washington, DC

Lost in the City
By Edward P. Jones

It’s a joy to read anything by Edward P. Jones, the gifted, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer. His debut collection of short stories, Lost in the City, is no exception and first cemented his literary reputation. These 14 tales tell the everyday encounters and struggles of Black citizens in Washington, DC. But Jones has a gift for making even the most mundane situation meaningful, and his rich, textured stories give weight to life’s most quotidian moments as viewed through the lens of the Black experience in the nation’s capital.

Written by Marti Trgovich

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