The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II
by Daniela Gerson ’00 (Grand Central)

When Daniela Gerson, a journalism professor, met her future wife Talia Inlender, an immigration lawyer, at a Los Angeles birthday picnic, neither knew that their grandparents had fled the same small Polish town and headed east to escape the Nazis during World War II. In this enthralling read, both a genealogical detective story and a love story, Gerson recounts how they uncovered their families’ parallel odysseys that sent their grandparents first to a Siberian gulag, then to Central Asia, and years later, to new lives in the West. This is also, as Gerson points out, the surprising route that most of the Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust also followed.
 

The Complex by Karan Mahajan, Associate Professor of Literary Arts (Viking)

The complex in this vast family saga is a set of apartments in North Delhi that’s home to the descendants of SP Chopra, a leader in India’s struggle for independence. The novel opens in 1980, zooming in on SP’s grandson Sachin and his wife, Gita, who have moved to Michigan but find themselves drawn back to Delhi. There’s also Sachin’s dangerous uncle, Laxman, one of SP’s seven sons, who assaults Gita when she visits the complex for a wedding. That’s just the start, as the plot is studded with more than enough family secrets, political dramas, tragedy, and revenge to speed readers through its 105 brief and vibrant chapters. Mahajan’s earlier novel, The Association of Small Bombs, was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award.
 

How to Prepare for the Past: Travels in Music and Time by Brian Cullman ’73 (ZE Books)

In a memoir that unfolds like a slideshow, Cullman, a musician and writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice, recounts 37 succinct and vivid encounters, hopping from New York to London and sometimes touching down in Providence. Among other moments, you’ll find Ed Sullivan chatting with Cullman’s dad and predicting that the Beatles, who had just appeared on Sullivan’s show for the second time, would be “gone from the radio” in six months. The cast of luminaries is somewhat astounding, as it includes Big Joe Turner, Sandy Denny, Dr. John, Nick Drake, jazz bassist Gary Peacock, Beatles producer George Martin, and many more. A compelling ride that’s easy enough to hop on and off.