30+ of Your Favorite Multigenerational Books
This Riot Recommendation for favorite multigenerational books is sponsored by Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li. Published by Henry Holt & Co.
The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland is not only a go-to solution for hunger pangs and a beloved setting for celebrations; it is also its own world, inhabited by waiters and kitchen staff who have been fighting, loving, and aging within its walls for decades. Generous in spirit, unaffected in its intelligence, multivoiced, poignant, and darkly funny, Number One Chinese Restaurant looks beyond red tablecloths and silkscreen murals to share an unforgettable story about youth and aging, parents and children, and all the ways that our families destroy us while also keeping us grounded and alive.
“Read multigenerational books: Because modern medicine isn’t sci-fi enough to let you watch your great-grandkid’s life unfold!”
But seriously. A good multigenerational novel gives you something that you can’t get in reality: an intimate longview of family dynamics playing out across decades. Below are just some of the multigenerational books you told us we just gotta read.
The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Dandelion Dynasty Books by Ken Liu
…And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz
The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya
Stolen Beauty by Laurie Lico Albanese
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
As Close to Us as Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner
Roots by Alex Haley
Casa Rossa by Francesca Marciano
TheSignature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins
The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness
Tolbecken by Samuel Shellabarger
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
