Books like Barren Lives
Fabiano, a cowherd, his wife Sinha Vitória, their two sons and their dog Baleia wander the drought-stricken backlands of north-east Brazil looking for work.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Barren Lives
The Hour of the Star
A self-conscious narrator tells the story of Macabéa, a poor girl adrift in Rio.
The Village
Two brothers born serfs in the village of Durnovka, Tikhon, who has clawed his way to owning a shop and land, and Kuzma, a self-taught poet, take stock of the brutal country life around them.
No One Writes to the Colonel
In a Colombian river town in 1956, an old colonel and his asthmatic wife wait in poverty for the veteran's pension he was promised long ago, and keep alive the fighting cock that belonged to their dead son.
The Yearling
Jody Baxter, a boy living with his parents on a hardscrabble farm in the Florida scrub in the 1870s, adopts an orphaned fawn and calls it Flag.
Leaf Storm
In Macondo in 1928, a retired colonel insists on burying a doctor who has hanged himself, a man the whole town hated, while his daughter and small grandson keep vigil beside the coffin.
Ancient Tillage
André, who has run away from his family's farm, is brought home by his older brother, and tells in a torrent of language why he left.
The Red Pony
Jody Tiflin, a ten-year-old on his family's ranch in the Salinas Valley, is given a red pony colt to raise, the first of the lessons his childhood will teach him.
Ethan Frome
A visiting engineer pieces together the story of Ethan Frome, a farmer in a bleak Massachusetts village, his sickly, suspicious wife and her young cousin who came to help keep house.
Reeds in the Wind
In a Sardinian village, three ageing sisters of a ruined noble family and their devoted servant Efix, who carries a secret, wait for a nephew from the mainland who might save them.
Men in the Sun
Three Palestinian refugees of different ages pay a smuggler to get them across the desert from Basra to Kuwait inside the empty tank of a water truck.
Cosima
Deledda's late novel of her own girlhood in Nuoro, Sardinia, where a girl from a strict, conventional household secretly writes stories and dreams of a life in literature.
Captains of the Sands
A gang of homeless boys lives in an abandoned warehouse on the beach in Salvador da Bahia, stealing to survive, led by fifteen-year-old Pedro Bala.