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Beowulf Sheehan/ZUMA Press Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free _Mother Jones Daily_. We asked a range of authors and creative types

to recommend books that bring solace and/or understanding in this age of rancor. More than two dozen responded. Since the publication of his first novel, _Moth Smoke_, in 2000, the

Pakistani novelist MOHSIN HAMID (read our recent interview) has won a Man Booker Prize, has had his best-selling works adapted for film and translated into 35 languages, and has been named

one of _Foreign Policy_ magazine’s “Leading Global Thinkers.” We conclude our author series with Hamid’s selections. LATEST BOOK: _Exit West_ ALSO KNOWN FOR: _How to Get Filthy Rich in

Rising Asia_ READING RECOMMENDATIONS: _BELOVED_, by Toni Morrison, because it is so beautiful and so harrowing and because it slaps us in the face with just how viscerally vicious the

oppression of human beings by other human beings can be. (And how echoes never cease.)_ KINGDOM’S END_, by Saadat Hasan Manto because Manto writes about the violence and craziness and

tribalism that occurred around the separation of India and Pakistan, and because he reminds us that humor is one of our most potent responses to the absurdity of tyranny._ _And _FANTASTIC

MR. FOX_, by Roald Dahl, because he takes us into the world of imperfect but resolutely defiant characters who triumph in the face of impossible odds, and because no matter how powerful the

mechanical shovels that come for us, we can always dig, dig, until we make a better world. ______________ THE COMPLETE SERIES: Daniel Alarcón, Kwame Alexander, Margaret Atwood, W. Kamau

Bell, Ana Castillo, Jeff Chang, T Cooper, Michael Eric Dyson, Dave Eggers, Reza Farazmand, William Gibson, Mohsin Hamid, Piper Kerman, Phil Klay, Alex Kotlowitz, Bill McKibben, Rabbi Jack

Moline, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Peggy Orenstein, Wendy C. Ortiz, Darryl Pinckney, Joe Romm, Karen Russell, George Saunders, Tracy K. Smith, Ayelet Waldman, Jesmyn Ward, and Gene Luen Yang.