Warlight, Washington Black among Barack Obama's 'favourite books of the year'
Novels by two Canadian authors have made Barack Obama's yearly list of his favourite books.
The 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning Washington Black by Calgary author Esi Edugyan was also a finalist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and the 2018 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
The novel follows a slave boy named George Washington Black from his childhood of brutality and despair on a plantation in Barbados to his eventual escape and globe-trotting adventures as he searches for the meaning of true freedom.
Acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje's 2018 Man Booker Prize-nominated novel Warlight also made the former U.S. president's list of favourite books of 2018.
In his latest novel, Ondaatje once again revisits the Second World War, this time through the eyes of a young brother and sister living in post-war London whose parents have departed for Singapore, leaving the siblings in the care of a mysterious man named the Moth and his group of eccentric associates.
Barack Obama's list also included Zadie Smith's Feel Free, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, Amitava Kumar's Immigrant Montana, which he spoke with Eleanor Wachtel on Writers & Company about — and of course, his wife Michelle Obama's bestselling memoir Becoming.
Click or swipe through below to see the full list.