A Lifetime of Reading

Papa Hédi’s Incomplete List of Essential Books

Before we begin, a little context on the person behind this list.

My father, Hédi Jaouad, was born and raised in Tunisia. He is a retired professor of French and Francophone literature, and the person who gave me my first passport into a life of reading. When I was growing up, he assigned me summer reading lists that shaped not only my imagination, but the course of my life. Without him—and without the books he pressed into my hands—I’m not sure I would have become a writer.

So when I asked him for his essential reading list, I knew this was an impossible assignment. How do you distill a lifetime of reading, teaching, and wandering through literature into a handful of books?

What follows is less a definitive canon than a portrait of a reader: a map of obsessions, discoveries, old loves, and books that became doorways into new worlds.

A very incomplete list, because, as Papa Hédi reminded me immediately after making this one, “I try to refrain from making lists. I just enjoy books. At the end of the day, I call it the pleasure principle. Whatever gives you pleasure is going to be beneficial. If you like it, the rest will follow.”

I hope you’ll share your own essential reads in the comments—I’d love to know which books made you, changed you, or arrived exactly when you needed them.

Papa Hédi’s Incomplete List of Essential Books

The Golden Ass by Apuleius

“I’ll begin with a work by a North African from antiquity. It’s little known now, but it’s a hilarious tale of a man who tries to transform himself into a bird and accidentally turns himself into a donkey. This classic is a tour around the Mediterranean world. People are probably more familiar with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but Apuleius’s novel was also originally called Metamorphoses and only later became known as The Golden Ass.”

The Confessions by Saint Augustine

“Considered the first autobiography—the first book concerned with the writer’s own subjectivity. Anybody who has written autobiography has been influenced by this founding text.”

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

“The full work is very long—something like 900 pages—and when I first encountered it, I only read a story here and a story there. But it has become one of my favorite books to go back to. Upon the recommendation of Salman Rushdie in an interview, I revisited it in a recent translation by Edith Grossman, and it reads so beautifully.”

The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne

“Montaigne was revolutionary in his writing—he tackled issues that are still relevant today, from slavery to every aspect of the human experience. A truly foundational text.”

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

“Usually people go with Mrs. Dalloway, which is also a great book. But maybe because I studied To the Lighthouse as an undergraduate—and we spent an entire semester on it—I’m partial.”

Othello by William Shakespeare

“A play that really deserves more attention. It was very novel for its time in that it broached the subject of a biracial relationship. It was very provocative then, and still is.”

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

“A rereading of Othello by a Sudanese writer. The issues are still very relevant—East and West, North and South, colonialism, post-colonialism, race. This one is almost a detective story—a good, fun, interesting read.”

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

“It’s a tome—something like 700 pages—and I started it several times and failed to finish it. Finally, one cold winter in Saratoga Springs, I got all the way through. He’s such a great writer. The novel is about tuberculosis, but also so much more than that.”

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

“About five years ago, I finally read all of Proust. It was a whole summer project, and it helped me with my own memoir—in how he plays with memory, his minute descriptions, and the beauty of the language. The language is so musical. It moves beneath the whole work like a soundtrack.”

The U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos

“I remember reading it and thinking: what a masterpiece. You can see the United States coming into its own, as he discusses movies and literature and news items in this surrealistic style, full of cut-ups and collage. You go along for this ride, and in the end, it all comes together.”

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

“I like Steinbeck better than Hemingway, perhaps because I love long, endless narratives. (This is also why I like Dostoyevsky and Flaubert.) I read all of Steinbeck, from Cannery Row to The Grapes of Wrath to East of Eden. The last is probably his most accomplished novel, but start with The Grapes of Wrath. Then you can keep exploring—as with any writer you love.”

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

“When I was eighteen, I discovered Sartre. He wrote in every conceivable genre—plays, novels, essays, prefaces. For this list, I would recommend his play No Exit, which was translated by Paul Bowles. In French, it was Huis Clos, which is a legal term. But Paul Bowles found his translation of the title one day emerging from the subway in New York: he looked up and saw a sign that said ‘No Exit.’ The whole play takes place in hell, so it’s ‘no way out.’”

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

“I met Paul Bowles once in Tangier and interviewed him, somewhat disastrously. Before the interview, I stopped to buy fresh batteries for my tape recorder. ‘You want American or Moroccan batteries?’ the shopkeeper asked. I paused. In Morocco, buy Moroccan, I thought. Bowles and I proceeded to speak for two hours, and I was captivated—not only by his ideas, but by his presence. He was such a gentleman, very well-mannered and well-dressed, especially for a beatnik. I later read that when he traveled, it was with fifteen trunks. Not suitcases—trunks! He traveled like an aristocrat.

“After the interview, I returned to my hotel and pressed play. I made it through the opening pleasantries and into the first few questions before the sound fizzled, then cut out completely. I got fifteen minutes on those Moroccan batteries, and that was the extent of my interview with Paul Bowles.

“Anyway, read The Sheltering Sky. It’s exceptional.”

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“There was a phase where I read my way through so much Russian literature, especially nineteenth-century novels. But of all of them, I think I’d have to choose Anna Karenina. I think Tolstoy was inspired by Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in writing it—I spent a lot of time studying Flaubert, and there is a parallel. Both are great stories about great women.”

Justine by Lawrence Durrell

“The first of The Alexandria Quartet. I wrote my master’s thesis on the image of the Orient in its pages. Justine is such a remarkable character, and there is history, culture, religion. It’s probably the most Mediterranean of all contemporary literature. It was a revelation to encounter the city of Alexandria in the 1920s and 30s—that cosmopolitan world. I shared the quartet with my daughter when she was a teenager, and it inspired her so much that she later spent a semester studying abroad in Alexandria as an undergraduate.”

Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser

“I would be remiss not to add to the list my colleague Steven Millhauser. I think he is a superb writer. His novel Edwin Mullhouse is brilliant, as is his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Martin Dressler. He’s also a master of the short story. He has such a unique style—you read only a couple of pages and know instantly: ‘Oh, it’s a Millhauser book.’”

The Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor

“Suleika asked me for my version of a beach read—and I think that would maybe be short stories. I’d go with Flannery O’Connor. Some of them are hard, but if you put them in their historical context, they’re great. Try A Good Man Is Hard to Find or Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

The Stranger by Albert Camus

“Suleika also asked me what book I would recommend to a graduating senior, and my answer is The Stranger. I read it around that time, and I found it challenging and empowering. After reading that book, I felt like I was becoming an intellectual. I started thinking about social issues, about society, about what effect society can have on you. It was a transformative experience.”

The 1001 Nights

“Arguably the most significant contribution to world literature from the East. The stories are mesmerizing and funny and remain unmatched in narrative suspense. Several translations exist, but Yasmine Seale’s recent version truly impressed me. Her translation, the beautifully illustrated The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from the 1001 Nights, strikes a balance between poetic language and accessibility.”