The best books about returning home

A list of books about leaving and returning home: from Marilynne Robinson to Hisham Matar.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve returned home after a long period away. Coming home hits you with a strange feeling that can’t be described to anyone who’s never left (let alone be perfectly articulated in a book).

It’s as if the more things are as you remember them, the stranger they feel. 

These 9 authors and their stunning works do their best to capture their protagonist’s journey back to their origins and the feelings that arrive with it. Some of these journeys are self-chosen, some are forced on our heroes and heroins—but all capture those complex emotions and the confronting nature of coming home. 

Here are our 9 favorite books about returning home:

1. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

In the small town of Gilead, Iowa, protagonist and dying preacher John Ames pens his final letter to his son, relinquishing his thoughts on his life, his faith and his small town experiences. This beautiful novel gives profound new meaning to the idea of home, in that coming home can be beyond the physical—into the realm of the spiritual. 

Marilynne Robinson wrote a companion to this literary beauty called Home, so your journey can continue if you—like us—loved Gilead. 

2. Broken Flags by James Sunday

One of our favorite holiday reads of 2022, protagonist Andy Nixon is blackmailed into leaving his home in Australia after stumbling on his banking boss’s high financial crimes. China is his chosen destination abroad, but when he’s faced with trouble in the communist nation, he inevitably returns home with more baggage than he left with, having to face his fears and confront his earlier foiled corruption. 

A new voice in Indie circles, James Sunday brings to life what it feels like to be stuck between a rock and a hard place—the latter being home. 

3. The Odyssey by Homer

A story that’s survived over two thousand years, The Odyssey tells the epic of Odysseus’ ten-year journey home after the Trojan War. When failing to have paid proper respects to Poseidon—and a little bravely insulting the sea god after the fact—Odysseus is banished to a long decade of wandering to return to his home in Ithaca. 

As both a gateway into Greek epics and a mouthpiece for those who’ve bravely returned home after a long “battle” abroad, The Odyssey is a must-read. Sometimes, as you’ll read, the journey home is where the most growth is attained. 

4. The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

A Pulitzer Prize winning memoir from 2016, Matar tells of his return to Libya after years of exile, searching for his father, who disappeared under Colonel Gaddafi’s ruthless regime. Matar’s father was one of Gaddafi’s most critical opponents, which narrows down the man’s potential fates after his mysterious disappearance: was he exiled, jailed—or killed? 

Matar’s voice brims with pride in this masterpiece. We don’t only join him on his arduous and confronting return to a war-trodden home, but he pulls back the curtains for us on Libya’s extraordinary landscape. Matar’s lyrical prose and evocative narrative will find a permanent place on your bookshelf (or in your backpack). 

5. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

Ifemelu is a Nigerian woman returning to her homeland after years in the States. On coming home, she battles with the two versions of herself, the woman she was in America and who she is (or intends to be) in Nigeria. 

Americanah explores migration and coming home in ways that many of us are fortunate enough to only need to read about. If you’re searching for a sense of belonging on your own return home, this extraordinary novel explores homecoming as a struggle with identity and culture. 

6. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Along with his two daughters, our sad, lonely and… well, pathetic protagonist Quolye returns to his ancestral home after a car accident takes his wife. Facing past demons and attempting to offload his long held failures, Quolye does his best to find not only his place as he returns home, but authentic romantic love. 

Many stories set in Newfoundland have popped up on my radar recently—maybe it’s something about the rugged ugliness of Canada’s most eastern point—and this Pulitzer Prize winner is one of the most significant, dark… and entertaining. 

7. Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy 

Jude Fawley is cemented in the working class, but it’s his dreams of becoming something bigger—and his desires to live somewhere more astounding—that pushes him to depart his home of Wessex for a scholarly life in Christminster. Confronted by deceit and flattened by reality, Hardy’s best novel sends Jude down the road to romantic ruin, returning again to Wessex where his troubles only continue. 

Hardy drags yet another of his hero’s through the mud (and back again) in this classic novel that deserves your full attention from cover to cover. 

8. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin 

David heads to Paris to find himself and indeed undergoes a transformative experience as he grapples with his own sexuality. After a love triangle ensues, involving a bartender he meets at a gay bar named Giovanni, David returns Stateside to attempt to resolve the conflict between who he is and who he once was. 

Giovanni’s Room is a short but excellent read from the late great James Baldwin, with gay romance themes that readers will warm to. 

9. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

Leaving small-town Ireland life for the bustling, melting-pot culture of Brooklyn, New York, young Eilis Lacey attempts to find her place among an overwhelming crowd. She begins her sojourn as a department store clerk and soon finds love with a young fella from a staunchly family-first upbringing. But after devastating news from home, it’s when she returns to Ireland that she finds her biggest challenge: accepting who she’s become while re-adapting to the place she came from. 

Since adapted into a major film, Brooklyn gives us a very likeable character weavering her way through a very sophisticated piece of storytelling. I watched the film first, and even though I was prepared for every twist, turn and turmoil thrown Eilis’s way, I still found the novel extremely compelling.