Want to know what books Alfred A. Knopf recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Alfred A. Knopf's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
From the two-time NBCC Finalist, an emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border--an indelible journey told with breathtaking imagery, spare lyricism, and profound humanity.
A mother and father set out with their two children, a boy and a girl, driving from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. Their destination: Apacheria, the place the Apaches once called home.
Why Apaches? asks the ten-year-old son. Because they were the last of something, answers... more From the two-time NBCC Finalist, an emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border--an indelible journey told with breathtaking imagery, spare lyricism, and profound humanity.
A mother and father set out with their two children, a boy and a girl, driving from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. Their destination: Apacheria, the place the Apaches once called home.
Why Apaches? asks the ten-year-old son. Because they were the last of something, answers his father.
In their car, they play games and sing along to music. But on the radio, there is news about an "immigration crisis": thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States, but getting detained--or lost in the desert along the way.
As the family drives--through Virginia to Tennessee, across Oklahoma and Texas--we sense they are on the brink of a crisis of their own. A fissure is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. They are led, inexorably, to a grand, harrowing adventure--both in the desert landscape and within the chambers of their own imaginations.
Told through several compelling voices, blending texts, sounds, and images, Lost Children Archive is an astonishing feat of literary virtuosity. It is a richly engaging story of how we document our experiences, and how we remember the things that matter to us the most. With urgency and empathy, it takes us deep into the lives of one remarkable family as it probes the nature of justice and equality today. less 
Alfred A. KnopfLOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE by @ValeriaLuiselli “is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, one which is determined not to let these children be robbed of their innocence or their humanity, by a cruel bureaucracy laboring to make them feel unwelcome.”
https://t.co/z2OHFL2KZu (Source)
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2
Beautifully written, thought-provoking, intense and cleverly wrought, this is the most extraordinary first novel from a mesmerising new talent.
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an... more Beautifully written, thought-provoking, intense and cleverly wrought, this is the most extraordinary first novel from a mesmerising new talent.
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty – densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska – and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel provides a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before. less Alfred A. KnopfThanks to the librarians of @nypl, aka the city's best book recommenders, for naming DISAPPEARING EARTH by @jkbphillips one of the top 10 books of the year! 📚
https://t.co/jJJFXuohSV (Source)
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3
From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation--one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year--a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis
Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with... more From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation--one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year--a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis
Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience--but still she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks . . . And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in--funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad. less 
Cal FlynJust out, and another one not to miss, is Jenny Offill’s Weather, her third novel and the follow-up to her wry, intelligent and heart-rending examination of marital infidelity, art and motherhood Dept. of Speculation, which cannot be recommended highly enough. As with Dept. of Speculation, Weather is built from fragments, some koan-esque and oblique, some directly reported, which Offill... (Source)
Alfred A. KnopfYou heard it here first: “the only book you need this February is WEATHER. It might be short, but it invites rereading, filled as it is with jokes, wry asides, brilliant observations, and, you know, pertinent information for surviving the years to come.”
https://t.co/ajgR3Hxh8W (Source)
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4
A funny, warm, and brilliantly original memoir in which a grandmother speaks to her granddaughter from beyond the grave, telling, with candor and irresistible humor, stories from both their lives--of kinship, loyalty, tenacity, and love.
Bess Kalb--whip-smart, Twitter-famous TV comedy writer and regular New Yorker "Daily Shouts" columnist--has saved every voicemail message her grandmother, Bobby Bell, ever left her. The two were best friends and confidantes. Bobby doted on her granddaughter; Bess adored Bobby. In 2017, nearly ninety, Bobby died.
In this... more A funny, warm, and brilliantly original memoir in which a grandmother speaks to her granddaughter from beyond the grave, telling, with candor and irresistible humor, stories from both their lives--of kinship, loyalty, tenacity, and love.
Bess Kalb--whip-smart, Twitter-famous TV comedy writer and regular New Yorker "Daily Shouts" columnist--has saved every voicemail message her grandmother, Bobby Bell, ever left her. The two were best friends and confidantes. Bobby doted on her granddaughter; Bess adored Bobby. In 2017, nearly ninety, Bobby died.
In this moving, wildly imaginative memoir, Bobby Bell is still speaking to Bess, her inimitable voice in Bess's head, bristling with the loving friction between one headstrong woman and the granddaughter who grew up to be an equal force of nature. Bobby gives Bess critical advice (on career and romance; lipstick and hair). And she relates the history that made her who she is, beginning with her mother's escape from the pogroms of Belarus in the 1880s to the cramped Brooklyn apartment where Bobby was born; and Bobby's own marriage to a successful businessman, which made possible the educations that helped her children and grandchildren flourish.
But from the time Bess was born, Bobby bestowed a unique flavor of love upon her granddaughter: tea at the Plaza; new dresses at Bloomingdales; and above all, her nobody-will-tell-you-this-but-me truths, full of devotion and well meaning, even when they hurt.
This unusual love story celebrates the very special bond that can skip a generation and hold iron-clad. Told through documents, photographs, and verbatim dialogues between two remarkable women, it is an unforgettable account of survival and family; of women's lives across different generations; of gratitude and grief--all rolled into one hilarious, poetic, page-turning book. less Alfred A. Knopf“‘Grandma Bobby’ gave @bessbell gifts of love and language (and lunches at the Plaza!), and in this deeply moving and powerful book, Bess repays her in full.… Deeply moving and powerful.” —@petersagal
Learn more about NOBODY WILL TELL YOU THIS BUT ME https://t.co/JsxtYjIi0t https://t.co/WrFLTDdNWP (Source)
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5
Emily St. John Mandel, Vincent Chong | 4.12
Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams... more Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. less Alfred A. Knopf“What sets Station Eleven apart from so many other recent dystopian novels is the warmness of @EmilyMandel's writing, the lived-in details of each of these characters’ lives… It’s the kind of book that stays with you.” —@TomiObaro
https://t.co/tWakW2L6Tq (Source)
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