STACKED: What’s on Vauhini Vara's Shelf

I recently read Solidarity by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor, which is about the sort of past, present, and potential futures of solidarity.

A book I recommend to anyone who wants to understand how capital functions in relation to politics and philosophy. It's a really good book.

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar was one of my favorite books of the past five years. It’s really funny, weird, and moving—a book about the world we live in today, in the age of Donald Trump.

Elena Ferrante is one of my very favorite writers. The Neapolitan Quartet follows two best friends in Naples, Italy, as they make their way through life as kids and then grown-ups.

My favorite book is Moby Dick. People think it’s just about a crazy sea captain and a whale, but it’s about so much more—community, spirituality, and I’d argue, a kind of proto pre-industrial capitalism.

I love this book. It’s about contemporary life in Egypt, but also what it’s like to be the child of immigrants. The narrator, an Egyptian American, goes back to Cairo, meets this hot guy, and stays. It’s a twisted love story, but also about so many other things.

A really good book.

Another one of my favorite books.

Justin Torres and I went to graduate school together. His more recent book, Blackouts, won a bunch of awards. It’s incredible—strange and experimental.

Torres' first book, We the Animals, is super different from Blackouts and beautiful in a different way.