Have you ever had the serendipitous experience of reading a complementary nonfiction and fiction book close together? I love it when this happens: when I just happen to read a nonfiction book about, say, a historical event, and then coincidentally pick up a novel exploring that very thing, or something satisfyingly tangential. Some books are better together, whether you stumble upon a book flight or purposefully plan themed reading.
Today’s post is inspired by that idea of book flights—I’ve long adopted the practice of grouping books into “flights” to allow readers (and myself!) to sample, compare, and learn. I borrowed this idea from a wine tasting practice, but love it even more for the literary life. Whether the groupings comes in twos, threes, fours, or more, these purposeful pairings help me understand themes and ideas in deeper and more nuanced ways than would be available to me were I reading the works in isolation. And as a giant nerd (a term we use with affection around here), I find great pleasure in these richer reading experiences.
There are so many different topics and pairings we could cover. Today’s flights include the Irish Troubles, codebreaking, hostage situations, and more. However you choose to approach these book flights, I hope you find an unexpected pairing or thoroughly intriguing topic. (We welcome your flights in comments!)
10 nonfiction and fiction pairings about an array of topics
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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe and Trust Her by Flynn Berry
Investigative journalism at its finest, Say Nothing examines the IRA’s abduction of Jean McConville, a mother of ten, from her Belfast home in 1972 during The Troubles. Her family never saw her again. A little more than thirty years later, human bones are found on a beach and later identified as McConville. The case serves as an example of the violence, fear, and paranoia during that time, as well as a jumping off point to explore the IRA’s goal for a united Ireland, the repercussions of guerrilla warfare, and whether their ends ever justified the means. A riveting and heartbreaking read, this was adapted into a TV miniseries on FX.
Trust Her, Edgar Award-winning Berry’s standalone companion to her 2021 bestseller Northern Spy, continues to explore the Irish Republican Army’s activity in the post-Brexit era. The story starts with a bang when the IRA kidnaps journalist Tessa on a remote highway outside Dublin and delivers an ultimatum: persuade her MI5 handler to become an informant, or someone she loves will die. Tessa and her sister Marian had become deeply involved with the IRA several years before, but she thought those entanglements were behind them. Now she fears for her and her son’s safety, as she knows the IRA will make good on their threats. Berry delivers a riveting spy thriller and a fascinating exploration of women’s involvement in the IRA and the subsequent impact on families, neighborhoods, and entire communities.
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh and Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by RF Kuang
Opium may be a small plant but Smoke and Ashes details its ties to colonialism, corporations, powerful families and institutions in the US, and contemporary globalism. In this “object biography” of opium, Ghosh explores its economic and cultural impact on Britain, India, and China, and how those effects still linger today. With sweeping scope and intricate detail, Ghosh lays out how the British Empire exported opium from India to China as a way of sustaining the Empire, regardless of the cost of addiction to those they exploited. Literature lovers will notice many cameos of authors through the ages in these pages (Orwell, Kipling, Dickens, and more).
Set primarily in 1830s Oxford, the workers at the translation institute Babel literally fuel the British Empire by combining their language skills with precious silver bars. While I loved the academic setting and band of four fast friends in this historical fantasy, Kuang’s engagement with the complexities of race, power, privilege, and the opium trade are what really ground Babel. There’s much philosophizing about the art of translation and discussion of what the practice actually involves, which I found insightful and fascinating.
How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
How the Word Is Passed, poet and journalist Smith’s first full-length nonfiction work, explores the legacy of enslavement in the United States, and to do so he takes his readers on a tour of sorts, visiting nine physical monuments crucial to that history, like Jefferson’s Monticello, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, Angola Prison, New York City, and finally Senegal’s Gorée Island. Each visit is packed with stories from both past and present, as Smith examines the site’s history and explores what that means for us today. This is a stunner. I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the author.
By exploring the stories of two sisters, who met different fates in Ghana more than 200 years ago, Gyasi traces subtle lines of cause and effect through the centuries, illuminating how deeds of ages past still haunt all of us today. Homegoing, her popular debut novel, traces the generations of one family over a period of 250 years, showing the devastating effects of enslavement and racism from multiple perspectives, in multiple settings. For the first hundred pages I didn’t quite grasp what Gyasi was up to, but when it hit me it was powerful. (The family tree in the front of the book helped me track the characters throughout.) A brilliant concept, beautifully executed.
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston and Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
In The Hot Zone, a 1994 nonfiction thriller, Preston details the emergence of the ebola virus in a pageturning, day-by-day, truth-is-scarier-than-fiction account, starting with the initial discovery of the virus in the Washington, D.C. suburbs—which kills 90 percent of its victims—and tracing its origin back to the central African rain forest. Meanwhile, a secret team of scientists and soldiers are deployed to stop the outbreak. Riveting and terrifying.
In this 2020 award-winning historical novel, O’Farrell takes a few known facts about Shakespeare’s wife and family and, from this spare skeleton, builds out a lush, vivid world with Hamnet. The devastating story centers on Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, who is torn apart by grief when their son Hamnet dies from the Black Death plague at age 11. Soon after, Shakespeare writes Hamlet—and O’Farrell convincingly posits that the two events are closely tied. In her distinctive style, O’Farrell takes you to the heart of what really matters in life, making you feel such a deep sense of loss for Hamnet that you won’t look at your own life the same way.
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah and Hum If You Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais
Born a Crime is a collection of coming-of-age essays about growing up during apartheid in South Africa. The Daily Show host does a masterful job of alternating the deathly serious with the laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes even combining the two. Noah’s birth to a white Swiss father and Black Xhosa mother was considered a crime and his mother kept him mostly indoors so as to not alert the government to his existence. His mischievous childhood and unconventional youth provide wonderful fodder for not-quite-polite (so much potty humor!) but always entertaining stories. Trevor Noah narrates the audiobook, which I highly recommend.
In 1970s Johannesburg, race is everything, yet two people who are legally deemed to be incompatible in apartheid South Africa are thrown together following the 1976 Soweto Uprising in Hum If You Don’t Know the Words. After white police open fire on peacefully protesting Black schoolchildren, 9-year-old Robin Conrad’s life is shattered when her parents are killed in the backlash. Meanwhile, Beauty Mbali’s daughter goes missing, and Beauty’s search for her coincidentally lands her a job as Robin’s caretaker. As time stretches on, Beauty grows to care deeply for this child she is being paid to “love,” and Robin, while fiercely possessive of Beauty, is keenly aware her parents wouldn’t approve of this relationship.
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy and The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
Code Girls highlights the American female code breakers who helped win World War II, but whose vital work has gone unsung for decades. 10,000 American women served the U.S. Army and Navy as cryptanalysts; their call to action came in the form of a letter that asked them two short questions: did they like crossword puzzles, and were they engaged to be married? Despite their critical role in protecting the Allies and exposing the plans of the Axis powers, their work in cryptanalysis was kept secret. Mundy conducted extensive research to capture their story, including interviews with surviving code girls. A fascinating, thoroughly researched, and well-told true account.
Set in World War II Britain, The Rose Code follows three unlikely women united in a common cause: breaking codes at Bletchley Park. Well-to-do Osla is a society girl, often accused of having more beauty than brains. Determined Mab grew up poor in London’s east end, and seeks a better life for herself and her young sister. And miserable Beth, doormat daughter to the overbearing mother who billets Bletchley Park girls to help the war effort. This book grabbed me from the opening pages, but I’ll admit I began turning them faster when we veered into spy thriller territory. Solidly entertaining—I especially enjoyed the story on audio, as narrated by Saskia Maarleveld.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister
The author of Never Split the Difference is a former hostage negotiator for the FBI. His workplace tales were fascinating, of course: he specialized in negotiating international kidnappings, and those did NOT play out like I expected. I was impressed at how he took those principles and applied them to everyday life—like negotiating a salary, or buying a house, or having normal, everyday conversations with your kids.
In Famous Last Words, London literary agent Camilla drops her daughter at daycare and heads to work after her maternity leave. That’s when she gets the call: her husband is involved in a hostage situation. Then she learns he’s not a hostage; he’s holding the hostages—but how could that be true of her kind-hearted, fun-loving husband? Camilla won’t get any answers, because law enforcement’s attempts to apprehend her husband are unsuccessful. The story’s second perspective comes from hostage negotiator Niall, whose life and career were ruined by that same botched siege. Like Camilla, he can’t let go of the baffling and still-unexplained events of that day. When new evidence surfaces years later, the two team up to figure out what really happened.
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley and Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson
After Bringley’s older brother died from cancer, he quit his dream job at The New Yorker and spent the next ten years working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His brother’s death rocked him and his life could no longer go on as usual. It was supposed to be a temporary escape where he could disappear into the background for a while but it wound up being a source of solace. In All the Beauty in the World, he details the ins and outs of being a guard, from bonding with his colleagues in the locker room to roaming the museum floors to how the guards close down the museum at night.
Coulson worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for decades, holding a variety of positions, and Metropolitan Stories, her novel in short stories, takes us behind the scenes of the museum. Sometimes the stories feel extremely down-to-earth for such a lofty place; sometimes they’re downright surreal, like the story told from the perspective of an 18th-century French chair who wishes someone would come sit in it.
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
In The Place of Tides, a charming blend of nature writing and memoir, travel writer Rebanks recounts a magical summer spent on Norway’s Vega archipelago. Not long ago Rebanks reached a place of personal and professional weariness. His chosen antidote? Traveling to Norway’s sparsely populated islands just under the Arctic circle, where a handful of old-timers still engage in the traditional work of gathering eider duck down. Under the tutelage of “duck woman” Anna, Rebanks learns about the history of the region and its fading way of life. This lyrical, meditative work and its vivid picture of the Norwegian islands is the best kind of armchair travel.
In Wild Dark Shore, Dominic Salt and his three children live on Shearwater Island, not far from Antarctica. He tends to the world’s largest seabank, which used to teem with researchers. Now only the Salts remain despite the rising sea levels. When a woman almost drowns while trying to reach the island by boat, Dominic’s teenage daughter rescues her and drags her ashore. As the woman gets to know the family and gain insight into the secrets they’re keeping, she’s hiding a secret mission of her own. A brooding, character-driven, page-turning read.
Philosophy for Polar Explorers by Erling Kagge and The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Philosophy for Polar Explorers, a short and compact book from Norwegian author and explorer Kagge, is part philosophy, part grand adventure, and part survival tale. Kagge was the first person to visit all three poles by foot, trekking the North Pole, South Pole, and Mt. Everest. He records his adventures in this small volume, along with philosophical musings prompted by his journeys. The stunning photos from his polar expeditions and related illustrations upped my appreciation for the stories recounted in these pages. Translated by Kenneth Stevens.
Bradley’s gripping debut, The Ministry of Time, unfolds in a near future where the British government employs time travel, as administered by a clunky bureaucracy. Our unnamed narrator takes a position as companion to the devastatingly handsome Commander Graham Gore, of the lost 1845 Royal Navy Arctic Expedition. She’s hired largely because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia, as her charge is also a refugee of sorts—not from another country, but from history. At once fast-paced and deeply philosophical, Bradley weaves together a spy plot, a love story, and heaps of droll British humor as her characters converse on race, gender, inherited trauma, and imperial legacy. A 2024 MMD Minimalist Summer Reading Guide pick.
Which of these pairings most intrigues you? Do you have any good nonfiction-fiction pairings to recommend? Please share in the comments.
P.S. Books that are better together and 50 engrossing and adorable rom com books and movies for your Valentine’s weekend.
52 comments
I would add The Penguin Lessons & How the Penguins Saved Veronica.
I recently read Long Island Compromise and followed it with Operation Jacknap, which is the real life story it was based on. The author of the non-fiction book lived in the neighborhood the fiction author grew up in. She cites his book in her author notes and I read it immediately. Great pairing.
I also read The Worst Hard Time a month or so The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah came out and loved how those paired.
Another one I loved and was accidental for me was reading The Overstory (one of my all time faves) while The Hidden Life of Trees was my morning non-fiction read. Couldn’t be a closer pairing.
I’m sure I could think of more, but those are a few just off the top of my head.
I love this list- pairing non-fiction and fiction is one of my very favorite things.
The Dictionary People and The Dictionary of Lost Words
The Worst Hard Time also pairs well with The Grapes of Wrath
I just read My Documents by Kevin Nguyen and Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown. Facing the Mountain is a nonfiction about the Japanese Americans interned and who fought during WWII. My Documents is a dystopian fiction about modern day concentration camps in the US. I highly recommend both but back to back it was a powerful experience.
I love this prompt – have been talking pairings with a couple of reading friends lately. Would pair PRK’s Empire of Pain with Demon Copperhead. And a couple of years ago paired My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
with How the Word is Passed and totally recommend that pairing as well.
Completely agree, Empire of Pain with Demon Copperhead. Amitav Ghosh’s book turns the pair into a trio. All three books are magnificent.
Nonfiction: A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell paired with The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
This would be an excellent pairing!
I read Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly and Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid together this summer!
Also earlier this year I read the Chris Voss book so I’m going to read Famous Last Words next- it’s been on my TBR, too!
The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush also pairs well with Atmosphere.
One memorable accidental combo for me was The Aviator’s Wife (about Anne Morrow Lindbergh) and Gift from the Sea, essays on womanhood, written by her. Satisfying and profound!
My addition to the list is “Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe and “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver – both about the opioid crisis.
I did this on accident a few years ago with Elizabeth Wein’s A Thousand Sisters and Kate Quinn’s The Huntress and loved the pairing to learn about the Soviet Union Night Witches.
Thanks for this comment, I was fascinated by the Night Witches in The Huntress. Adding Wein’s book to my TBR.
This summer I read The Berlin Apartment by Bryn Turnbull and Tunnel 29 by Helen Merriman. I was lucky enough to travel to Berlin this past spring. It is a fascinating and heartbreaking place, and these books capture that.
I’d add A Marriage At Sea & 117 Days Adrift!
I first read the fictional The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O’Farrell, in which Iris discovers that her grandmother, Kitty, had always been lying when she claimed to be an only child. In fact, Kitty’s elderly sister Esme lives in a mental institution, which has now contacted Iris to release Esme into her care. Iris grapples with this new reality and seeks answers to her myriad questions about why Kitty lied and why Esme was institutionalized for most of her life.
Then I read Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg (recommended to me by a MMD member). The author recounts his discovery of his mother’s sister after always being told that his mother was an only child. In fact, his aunt lived most of her life in a Detroit mental institution. Luxenberg explores both his aunt’s life and the history of the American mental health system throughout the 20th century.
I am going to have to recommend My Monticello as a fiction pairing with How the Word is Passed. I am so glad I read those books near the same time!
Yes yes yes!
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid and The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush
This is a great idea to pair a nonfiction book with a fiction book that is related. I am going to read the Say Nothing/ Trust Her pairing.
Soul of an Octopus and Remarkably Bright Creatures
Yes! I came to say this as well. They go so well together.
There are at least 4 books titled Soul of an Octopus. Which one, please?
I love this post and was so interested in seeing your first pairing. This summer I read Say Nothing followed by Northern Spy by Flynn Berry. This has taken me on a deep dive into Northern Ireland and the Troubles, which I am not mad about.
I haven’t read Northern Spy but I’ve been doing a deep dive into Irish/Northern Irish lit lately and u thought it’d be a few books and now it’s been 30 and I just keep finding more! What have been your favourites so far?
I’m on a GILDED AGE jag in every way…the TV show of course but then non-fiction: GLITZ, GLAM, & a DAMN GOOD TIME by Jennifer Wright and in fiction AMERICAN BEAUTY by Shana Abe. It’s so fun to go deeper into these time periods!
Oh, I absolutely loved “The Rose Code”, I couldn’t put it down! I have yet to read “Code Girls” but I added it to my TBR list before I’d even finished with “The Rose Code”.
What a great list! Some I have read, many are on my TBR and others have been added to it. Thank you Anne!
I would suggest Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop”, a novel about the first bishop of Santa Fe and the surrounding areas. The Pulitzer Prize winning book by Paul Horgan, “Lamy of Santa Fe” is the story of the real archbishop and his activities in the territory. It is beautifully written and is a perfect follow-up to Cather’s book.
That sounds great! Love Cather!
I loved “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” but I wasn’t aware of the Horgan book. I just added it to my TBR. Thanks!
My favorite method of developing my TBR!
Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series goes well with Say Nothing.
This summer read Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography with James by Percival Everett.
Last Days of Night by Graham Moore and Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes go together with the Gilded Age plus Caleb Carr’s Dr Laszlo series and Sara Donati’s gilded age books.
Jennifer, these are great pairings! I especially like the Mark Twain with James. That seems like a perfect combo.
Everyone is Lying to You (fiction) and A Well-Trained Wife (non-fiction)
As a reader and bookseller, “All the Beauty in the World” is among the books I most often recommend, both as a memoir and as an enlightening and fascinating narrative about the inner workings of the Metropolitan Museum and the importance of art. I also loved “Metropolitan Stories,” and highly recommend Coulson’s other book, “One Woman Show,” if you want to experience more of her distinctive style.
Great post, great suggestions! My most recent fiction/non-fiction pairing (pub date of McCoy’s novel is September 3; I’ve read it on Netgalley):
Sarah McCoy’s Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely (novel about a rising film and stage star who ditches her career to become a nun) AND The Ear of the Heart by Delores Hart & Richard DeNeut (the bio a person who inspired McCoy’s novel, Delores Hart, the film/stage star– and Elvis Presley’s first on-film kiss– who at 24 left her promising career and the man she loved to enter a Benedictine monastery where she thrives to this day. Don’t you love novels that launch you down fascinating rabbit holes?! Oh– and if you get really deep into that rabbit hole, you’ll find the absolutely delightful, award-winning documentary short about Mother Hart: God is the Bigger Elvis.
Fun topic! I haven’t been able to get my hands on any of the sources listed at the back of Kristin Hannah’s The Women. Anyone have any luck with a non-fiction pairing about women nurses during the Vietnam War? TIA!
The miniseries “China Beach” just became available on Roku. Super pairing with “The Women” and not quite so heartbreaking, at least not yet.
It’s not fiction with non-fiction, but I found reading Careless People shortly before The Anxious Generation to be an insightful pairing! I also read the novel You Will Never Be Me, about social media influencer friends-turned-enemies around the same time. I didn’t find the plot of that one to be super plausible, but the behind-the-scenes look at Meta’s creators, the peeks into the off-screen-life of content creators, and then the perspective of what all of that is doing to us as consumers was fascinating!
I led a book club a while back, and I paired Caste with The Vanishing Half. It worked out even better than my expectations. Both amazing books, and Caste provided a lot of context for The Vanishing Half. I keep meaning to pair nonfiction and fiction again. Thanks for the inspiration!
Forty Autumns paired with The Berlin Letters.
I am reading Heartwood by Amity Gaige, and now I’m longing to re-read “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson.
I just read these two together, along with Grandma Gatewood’s Walk!
I absolutely LOVE this posting! I have been introduced to SO much history through fiction, and I usually follow up with a deep dive into the non-fiction. Not immensely popular, but still available is Fred Saberhagen’s “After the Fact,” a time-travel page-turner about trying to save Abraham Lincoln. I read this years ago and still think about it! It would pair well with any Lincoln biography that includes his last days.
Open by Andre Agassi pairs well with Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Please more posts like this! I love to pair books.
Some good pairings there. The one I’d suggest is pairing non-fiction The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester (later named The Professor and the Madman, to fit in with the film release), with The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Both about the development of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Tara Westover’s memoir Educated pairs well with Janelle Brown’s novel What Kind of Paradise.
And Aisling Rawle’s debut novel The Compound pairs well with Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum.
Nonfiction: “The Road to Surrender” by Evan Thomas
Fiction: “Daikon” by Samuel Hawley
Both books focus on August 1945 in the final days before the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII. “The Road to Surrender” tracks the debate whether to use the nuclear bomb, alongside the conflict within the Japanese leaders whether to surrender of fight to the death. Meanwhile, “Daikon” supposes that a third nuclear bomb went missing in the Pacific and the Japanese forces recovered it. A Japanese physicist, who studied at UC Berkley under Oppenheimer, is tasked with salvaging the weapon so it can be used against America.
One of the best pairings I have read is Monument Men and Lady in Gold. They may both be nonfiction, but the latter definitely read like fiction.
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