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In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven books that bring elderly characters to life.
Oct 27, 2024
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Fiction is often dominated by stories about young people, from bildungsromans that trace their journey from childhood to maturity, to stories about those in the early stages of adulthood or even middle age. It is almost as though only younger people have interesting stories to tell. Readers rarely encounter books that delve into the hearts of elderly characters, bringing them to life on the page. I recently had the pleasure of reading one such book recently, and I will never forget how much of an eye-opener it was!
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven books that bring elderly characters to life. Whether featuring a closeted grandpa in the UK or a sexually liberated seventy-five-year-old Nigerian woman in San Francisco, the books on this list prove that elderly characters don’t have to conform to our preconceived notions, and that great fiction can centre around them too!
Read our recommendations below.
In Waiting for the Barbarians, South African Nobel laureate, J. M. Coetzee, explores the reality of imperialism from the point of view of an elderly character, the magistrate of a calm frontier settlement of ‘The Empire’.
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About the Author
lives in Ibadan, Nigeria. Their essays have been published in The Republic, and The Lagos Review.
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