Top Ten Books That Tackle Tough Issues

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish.  Each week, we get a theme to list our top tens. 

This week's Top Ten is: Top Ten Books That Tackle Tough Issues

Here goes:

1) A Passage to India by E M Forster: set in British rule in India, it deals with conflicting issues of three religions, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam

2) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: It deals with the age-old struggle between unyielding traditionalism and the winds of change.

3) Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom by John Follain and Rita Cristofari: Zoya’s Story, vividly brings to life the realities of growing up in a Muslim culture, the terror of living in a perpetual war zone, the pain of losing those she has loved, the horrors of a woman’s life under the Taliban, and the discovered healing and transformation that lead her on a path of resistance.

4) Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl: There are two parts in this book, which I found deeply spiritual. In the first part of "Man's Search for Meaning" Viktor E Frankl describes how he survives various Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Searching deep within, he learns how to endure deprivation and life-threatening horror in the midst of the holocaust. He tells us in order to keep going; we need to hold onto core beliefs and values, and thoughts about ourselves in a better future. 

5) Death Of A Salesman by Arthur Miller:  It asks the big question: When it comes time to take our own life's account, as Willy has, will we look back with pride and a sense of accomplishment? Alternatively, will we find ourselves sidestepped and alone, lost in despair? Arthur Miller asks some of life's crucial questions in this powerful play.

6) Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult: set in a small town where a horrific shootout takes place in the high school. It takes only nineteen minutes to change the whole scenario of that place. Life is never the same again for the inhabitants of Sterling. In that shootout, there are ten deaths and nineteen seriously injured.

7) Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher: Why did a teenager kill herself? Why can't her friends see the signs? Why and how did she develop a reputation? Who is responsible for spreading rumours and assuming the worst about a girl who is new to the town and needs friends?

8) I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb: Thomas Birdsey, a 40-years old, goes to a library, all the while praying and with quite deliberation cuts off his right hand from the wrist. His only explanation being: by his sacrifice he can stop the war. His twin Dominick has always taken care of his schizophrenic brother for the last twenty years.This novel questions our own beliefs, our life's journey, and soul searching.

9) The Horseman's Graves by Jacqueline Baker: The Schoff family and the Krauss family are two such families who are neighbours. Stolanus and Helen Schoff are a hard-working family who live with their son, who has scars due to wagon accident and a farm hand, Lathias, who life is somehow connected with the boy.

10) The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha: A nineteen year old man Daniel Robbin gives himself up for the said murder and after nineteen years he is given the death sentence, that is to die by lethal injection. It ought to be a happy day for which any parent whose child has been brutally murdered awaits.