The New “O” Book Club: 12 Fiction Picks from President Obama

Already beloved by millions of readers, this novel follows a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II. The breakout hit of 2014, this beautiful novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and it just won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. If you haven't read it yet, this one should be at the top of your spring reading list.

Though his contemporary reading repertoire is impressive, President Obama also has made time for classics, including Joseph Conrad’s duo of literary voyages. Both are chilling yet relevant stories of self-discovery, corruptibility, and the ways of the mind.

For fans of “The Affair”

There are two sides to every story—and the psychological drama “The Affair” explores that quite creatively. FATES AND FURIES is perfect for fans of dramatic romances told from alternating perspectives. At the core of this expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents a dazzling examination of a marriage over the course of 24 years.

Set in the same village where BROOKLYN begins, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces us to the formidable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty and with four children, Nora has lost the love of her life. Wounded but strong-willed, she is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her children. As she navigates the complexities of grief and loss, the novel shines with moments of courage, empathy, kindness, and hope.

Though the reasons for his literary picks are rarely explained, it’s safe to say that the unfortunate contemporary debate over police-civilian relationships might have motivated the president to pick up Richard Price’s novel about a South Bronx cop trying to find redemption after a new case brings back memories of an old mistake.

Every reader needs a little escapism, and the leader of the free world is likely no exception. Salman Rushdie’s fantastic (and fantastical) story centers on a storm in New York City that reawakens an ancient conflict between humans and the descendants of a mystical creature known as the Jinn.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of "The Namesake "comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death.

POTUS showed off his cultural knowledge once again in 2015, when he picked up this Man Booker Prize–winning novel by Richard Flanagan. THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH is a sweeping story that moves from a Japanese POW camp to present-day Australia and explores the important themes of war and truth, love and death.

In a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor Akhmed finds Havaa hiding in the forest with a strange blue suitcase, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. A story of the transcendent power of love in wartime, A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA is a work of sweeping breadth, profound compassion, and lasting significance.

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Jacqueline Woodson always felt half at home in each place. In mesmerizing verse, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. The winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, each poem in Brown Girl Dreaming is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a young girl’s soul as she searches for her place in the world.

One of the first books publicly shared by the president after taking office in 2009, Paul Harding’s debut novel is a Pulitzer Prize winner and is a meditation on life, loss, illness, faith, and nature, told through the perspective of a dying old man. As the clock runs down, his memories intertwine with those of his father and grandfather.

It’s not hard to imagine why the former Chicago resident picked Ward Just’s historical epic set in the Windy City. Following the life of Lee Goodell, a man whose life was once changed by a Gatsbyesque figure named Tommy Ogden, RODIN’S DEBUTANTE explores the ways in which we remember, and how we decide which moments shape us forever.