Mix up an old science fiction writer with a car dealer, add in excerpts from a fictional book and sketches of an electric chair and the American flag, and you have the zany adventure of “Breakfast of Champions.” This postmodern parody satirizes American culture and eventually introduces the author as a character in his own book (Alternate Choice: Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”.)

After political turmoil in India causes Pi’s father’s to sell his zoo, he barters passage for his family aboard a ship to Canada. Unfortunately, the ship sinks, leaving Pi on a raft with a zebra and hyena, an Orangutan named Orange Juice, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The book’s rich content comes not only from its fabulist elements, but also from Pi’s exploration of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.

In the 2006 New York Times poll of authors and critics, “Beloved” ranked as the most important novel of the last twenty-five years. (Second was Don DeLillo’s 827-page “Underworld,” so students should appreciate the comparatively slim “Beloved”.) Sethe and her daughter Denver have recently escaped from slavery, but Sethe is haunted by the ghost of her child “Beloved,” whom Sethe mercy-killed when the child was two. (Alternate Choice: Toni Morrison’s “Sula”)

A young girl from the West Indies comes to America to work for a family in a large city. She resists British colonialism and an overbearing mother, but cannot resist her burgeoning adolescence, which leads to sexual explorations.

A middle-class couple lives in a suburban enclave next to the woods where an illegal immigrant couple squats. When the suburban husband accidentally hits the immigrant man while driving, the couples’ lives began to intertwine, leading to an examination of xenophobia and environmentalism.

A coming-of-age novel composed of diary entries by the young Latina narrator Esperanza Cordero. Esperanza navigates the treacherous transition to adolescence, dealing with her own sexuality as well as the sexuality of her friend Sally (Alternate Choice: Julia Alvarez’s “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”.)

This might be one of the more challenging books on the list because of archaic language, atypical punctuation and frequent allusions, but students need some books that stretch them (besides, Shakespeare is equally difficult). McCarthy’s protagonist “The Kid” wanders through violent adventures in the American old west, scalping Indians, surviving betrayals, and fighting off his nemesis Judge Holden.

Although we don’t want students to lose the connection with stageplays, it’s absolutely essential to teach them how to read screenplays. Students can explore the ambiguity behind Mozart’s death, and the moral dilemma of genius bestowed upon those who seemingly don’t deserve it.

This nine-story collection about Indians and Indian-Americans won the Pulitzer and vaulted Lahiri to critical acclaim and commercial success. As a collection, rather than a novel, its inclusion on this list highlights the importance of short story collections as a worthwhile genre for study. In the title story, an Indian-American family visits India with a tour guide, and must confront their homeland as foreigners rather than natives.

In this dystopia that rivals Huxley’s “Brave New World,” the narrator who might or might not be named June is the concubine of Commander Fred in the Republic of Gilead. She must become pregnant in order to avoid being classified an Unwoman (an unfertile woman), and shipped off to the colonies. The novel explores gender hierarchies, the subjugation of women, and the indignities of a social system built upon castes.