Five of the best fiction books to celebrate Literacy Day with

In keeping with the spirit of book week and literacy day, here are five thought-provoking books to add to your bookshelf.

National book week coincides with a few important international book and reading related days.

South Africa celebrates national book week from 3 to 9 September and 8 September is recognised as International Literacy Day.

This day aims to highlight the importance and value of literary education for individuals and groups and for the wider global culture.

To encourage literary education, Love Books in Melville compiled a list of five must-read books.

These the five books that form part of their best selling fiction section:

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight:

Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient recently won the Golden Man Booker prize, the best book of the last 50 years of the Booker Prize.

This might have given Warlight the extra sales boost it needed, but Ondaatje has a loyal following, and in Warlight he has crafted a mesmerising story of Rachel and Nathaniel, two young adults abandoned by their parents in post-war London.

Lyrical and compellingly written.

Tim Winton’s The Shepherd’s Hut:

This sparse and brutal story by Tim Winton is an unsparing portrait of a young man on the run from a cruel and unloving father.

Jaxie Claxton journeys across the harsh salt lands of Western Australia in search of hope and love. It is a metaphorical and a physical journey – profound reading.

Arushi Raina’s When Morning Comes:

This is a fantastic read for young adults. Compelling and with fantastic characters that introduce today’s young readers to a South Africa of 1976, of the Soweto uprising, and of legislated apartheid.

This is a fantastic recommendation for today’s often blinkered youth.

Harry Kalmer’s A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg:
Winning the Sunday Times Fiction Prize has given this book an extra boost.

It is a stunning novel set in contemporary Joburg but never forgetting the history of our complex city.

Compelling, rich and sure to be a classic.

Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine:

Everyone seems to love the truly original voice of Eleanor Oliphant.

This book recently won the Costa First Novel Award.

ALSO READ: Five books to add to your must-read list on Read a Book Day