At first glance, Jhumpa Lahiri’s powerful novel The Namesake, which traces a Bengali family between India and the U.S., has little in common with a beloved childhood tale about the adventures of a scarecrow, a tin man, a lion and a girl named Dorothy. Or with Homer’s epic Odyssey and its myriad retellings, for that matter. But for us here at Tory Daily, as we celebrate a holiday season inspired by the idea of coming home, these books are connected and — you guessed it — they’re all anchored by that central conceit of returning home. Here, a few more reads, some literary classics, others wondrous fantasies, that fit the theme.

Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Meet Me in St. Louis by Sally Benson
The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
The Odyssey by Homer
Ulysses by James Joyce
You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free by James Kelman
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sweet Promised Land by Robert Laxalt
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra

More to explore in Culture