Lucette Lagnado's six favorite books

Lucette Lagnado was born in Cairo, Egypt. She and her family left Egypt as refugees when she was a small child, an experience that helped shape and inform her memoir, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. Her follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16.

One of her six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

An exquisite and soulful novel about a pair of Cuban exiles who land in New York. Hijuelos does a wonderful job of capturing the longings of expatriates for their lost culture and country.

Read about the other books on Lagnado's list.

--Marshal Zeringue