gemsmoke

@ShaulaEvans firstly, I wanna second the China Miéville rec, especially The City & The City, which I read earlier this year and is not just a fresh take on the "whodunit" murder mystery genre, but also so fascinatingly describes the governmental inner-workings, psychology of the citizens, etc. of two cities in two different countries that occupy the same geographical location. it's delightfully schizophrenic :)

secondly, I am only familiar with one of the books by Irish writer Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin, but it so beautifully balances geopolitics with deeply personal accounts of the sorts of folks who would really be living through that time period, and what they might be going through in their personal lives (esp. within the context of said geopolitics.) I was captivated from start to finish, which is not always the case with me and realistic/"literary" fiction, and each chapter had at least one section that made me burst into tears and deeply changed me. and how it all ties together at the end is just brilliant writing.