AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC

French Polynesia
Breadfruit, by Célestine Hitiura Vaite (2000). Life is good on the island of Tahiti for professional cleaner Materena Mahi, her man, Pito, and their three kids—until Pito comes home drunk one day and proposes marriage. This sets Materena off in a flurry of wedding plans, involving her large and voluble clan—despite the fact that Pito has since sobered up and gotten cold feet. This warm and humorous debut novel by Tahiti-born Vaite won the 2004 Prix Litteraire Des Étudiants and is part of a trilogy starring Materena that's full of the flavor of contemporary life in French Polynesia.

New Zealand
The Bone People, by Keri Hulme (1983). With characters Hulme pulls from real-life experiences and a dream she had when she was 18, this novel takes readers deep into the heart of New Zealand, a nation still plagued by colonialism. Hulme weaves Maori heritage and history into this gripping tale of love, death, and redemption.

CARIBBEAN

Guyana
The Ventriloquist's Tale, by Pauline Melville (1999). English scholar Rosa Mendelson travels to contemporary Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, to retrace the voyage of novelist Evelyn Waugh. Soon, she embarks on a steamy, forbidden romance with a local half-Indian, half-Scot cattle rancher. Their illicit relationship echoes another doomed and incestuous affair that takes place in the 1920s. Melville brilliantly jumps from past to present, weaving these dual romances together with native folklore and Guyanese history in a story that won Britain's prestigious Whitbread First Novel Award.

SOUTH AMERICA

Paraguay
The News From Paraguay, by Lily Tuck (2004). This National Book Award Winner is an exhaustively researched work of historical fiction that traces the 19th-century love affair between Irish beauty Ella Lynch and Paraguay's infamous dictator Francisco (Franco) Solano Lopez. After meeting in Europe, the pair sail to Paraguay's capital, Asunción, where, as Ella learns, the women smoke cigars. She bears five sons as her lover sets about making war, taking mistresses, and living extravagantly as the country descends into ruins.