See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in the Dominican Republic.
These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.
| Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
| In the Time of the Butterflies | Julia Alvarez | 79,101 | 4,961 |
| Clap When You Land | Elizabeth Acevedo | 109,418 | 1,869 |
| The Feast of the Goat | Mario Vargas Llosa | 42,462 | 3,596 |
| The Farming of Bones | Edwidge Danticat | 9,907 | 1,510 |
| Before We Were Free | Julia Alvarez | 9,474 | 1,427 |
| Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship | Robert Kurson | 11,821 | 591 |
| The Cemetery of Untold Stories | Julia Alvarez | 15,639 | 439 |
| The Color of My Words | Lynn Joseph | 2,109 | 650 |
The dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, from 1930 to 1961, looms large over the Dominican Republic. This week’s winner, In the Time of the Butterflies, is about the four Mirabal sisters, who fought back against the regime, which then killed three of them. It has been adapted into a film produced by and starring Selma Hayek. The Feast of the Goat is about the assassination of Trujillo in 1961. The Farming of Bones is about the Trujillo regime’s 1937 Parsley massacre of tens of thousands of resident Haitians. Before We Were Free is set at the end of Trujillo rule in 1960-61. The Cemetery of Untold Stories is about a writer in the 2020s who is researching the life of one of Trujillo’s wives. The Color of My Words is also set during the Trujillo regime, though as far as I know the precise date is not specified.
The other constant in the literature of the Dominican Republic is the relationship with the United States, and in particular the emigrant experience. This week’s Goodreads winner, Clap When You Land, is about two girls, one in the Dominican Republic and one in New York, who discover that they have the same father when he suddenly dies.
Most of the books by Dominican writers about the emigrant experience are set mainly in the USA. I disqualified no less than sixteen books for that reason – six more by Julia Alvarez, four by Junot Diaz (including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), and two by Angie Cruz, another two by Elizabeth Acevedo, and two by other writers. I also disqualified Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, which is set in Jamaica, and Collapse, by Jared Diamond, whose remit is worldwide.
Although Pirate Hunters is set off the coast of the Dominican Republic rather than on the country’s land territory, it seems to be close enough to the shore to qualify for the list by my criteria.
Next week’s country is the United Arab Emirates, which provides a challenge to my research strategy, followed by a return to Latin America for Honduras and Cuba, and then over to Central Asia for Tajikistan.
Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium
Oceania: Australia