The Tortilla Curtain is a novel by T. C. Boyle dealing with issues of immigration, class, racism and environmentalism. The novel recounts the lives and interactions between two couples in very different situations: the illegal Mexican immigrants, Candido and America, and the middle-class citizens, Delaney and Kyra. The novel recounts the immigrants' struggles with poverty and Delaney's gated community's fear of immigrants. In the end, Delaney confronts Candido, their house is swept away in a landslide, killing their daughter and Candido helps Delaney out of a river.
An Ice-cream War is a 1982 novel by William Boyd that satirizes the battles between the Germans and British in East Africa during World War I. One part of the novel follows a feud between the American Temple Smith and the German Erich von Bishop. Once friends, Bishop sabotages Smith's plantation, sending him into poverty and Smith swears vengeance. The second part of the novel follows Gabriel, the son in an aristocratic family who must leave his new wife to fight in Africa, where he is wounded.