International fiction
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
This month we’re reading novels translated from Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Danish. The works themselves are diverse in content – from thrilling crime, to science fiction, to historical epic, and some incisive social commentary to boot!
Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada (translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani)
Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as the land of sushi. Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee…
Our top 10 bestsellers of the week
Young Mungo by Douglas Stewart
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
French Braid by Anne Tyler
Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Sea of Tranquility Emily St. John Mandel
Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes
A Solitary Walk on the Moon by Hilde Hinton
Our chart topping book this week is the second novel from Booker-prize winning author…
Debut fiction to read this month
These outstanding debuts are written by some of the most exciting emerging voices in fiction. Explore a selection of April highlights below or browse our ongoing collection for debut fiction in 2022 here.
No Hard Feelings by Genevieve Novak
Penny can’t help but compare herself to her friends. Annie is about to be a senior associate at her law firm, Bec has just got engaged, Leo is dating everyone this side of the Yarra, and Penny is just ……
The 2022 International Booker Prize shortlist
The shortlist for this year’s International Booker Prize has been announced!
The International Booker Prize celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world. The prize is awarded every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. It aims to encourage more publishing and reading of quality works of imagination from all over the world, and to give greater recognition to the role of translators.The contribution of both author…
The Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist 2022
The shortlist for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize has been announced.
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under. The Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.
Namita Gokhale, Chair of Judges, said of the shortlist: ‘The longlist for the 2022 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize was one of the strongest…
Our top picks of the month for book clubs
For book clubs drawn to queer retellings…
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry…
Debut fiction to read this month
These sparkling debuts are written by some of the most exciting emerging voices in fiction. Browse some of our March highlights below or browse our ongoing collection for debut fiction in 2022 here.
Hovering by Rhett Davis
Alice stands outside her family’s 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it’s clear she is out of options. Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger - thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows…
A spotlight on works in translation
This month’s translated works include a debut fiction collection from an Indonesian poet, an award-winning classic of Japanese crime fiction, and the latest work from the secret Italian superstar, Elena Ferrante.
Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu (tranlated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao)
A playful, charged and tender collection of twelve stories – a blend of speculative fiction and dark absurdism, often drawing on Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s Batak and Christian cultures. Pasaribu’s stories ask what it means to be…
What we're reading: Hinton & Gardner
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on, or the music we’re loving.
Tye Cattanach is reading The Loudness of Unsaid Thing by Hilde Hinton
I meant to read The Loudness of Unsaid Things at the same time everyone else was reading it, but somehow, it just never happened that way. Then, I was asked to read and review Hinton’s forthcoming novel - A Solitary Walk…
The 2022 International Booker Prize longlist
The International Booker Prize has revealed the ‘Booker Dozen’ of 13 novels in contention for the 2022 prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.
The prize is awarded every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. It aims to encourage more publishing and reading of quality works of imagination from all over the world, and to give greater recognition to the role of translators.The…
The Women's Prize for Fiction longlist 2022
The longlist for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced!
The Women’s Prize for Fiction celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world. The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.
Below are the sixteen longlisted books for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
…
Prose by your favourite poets
These poetic novels and works of non-fiction and memoir are from some of our most beloved and revered poets!
Son of Sin by Omar Sakr
An estranged father. An abused and abusive mother. An army of relatives. A tapestry of violence, woven across generations and geographies, from Turkey to Lebanon to Western Sydney. This is the legacy left to Jamal Smith, a young queer Muslim trying to escape a past in which memory and rumour trace ugly shapes in the…
Our top 10 bestsellers of the week
The Future Is Fungi by Michael Lim & Yun Shu
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Still Life by Sarah Winman
On Reckoning by Amy Remeikis
The Big Switch by Saul Griffith
Love Stories by Trent Dalton
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Making Australian History by Anna Clark
Black and Blue by Veronica Gorrie
Maid by Nita Prose
Our best-seller from the past week is the wonderful The Future Is Fungi, an informative and richly illustrated guide to…
Recommended reading: short story collections
We love short stories and their unique ability to distill so much insight and entertainment with artful brevity and fervour. This month we’re highlighting six collections that have recently hit our shelves.
Send Nudes by Saba Sams
A motherless teenage girl, daughter of the town butcher, falls into a relationship with a much older boy, but realises she’d rather have the love of his dog. A directionless university student is taken up by beautiful, chaotic party girl Lara, who moves…
What we're reading: Keyes, Smith & Dahl
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on, or the music we’re loving.
Julia Jackson is reading Cooper Not Out by Justin Smith
I’ve read many a cricket book in my lifetime, from the Iceman’s Captain’s Diaries right through to Duncan Hamilton’s erudite biography of cricket laureate Neville Cardus, but I haven’t read a cricket book as downright fun as Cooper Not Out.
Here, Justin…
Our top 10 bestsellers of the week
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas
Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes
Violeta Isabel Allende
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Love Marriage by Monica Ali
On Reckoning by Amy Remeikis
Love and Virtue by Diana Reid
Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher
All About Love by Bell Hooks
Our best-seller from the past week is Jessica Au’s, Cold Enough for Snow. Our reviewer and Readings Monthly editor Jackie Tang says of…
What we're reading: Kang, Hadley & Baume
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on, or the music we’re loving.
Tracy Hwang is reading The White Book by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
Having loved Han Kang’s writing in the past, I knew going into The White Book that I would likely enjoy it. Turns out, ‘enjoyable’ is really too simple a word to describe the reading experience this book provides.
In…
Our books of the month, February 2022
OUR FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Reviewed by
This highly anticipated follow-up to 2015’s A Little Life is an epic tour de force. In fact, it’s impossible for me to praise To Paradise enough. Set in an alternative America, this is a novel of three parts, its narratives traversing a slew of human experience and emotion.
Locational echoes and characters’ names recur from one story to the next, as if they are reincarnated or reimagined…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
February signals promising start to the year with a wonderful collection of new novels in translation. Below are six stories for readers looking to discover voices from beyond our shores.
Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti (translated from Italian by Elizabeth Harris)
Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia’s mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when…
The most anticipated books of 2022
Dare I say it: here we go again? With another Covid-dominated year on the horizon, it is easy to feel not a little despondent: I don’t mind admitting, dear reader, that I’m very, very tired, and after a particularly difficult but still pretty fun Christmas trading period following our 2021 lockdown (like retailers across the land, I could recount a gripping, personal account of the infamous supply chain issues, but I’ll save that for my memoir…), I am sure I’m…
Debut fiction to read this month
January is a quiet time for local debuts, but fortunately we have a plethora of fresh fiction from overseas to tide us over! Discover some of the most exciting debut voices of 2022 so far below, and pencil in February and March for stacks of Australian releases that are to come!
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter’s research, only to discover a…
Best-selling books celebrating 10 years
These best-selling books are currently celebrating 10 years since their local publication!
A decade on, it’s incredible to see how these works have endured and heartening to know how many of these authors have continued to produce fantastic literature. How many of the below blockbuster books have you read?
Blood by Tony Birch
Jesse has sworn to protect his sister, Rachel, no matter what. It’s a promise that cannot be broken. A promise made in blood. But, when it comes…
Our top picks of the month for book clubs
For book clubs interested in who writes history…
Learwife by J. R. Thorp
Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear’s queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story. A breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present.
For book clubs who relish subversive stories of complex friendships…
…
LGBTQIA+ fiction favourites for 2021
It’s been a sparkling year for LGBTQIA+ stories in fiction! Below, you’ll find some of our 2021 fiction favourites that centre and celebrate a multiplicity of LGBTQIA+ experiences within their pages.
Nothing But My Body by Tilly Lawless
Nothing But My Body is an eight-day journey through the mind of a young woman, a queer sex worker in Australia, as she navigates breakups and infatuation across just over a year. The unnamed narrator’s voice is both fierce and vulnerable, defiant…
The best of international fiction 2021
Every year our staff vote for their favourite books and music of the past 12 months. Here are our top 10 international fiction books of the year, voted for by Readings’ staff, and displayed in no particular order.
Still Life by Sarah Winman
1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
November brings another dazzling body of works in translation. Below are six highlights from our collection of recently translated novels, but know there’s still many excellent titles publishing later in the month – including the latest work from The Shadow of the Wind author Carlos Ruiz Zafon, City of Mist.
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa (translated by Adrian Nathan)
Guatemala, 1954. A CIA-supported military coup topples the government. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as…
Damon Galgut wins the Booker Prize for Fiction 2021
Congratulations to Damon Galgut who has been named the winner of this year’s Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel, The Promise.
The Promise is set in South Africa during the country’s transition out of apartheid, explores the interconnected relationships between the members of a diminishing white family through the sequential lens of four funerals. The Promise is Galgut’s ninth novel and first in seven years; his debut was published when he was just seventeen.
Maya Jasanoff, 2021 chair…
Recommended reading: short story collections
We love short stories and their unique ability to immerse you in a new place or feeling at a moment’s notice. This month we’re recommending a number of short story collections to explore.
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tender-hearted, balancing acerbic humour with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the…
Our top picks of the month for book clubs
For something new and intensely affecting…
Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser
A story told in two narratives.
Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces ‘Australian values’. Three scary monsters - racism, misogyny and ageism - roam through this mesmerising novel told in a reversible format…
Our Teen Advisory Board's favourite reads of 2021 so far
We asked our Teen Advisory Board members to let us know which book stands out as exceptional amongst everything they’ve read so far this year. Below are the books they’ve loved the most and you can browse our more extensive collection of their favourite reads here.
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
This novel is the book to read! A Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai in the criminal underworld?? Sign me up!
— Aurelia Orr
Yolk…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
It’s another exciting month of releases in translated fiction. Below are five highlights from our collection of recently translated novels, including the long awaited conclusion to the best selling Mirror Visitor series!
Lemon by Kwon Yeo-sun (translated by Janet Hong)
In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be…
The Goldsmiths Prize shortlist 2021
The shortlist for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize has been announced! This prize was established in 2013 to celebrate the qualities of creative daring and to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form. You can learn more about the history of the prize here.
The six titles shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize are:
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
Assembly by Natasha Brown
A Shock by Keith Ridgway
This One Sky Day by…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
If you’re looking to read more works in translation this month, here’s five new works of fiction to bring you stories from around the world.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura (translated by Lucy North)
The Woman in the Purple Skirt seems to live in a world of her own. She appears to glide through crowded streets without acknowledging any reaction her presence elicits. Each afternoon, she sits on the same park bench, eating a pastry and…
Recommended novels centring family sagas
There’s something particularly captivating about multi-generational family sagas, those masterful works that seem to effortlessly trace the ties that bind over decades and sometimes even centuries. These novels invite an intense emotional investment; the ensuing intimacy imbues these stories with incredible staying power. Through accounts of often absorbing detail, they remind us that history is always personal.
Below are ten moving family sagas and you can browse our full collection for even more stories following the fate of families across…
The 2021 Booker Prize shortlist
The shortlist for the 2021 Booker Prize has been announced! The Booker Prize has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over 50 years. It is awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
Below are the six shortlisted titles:
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
It begins with a message: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s former care-giver, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances…
Dear Reader, September 2021
In the best of times, it takes a mighty collective effort to put together the Readings Monthly. Each issue is literally months in the preparation, and many of our staff members contribute to the final product. As is true for any kind of work during this time, the pressures of lockdown make this task exponentially more difficult, and so I’d just like to acknowledge the hard work of everyone involved, and single out in particular our tireless editor, Jackie Tang…
Our top 10 bestsellers of the week
Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards
An Insider’s Plague Year by Peter Doherty
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey
Dark as Last Night by Tony Birch
The Women of Little Lon by Barbara Minchinton
Recipe for a Kinder Life by Annie Smithers
After Story by Larissa Behrendt
The Orchard Murders by Robert Gott
The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert
Animal by Lisa Taddeo
Our best-seller for another week running is local debut, Small Joys of Real Life by Alee…
Our top picks of the month for book clubs
Read a master of the form in Dark as Last Night by Tony Birch
Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that Tony Birch is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood.
In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father’s violence, two…
Novellas to read this afternoon
There’s a unique greatness and grace to succinct stories that truly pack a punch. The kind of story that you ruminate on for far longer than it took you to read. Find great enjoyment, long after you turn the final page, in these compelling novellas.
Winter In Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn…
Read women in translation this August
August is Women in Translation Month!
Stemming from a lack of representation and availability of translated works by women within English-language markets, this month-long celebration is all about appreciating the great women writers who have been translated – as well as the translators and their publishers. Below you can browse a selection of exceptional translated works by women, while our Women in Translation book collection is regularly updated and available to browse year-round within the ‘Books’ page on our website.
…
The 2021 Booker Prize longlist
The longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize has been announced! The Booker Prize is the has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over 50 years. It is awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
Below are the 13 longlisted titles:
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
The Promise by Damon Galgut
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
Literary thrillers in literary settings
These twist-filled stories are set in worlds that revolve around words – whether that be an isolated writers cottage in the country or the bustling hub of a publishing house in New York City; what these places share is that all is not as it seems.
Hell of A Book by Jason Mott
A Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of…
Books to leave town with: summertime novels to dive into
Escape to warmer shores through the pages of these scintillating reads. But though it all seems light and warm – some of these summers have a dark side too. A lot can happen over a long, hot summer with the repercussions reverberating through lifetimes.
The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta
Win knows that Hollywood demands perfection - especially from a woman of colour. Leo just wants to enjoy life, and shift press attention away from his…
Recommended reading: short story collections
We love short stories and their unique ability to immerse you in a new world at a moment’s notice. This month we’re recommending six recent short story collections to dip into when you have a spare ten minutes.
She is Haunted by Paige Clark
A mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own starts falling out. A woman leaves her boyfriend because he reminds her of a corpse; another undergoes brain surgery to try to live more comfortably in higher…
Six books where mundane meets magic
Pass seamlessly into the slipstream between fantasy and reality with these six recommendations of where the everyday blurs with elements of magical and illusory. The following books are perfect for you to read if you’re interested in exploring the narrative twists and turns that this intersection encompasses.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura
One, normal morning in a quiet Tokyo neighbourhood, seven teenagers – each stricken with anxiety and desperate loneliness - awaken to find a mirror-portal in…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
If you’re looking to read more works in translation this month, here’s five new works of fiction to bring you stories from around the world.
The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas (translated by Frank Wynne)
The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply…
The Readings guide to the Women’s Prize 2021 shortlist, with Chris Gordon
With the Women’s Prize for Fiction winner’s announcement delayed until September, we now have even more time to read our way through the outstanding titles on this year’s shortlist. Not sure where to start? Our programming and events manager Chris Gordon has read her way through the list and is here to help.
There are so many reasons to support the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist. Firstly, reading any novel on the longlist or shortlist (and telling others about…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
If you’re looking to read more works in translation this year, we’ve compiled a list of seven new works of fiction that bring you voices from around the world.
I’m Waiting For You by Kim Bo-Young (translated by Sophie Bowman)
A stunning collection of short fiction by a South Korean writer who counts film director Bong Joon-ho among her many fans! In the title story, an engaged couple working in distant corners of the galaxy plan to arrive on Earth…
Novels exploring our relationship with work
Over the last year, many of us have experienced a seismic shift in the ways and expectations of our workplaces. Some jobs have evolved to be almost unrecognisable from their previous form, some jobs and industries have disappeared almost entirely or are just hanging in there; very few jobs, if any, remain unchanged by our circumstance. Where we might go from here?
Below are seven books which explore our complicated and changing relationship with work. They speculate paths our society…
David Diop wins the International Booker Prize 2021
David Diop has been selected the winner of this year’s Booker International Prize for his novel, At Night All Blood Is Black. French author Diop and English-language translator Anna Moschovakis will share equally in the £50,000 prize.
Please note: We currently have extremely limited stock of At Night All Blood is Black. Please call your local store to confirm availability before purchasing. We’re working hard to secure more copies, but anticipate a delay of some weeks.
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