International fiction
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
With After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz takes an entrancing look at art, sapphism, feminism and the emancipation of women in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. Not just a feminist manifesto, After Sappho is also a testimony to the beauty of…
This Is Gonna End in Tears by Liza Klaussmann
This Is Gonna End in Tears is a captivating story about the strength of friendship, trying to forget the past and what happens when the past comes rushing back to you. Reading this was like a psychedelic dream; it burst…
Lilly and Her Slave by Hans Fallada & Alexandra Roesch (trans.)
‘Hans Fallada’ is the nom de plume of Rudolf Ditzen (1893–1947), a German writer who chronicled desperate lives between the wars. His best-known novel, Alone in Berlin, published weeks after his death, fictionalises the real-life story of an older…
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
It is always a thrill opening a new book by Ottessa Moshfegh. You never know what you’re going to get. The only certainty is that it’ll be unlike anything else you’ve ever read before. Her previous novels, Eileen, My Year…
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
All I needed to know about Li’s book before deciding I absolutely had to read it, was that it was a heist novel centred on Chinese diaspora stealing back looted Chinese art from Western museums. I doubt anyone needs much…
When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley
When We FellApart is abeautifully writtenmystery, character studyand examination of bothAmerican and Koreanculture. Min, a man inhis late twenties, isvisited by a detectivewho tells him Yu-jin, his girlfriend, is dead.Min works for Samsung in Korea and hascome to Seoul for…
Either/Or by Elif Batuman
Full disclosure: Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot, is in my top five favourite books of all time. It takes place in 1995 and follows Selin, a Turkish American woman during her freshman year at Harvard. Intellectual, and possibly…
The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers
Two men, friendship and crop circles. British writer Benjamin Myers’ (The Offing, The Gallows Pole) strange and beautiful novel The Perfect Golden Circle sets us down among the wheat fields of Wiltshire, England in 1989. Crop circles…
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Snobs be warned. Author Akwaeke Emezi has stated in no uncertain terms that their third novel for adults, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, is a romance, so if the thought of bold declarations of feelings…
Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo
Closing the cover on the final page of Lisa Taddeo’s razor-sharp collection of short stories, Ghost Lover, I was reminded of a line from the Joy Williams song, ‘What a Good Woman Does’: ‘Everyone’s wounded, nobody’s won …’ It’s…
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