International fiction
The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken
Reading The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken reminded me of one of my favourite short stories: ‘The Luncheon’ by W. Somerset Maugham. Set in the Paris restaurant Foyot’s (which sadly no longer exists), the story tells of the quiet despair of…
Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif
Major Ellie crashes his sixty-five-million dollar jet in the desert near the refugee camp he was supposed to bomb. It’s not really a high priority target, but Ellie was thrown a bone by his commander to get a proper mission…
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is perhaps best known for her award-winning novels The Poisonwood Bible (1998) and The Lacuna (2009), though her numerous other works will also be familiar to many. With her much-anticipated new novel Unsheltered, Kingsolver brings her signature…
China Dream by Ma Jian
It’s no coincidence that Ma Jian dedicates this book to George Orwell. Named after Xi Jinping’s vision for Chinese prosperity, China Dream is a tale of the self, broken over the rack of the state. As Director of the China…
Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin
I read Evening in Paradise in a single sitting, mesmerised by the places and characters, and what they revealed about the cultures of the times. Names recur but are intermingled. A character from one story will emerge in a different…
Crimson by Niviaq Korneliussen
Niviaq Korneliussen begins her novel Crimson with a letter to the reader: ‘I began creating characters and stories on paper and suddenly the whole world was available to me.’
Crimson, originally titled Home Sapienne, is the story of…
Love is Blind by William Boyd
I have to confess that William Boyd is one of my favourite authors; his Any Human Heart is probably his best but Love is Blind comes close. It’s an exotic and sad love story that kept me wanting more.
Love…
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Melmoth is watching every dark and wicked act. You can feel her eyes on you wherever you are. Her eternal loneliness draws her to those who believe they can’t be redeemed. She is both feared and longed for by those…
Foe by Iain Reid
Living in isolation amid farming land predominantly owned by big industry and the government, Hen and Junior receive a late-night visitor. Terrance is an employee of Outermore; an organisation originally specialising in self-driving cars but who are now preparing for…
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, hundreds of girls and women would wake every morning feeling bruised, abused, and battered. This was attributed for many years to ghosts, demons, or Satan himself punishing the women…
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