International fiction
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
If you knew the date of your death, how would you choose to live the rest of your life? In the late ’60s in New York’s Lower East Side, word spreads of a psychic who can predict the date a…
Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah
Savages: The Wedding is the first instalment in Sabri Louatah’s Saint-Etienne Quartet, a cycle of political dramas centring on an Algerian family in that region of central France. The novel opens on the wedding day of two young third-generation French…
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
In the near future Britain has become a place of complete and utter transparency. Every utterance is recorded. Parliament has been disbanded. But this is no hackneyed North Korea. Everyone sees, hears and votes on everything, and the market…
Heather, The Totality by Matthew Weiner
I was excited to read the first novel from Matthew Mad Men Weiner – not just because he’s the meticulous craftsman at the helm of one of my favourite screen stories, but because he’s often cited 1950s American literature (John…
Winter by Ali Smith
For around 20 years, Ali Smith has had a quartet of novels, named simply after the seasons, in the back of her head. Winter is the second of these novels. The first, Autumn, was shortlisted for this year’s Booker…
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Following Trump’s election, classic dystopias like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale have resurfaced on bestseller lists. In our mid-climate-change, post-truth, resource-depleted, racist-and-sexist-backlash world, where we’re on the brink of the biggest technological and structural change since the Industrial Revolution, the…
Origin by Dan Brown
I’ve just finished reading the final chapters of Origin and feel deeply satiated. It’s been four years since Inferno, four years since I last experienced the unique sense of suspense, intrigue and downright awe that I only feel when…
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
A bestseller in Japan and now internationally, The Travelling Cat Chronicles (translated by Murakami translator Philip Gabriel) takes us on the road with Nana and his owner Satoru. Taken in by Satoru as a stray, Nana can’t understand why after…
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan’s wonderful new novel Manhattan Beach begins in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, where smooth union bagman Eddie Kerrigan is struggling to keep his family above water. Eddie moves easily among men of power: tipping his hat at the…
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Imagine living in a world where every act you undertake is politicised, against your will. For some readers, this will be a reality. Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, Home Fire, depicts this very phenomenon. It tells the story of the…
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