International fiction
Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
Speculative imaginings of our world in the wake of climate change are providing many authors with rich material for exploration. It’s fertile ground for some big questions that we should probably all be thinking about: after capitalism has drained all…
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
Once I started The Heart Goes Last, I couldn’t put it down until I’d read the last word. When I did, I had a perverse smile on my face; Heart sent me gaga, over the moon, triggered euphoria. I…
Sweet Caress by William Boyd
There’s a small group of us at Readings who are great fans of William Boyd, with one of my colleagues claiming his Any Human Heart as one of her favourite books. Boyd is a master storyteller who weaves history into…
The Blue Guitar by John Banville
Right from page one of John Banville’s new novel, you know you’re in for a ride with a tricky, slippery character. Oliver Orme describes himself as a thief and a painter, and then writes, ‘Ha! What I wrote down first…
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt
After a brush with death, the wistful young misfit Lucien Minor decides to embark on a new life, leaving his idyllic dead-end village to take up a post assisting the majordomo of a remote castle belonging to the mysterious Baron…
The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas is a very prolific young writer (The Seed Collectors is her ninth novel) and she’s also immensely talented. Her witty prose is captivating from the first page of this sprawling and highly original family saga. It begins…
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
If you’re already reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, you know why this author is considered a literary sensation by readers worldwide. Her books are shattering and enthralling, intimate and vicious. If you haven’t read the first three books in this…
A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
This small book makes a huge impact. It has been a bestseller in its original German language publication (selling some 150,000 copies) and readers can now join in this thoroughly deserved enthusiasm in English translation.
Andreas Egger is born in…
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
If you reckon all of us, here in the Great Indulgent Western World, are turning into complete tossers about food then this debut novel is for you. Already receiving huge enthusiasm in the United States, Kitchens of Great Midwest is…
You Don’t Have to Live Like This by Benjamin Markovits
On a trip back to the US from his dead-end academic posting in Wales, Greg ‘Marny’ Marnier is wooed by an old college friend, tech entrepreneur Robert James, to be part of a large-scale experiment: James, having bought-up thousands of…
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