International fiction
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
Books hold significance for Simon Watson, the protagonist in Erika Swyler’s The Book of Speculation. As a young archivist dedicated to securing funding for a rare collection at the library where he works, he understands the value and import…
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
If Firefly and Red Dwarf had a baby and it was raised by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the cast of Girls, and the baby was a novel, it would be The Long Way to a Small…
The Long Utopia by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
When I was a kid visiting Adventure Playgrounds, I always entered thinking, ‘This place is built for me and in it I can be anything, and anything can happen.’ Reading Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth series brings…
China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
‘Her entire existence revolved around the acquisition and preservation of fortune,’ writes Kevin Kwan in his latest novel China Rich Girlfriend. Such a statement sums up most characters in this book, which documents the fictional lives of Singaporean family…
The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera’s last novel, Ignorance, was published in 2000. Over a decade later, it’s no stretch to call The Festival of Insignificance one of the world’s most anticipated novels from one of the greatest living novelists. Many will delight…
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
I’ve neglected adult sci-fi in my adult life as it’s something that I read a lot of it as a teenager, and this novel has reminded me that sci-fi often mirrors what is happening today. It is often fobbed off…
Mislaid by Nell Zink
Mislaid, like Nell Zink’s first novel, The Wallcreeper, is a confident and clever work, but what is most striking is its peculiar style. It’s a bizarre domestic satire about a very dysfunctional family spanning from the 1960s to…
Dietland by Sarai Walker
Plum is a 29-year-old, 300-pound woman who is scheduled for weight-loss surgery. She believes that once she loses weight her real life will begin: ‘The real me, the woman I was supposed to be, was within reach. I had caught…
Find Me by Laura Van den Berg
Laura van den Berg’s first two books, the short-story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and Isle of Youth, established her as an incredibly inventive writer with a clear grasp on the…
The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard
I’ve been waiting for a Jim Shepard novel since Project X, his searing portrait of misfit boys and their ultimately violent reaction to their isolation. The Book of Aron continues with the misfit boy theme, with the eponymous Aron…
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