International Fiction reviews
Lanny by Max Porter
Literature runs through Max Porter’s veins. He’s been editorial director at Granta and Portobello books, home to some of my favourite books of recent years, and penned the affecting and brilliant deb…
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Queenie’s life is not going to plan. She and her long-term partner are on a break that has no end in sight. She’s been forced to move out of the flat they shared together and into a disgusting shareh…
Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt
Shedding the mask of Harriet Burden, the protagonist of her previous novel The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt reappears perhaps more overtly in Memories of the Future as ‘S.H.’ – a young woman who move…
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
It is 1914, and Midhat Kamal has travelled from Palestine to France to study medicine at the University of Montpellier. He is billeted with the Molineu family (Frédéric, father and academic; and Jean…
The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita
As a bookseller, when a book is recommended by other booksellers, my interest is automatically piqued. The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita has sold over a million copies in Japan, in 2016…
Halibut on the Moon by David Vann
In Halibut on the Moon, David Vann revisits a theme that plays out in his staggeringly good debut short-story collection, Legend of A Suicide. Indeed it’s a subject that the author knows intimately: …
We, The Survivors by Tash Aw
Tash Aw’s fourth novel, We, The Survivors reveals its mysteries slowly. Ah Hock, a Chinese Malaysian man, meets with a social researcher who wants to hear his story. We know, from the start, that sev…
Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
The Lee family gingerbread is legendary – it has been known to cause obsession in a single bite. Margot and her daughter Harriet are quite unusual. They come from the land of Druhástrana, which doesn…
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
In Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, the archive is a noun, a repository for information collected by the first narrator on her road trip, trying to find the children lost as they tried to cr…
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Life in Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s Bangkok is neither fair nor unfair: ‘it is only so,’ goes the mantra, reminding us that these events, the passing of old to new, the rise and fall of life and a nation, …
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