International Fiction reviews
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Have you ever been through periods when most books you pick up fail to ignite that magical spark? I’ve just emerged from one and Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line has been my saviour. Set in an imagina…
Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth
Jenny McLaine, writer and Instagram addict, should have it together. She’s thirty-five, she owns her own house, and she’s a successful feminist columnist. Only, her famous photographer boyfriend has …
Here We Are by Graham Swift
Graham Swift knows that life is a haphazard business, that experience and understanding, memory too, do not emerge in orderly fashion. He also knows that the dramas of life are tiny pools in the grea…
Weather by Jenny Offill
If I were more paranoid than I am willing to admit, I would be ruminating very seriously on when and how Jenny Offill (or her agents) entered my brain, extracted many of my thoughts, concerns, and ne…
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
This is quite a surprising novel in its structure made up of a series of numbered passages. Every passage is connected in some way and at times not in ways that are immediately obvious. It is based o…
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo
When Kim Jiyoung starts exhibiting bizarre behaviours, her husband takes her to a psychiatrist. What follows is a succinct account of Jiyoung’s life, from birth to elementary school, from the office …
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Native American author Louise Erdrich’s new novel, set amongst the inhabitants of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, is a welldrawn and sprawling portrait of a community in peril. Based in part on Erdr…
Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey
Miranda Popkey’s debut novel is a narrative told in ten conversations that occur between 2000 and 2017. The unnamed female narrator converses with her employer, her mother, a group of friends left at…
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
Vitória is a cleaning woman in a museum, but longs to be a writer. She meets and swiftly marries a wealthy man, who wants her to do nothing but relax. With this new-found leisure, Vitória works dilig…
Braised Pork by An Yu
Wu Jia Jia is abruptly widowed in her early thirties when her husband inexplicably drowns in the bath. Cast adrift with little money and even less sense of direction, she is haunted by the sketch her…
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