International fiction
Attraction by Ruby Porter
‘My earliest memories don’t come in images, but in thoughts,’ says the unnamed narrator early on in Attraction, the debut novel from New Zealand writer Ruby Porter, and it reads as an almost anti-manifesto for the book that unfolds…
Cape May by Chip Cheek
There’s an old-fashioned glamour to Chip Cheek’s impressive debut novel, Cape May, which I found very alluring. Set in 1957, in the seaside New Jersey town that gives the book its title, Cheek introduces Henry and Effie: young, Southern…
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 moves to New York in the…
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: the suicide of his own…
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 Jeannette, daughter and erstwhile student of philosophy), from…
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 won their National Booksellers Award…
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 sharehouse. She…
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 several years earlier Ah killed a…
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 debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers…
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
For the people of Iraden, faith in the gods is a highly transactional and complex affair. Any prodigy of nature – be it a meteorite or a recurring swarm of insects – can take on awareness and power if given…
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