International fiction
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Warlight opens in the ruins of the London Blitz. It’s 1945, and fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister Rachel, are left in the care of a shifty Dickensian figure they call ‘The Moth’ and an ex-boxer nicknamed ‘The Pimlico Darter’…
A Shout in the Ruins by Kevin Powers
George Seldom was born in Virginia in the midst of the American civil war. A foundling, saved from certain death by an outlaw gang, who knows nothing of his parents. In his nineties, on the cusp of the civil rights…
The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop
This is writing from an author at the very top of her game, an astonishing book, with echoes of To Kill A Mockingbird (a comparison I don’t use lightly). Beautifully written, it is heartache-making in its depiction of a young…
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
Much like her previous novel The Interestings, I found Meg Wolitzer’s new book The Female Persuasion to be completely immersive. It is centered around two characters: Greer Kadetsky, who we meet as an anxious, striving eighteen-year-old, and Faith Frank…
Chemistry by Weike Wang
Can a novel be propelled by indecisiveness? Chemistry, the debut novel by Weike Wang, makes a pretty strong case that it can. In the beginning, the un-named narrator is proposed to by her partner, a fellow grad student called…
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
Miscommunications and misunderstandings abound in this debut collection of stories from Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, American Wife). Characters are thrown into tailspins by the return of undesirables from their schooldays, couples bicker over perceived slights, and new mothers…
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Given the fact of the seemingly relentless media revelations of exploitation in all sorts of industries, I can’t think of a better time to read a smart book about uneven power dynamics. Lisa Halliday has written an entertaining, provocative and…
The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara
The House of Impossible Beauties charts the glitter and heartbreak of the tumultuous 1980s in New York. Inspired by the iconic documentary Paris is Burning and the real House of Xtravaganza, Joseph Cassara brings a narrative truth to this iconic…
Macbeth by Jo Nesbo
Crime fiction and thrillers aren’t my preferred reading, so I’ve never been tempted to read a Jo Nesbo novel before. This would no doubt have remained the case had I not been curious to see how he would retell my…
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi
You can and will be tempted to read Disoriental in one very long sitting, well, at least Side A. Yes, Disoriental keeps you off balance from the first page of contents, a novel organised as an album. In this structure…
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