International fiction
Don't Skip Out On Me by Willy Vlautin
Willy Vlautin is one of those dependable writers who has staked out his territory and is sticking to it. He writes about characters on the American fringe. People who are fighting a losing game against the system: orphans, drifters, war…
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes’ writing has always dealt with the complicated notions of history and truth. We saw this clearly in his Man Booker Prize-winning title, The Sense of an Ending, which prompts the reader to ask whether truth is fundamentally…
Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block
There are many ways to describe the titular Oliver Loving – his mother’s favourite son, a beloved older brother to Charlie, and an aspiring poet. He has also been comatose (perhaps even brain-dead) for close to ten years. At seventeen…
The Melody by Jim Crace
It was always going to be a tough act for Jim Crace to follow. I’d only just finished reading the astonishing Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, when I picked up The Melody to review. But of course, considering…
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
If you knew the date of your death, how would you choose to live the rest of your life? In the late ’60s in New York’s Lower East Side, word spreads of a psychic who can predict the date a…
Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah
Savages: The Wedding is the first instalment in Sabri Louatah’s Saint-Etienne Quartet, a cycle of political dramas centring on an Algerian family in that region of central France. The novel opens on the wedding day of two young third-generation French…
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
In the near future Britain has become a place of complete and utter transparency. Every utterance is recorded. Parliament has been disbanded. But this is no hackneyed North Korea. Everyone sees, hears and votes on everything, and the market…
Heather, The Totality by Matthew Weiner
I was excited to read the first novel from Matthew Mad Men Weiner – not just because he’s the meticulous craftsman at the helm of one of my favourite screen stories, but because he’s often cited 1950s American literature (John…
Winter by Ali Smith
For around 20 years, Ali Smith has had a quartet of novels, named simply after the seasons, in the back of her head. Winter is the second of these novels. The first, Autumn, was shortlisted for this year’s Booker…
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Following Trump’s election, classic dystopias like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale have resurfaced on bestseller lists. In our mid-climate-change, post-truth, resource-depleted, racist-and-sexist-backlash world, where we’re on the brink of the biggest technological and structural change since the Industrial Revolution, the…
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