International fiction

Origin by Dan Brown

Reviewed by Kirrily Ireland

I’ve just finished reading the final chapters of Origin and feel deeply satiated. It’s been four years since Inferno, four years since I last experienced the unique sense of suspense, intrigue and downright awe that I only feel when…

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The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

Reviewed by Amanda Rayner

A bestseller in Japan and now internationally, The Travelling Cat Chronicles (translated by Murakami translator Philip Gabriel) takes us on the road with Nana and his owner Satoru. Taken in by Satoru as a stray, Nana can’t understand why after…

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Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Reviewed by Robbie Egan

Jennifer Egan’s wonderful new novel Manhattan Beach begins in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, where smooth union bagman Eddie Kerrigan is struggling to keep his family above water. Eddie moves easily among men of power: tipping his hat at the…

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Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Reviewed by Ellen Cregan

Imagine living in a world where every act you undertake is politicised, against your will. For some readers, this will be a reality. Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, Home Fire, depicts this very phenomenon. It tells the story of the…

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The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

Reviewed by Kelsey Oldham

Spanning 70 years, Alan Hollinghurst’s long-awaited new novel begins with a group of friends at Oxford during World War II and follows the ensemble over the years and generations. The book is divided into four parts, set in four distinct…

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A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma

Reviewed by Annie Condon

Akhil Sharma’s A Life of Adventure and Delight is a collection of brilliant short stories, all of which have been published in The New Yorker – an incredible accomplishment.

Sharma’s skill lies in his acute characterisation. Not only is he…

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The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

Reviewed by Gabrielle Williams

This review is going to be difficult to write, because The Ninth Hour is so masterful, so charming, so delightful, it’s going to be hard to do it justice. I want to gush, but gushing is clumsy and knock-kneed, and…

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NK3 by Michael Tolkin

Reviewed by Chris Dite

Present-day Los Angeles already feels pretty post-apocalyptic. In NK3 Michael Tolkin takes the inequality, violence, misogyny and horror of contemporary Beverley Hills, Culver City and Skid Row and melds it with our worst North Korean-related fears.

Four years after the…

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Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri

Reviewed by Anaya Latter

This loving, gentle book evokes the chaotic colours and sounds of Bombay through the eyes of an expatriate writer, returning to his childhood home. Weaving through time at an eddying pace, Amit Chaudhuri describes his childhood friend Ramu in criss-crossing…

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The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

Reviewed by Lian Hingee

Ben Aaronovitch’s series of PC Grant novels are urban fantasies that somehow manage to combine the jaunty ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello of a traditional British police procedural with the rich mythology and history of the city of London. The newest instalment…

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