International fiction
Before Everything by Victoria Redel
Before Everything is a poetic and visceral exploration of friendship, life and death, and how we accept losing someone we can’t imagine life without. At the age of 11, Anna, Molly, Ming, Caroline and Helen decided to name themselves ‘the…
Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
Maile Meloy is one of my favourite writers. Her short stories are regularly published in The New Yorker (and were recently adapted for the film Certain Women, with Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Kristen Stewart); fans include Richard Ford…
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
I doubt I will enjoy another book in 2017 more than Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin. This small miracle of a novel about family, friendship and memory is equal parts laugh-out-loud hilarious and acutely moving.
Thirty-year-old Ruth Young has been…
Defectors by Joseph Kanon
Simon Weeks and his older brother Frank had promising careers in the United States intelligence services. Members of a respected Boston family, their careers and life trajectories were mapped out for them. However, Simon’s career was destroyed when Frank was…
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
It’s unusual to come across a novel that makes you feel like you are part of a world, and simultaneously totally ignorant of every aspect of that world. This paradox of belonging is what I’ve taken away from Arundhati Roy’s…
Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan
Already a runaway bestseller in its native France, Based on a True Story is unlike anything else you are likely to read this year. A taut, ferocious psychological thriller, it combines the masterful plotting of The Talented Mr Ripley with…
New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
In October 2015, the Hogarth Shakespeare project was launched, with the idea that the most acclaimed and bestselling novelists of the day would retell the works of Shakespeare. New Boy by Tracy Chevalier, the latest instalment, is a retelling of…
The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet
Paris, 1980. Detective Jacques Bayard is not familiar with the works of the influential literary critic and philosopher Roland Barthes when he enters his hospital room on a Monday afternoon. Barthes has just been hit by a passing truck on…
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is one the best American writers working today. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, and last year’s devastatingly brilliant short novel My Name is Lucy Barton. Her new novel, Anything is Possible…
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
The seven stories in this collection all feature male protagonists contemplating solitude and loneliness, love and death, and the impossibility of really knowing their unattainable love object. These guys are quirky head-thinkers, lost in patterns of lovesickness and unattainable objects…
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