International fiction
All That is Lost Between Us by Sara Foster
All That is Lost Between Us is at once a psychological thriller and a portrait of a family at breaking point. At 17 years old, it’s natural that Georgia keeps secrets from her parents, yet one secret in particular is…
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
You may not immediately recognise the name of the economist, sociologist and critic of modernity, Thorstein Veblen, but you will recognise some of the concepts that he introduced into the twentieth century lexicon, perhaps most notably the notion of ‘conspicuous…
Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff
Jonathan has a perfect girlfriend, a decent apartment in New York, and a (soul sucking) job that pays the rent. Nonetheless, he feels like he is at a standstill, ready and waiting to fall into ‘adulthood’. While patiently anticipating this…
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Early on in Numero Zero, Umberto Eco’s protagonist surmises, ‘If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else: the pleasures of erudition are reserved for losers. The…
Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
In 2014, Colum McCann was assaulted in a one-punch attack in Connecticut. In Thirteen Ways of Looking, the Irish novelist processes this traumatic event through multiple lenses. As McCann writes in an afterword, the novella and three shorter stories…
The Devil Is A Black Dog by Sándor Jászberényi
Hungarian war correspondent Sándor Jászberényi’s The Devil is a Black Dog is a fascinating collection that sits somewhere on the plane separating fiction and nonfiction. These nineteen interconnected short stories work to reinforce the argument that as readers we sometimes…
Slade House by David Mitchell
Slade House came into being on twitter. A short 280-tweet story formed and from there Mitchell found his way into his latest novel. Slade House is a short novel and could be read as a collection of stories, all revolving…
A Strangeness In My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
As someone who enjoys a bit of themed travel reading I find myself frequently drawn to authors whose work focuses upon a particular country or city. Orhan Pamuk’s relationship with Istanbul is certainly one of the great examples of such…
Where My Heart Used To Beat by Sebastian Faulks
Like Alice down the rabbit hole (if Alice was a 60-year-old man, and the rabbit hole was somehow New York and London and a remote island off the coast of France), the new Sebastian Faulks novel gets curiouser and curiouser…
Two Years Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
Scheherazade, that greatest narrator of fiction, may squirm at the thought of being so wistfully referenced in this new and sprawling tale of magic and philosophy, but then what other writer today would dare challenge the master storyteller except Rushdie?
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