International fiction
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Peter, a man of faith, is sent on a mission to share the Bible and its teachings with an alien race of beings. Beatrice, his wife, must stay behind in a world that is rapidly unravelling. This is, in part…
Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera
Island of a Thousand Mirrors tells the stories of two Sri Lankan women, and their families, as they grow up in a country torn apart by civil war. The novel begins gently with the history of Yasodhara, a Sinhalese girl…
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Every moment is charged with illimitable potential in Ben Lerner’s great second novel, and every action pregnant, however involuntarily, with the played narratives of both history and personal past. As with Lerner’s accomplished debut, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04’s…
The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
In the 13 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many novelists have tackled their meaning and impact, both head on or obliquely, through their fiction. Think Netherland, Saturday or Falling Man. Iranian–American author Porochista Khakpour’s second novel is…
Us by David Nicholls
David Nicholls’s latest novel deals in a similar brand of situation and relationship comedy as his past novels (the bestselling One Day, and the earlier Starter for Ten and The Understudy), however where these previous books tended towards…
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
Good reads bring us into close encounters with remarkable characters – a metamorphosis takes place and we merge with that character, their lived experiences feeling as if they were our own. Nora Webster, the protagonist of Colm Tóibín’s latest masterwork…
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
Unlike Hilary Mantel’s historical fiction, such as Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, this unsettling collection of brilliantly oblique short stories is situated firmly in a modern England, observed through the eyes of Britain’s peripheral people. From closeted…
Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Some Luck may be Jane Smiley’s fourteenth novel, but it’s the first work I’ve read of hers and, I have to say, it’s left me wanting to read more! Set in Iowa, in America’s Midwest, the novel follows a farming…
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
In Lila, Marilynne Robinson returns to Gilead – the setting of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead and the Orange Prize-winning follow-up Home – and to the characters that reside in this secluded town of refuge and religion. In the…
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels are relentless and ferocious, and wholly absorbing. With each new book, the story of Elena Greco and her friend, Lina Cerullo, intensifies, and in Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay the two women are now…
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