The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99)On the last day of his life – how does he know? He just does – Norwegian ferryman... Read more »
“I had become a living cliche: the cantankerous bookseller,” the narrator declares a third of the way through John Tottenham’s debut novel. “No book or movie that included a scene set in... Read more »
Karl Ove Knausgård’s Morning Star cycle may turn out to be even larger in scope than his six-volume autofictional bestseller, My Struggle. Four books deep, this gargantuan work of supernatural existentialism is... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryI was six, and in the lounge in my first home in Manchester. I was sitting cross-legged on the grey carpet, in 1977, when I finished reading whichever of Enid Blyton’s brilliant Secret Seven... Read more »
Halfway through Liars, the story of a new relationship that becomes a marriage, our protagonist, Jane, is asked by a neighbour: “Why are you with him?” It’s a question that has been... Read more »
Rabih Alameddine has won the National book award for fiction for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), a darkly comic saga spanning six decades in the life... Read more »
In 2015, I decided to write a novel about Dr Hans Asperger, who worked at the University Children’s Hospital in Vienna during the second world war. My interest was sparked by two nonfiction books:... Read more »
Eva Ibbotson, a doyenne of 1980s romantic fiction, once said self-deprecatingly that her books were aimed at “old ladies and people with flu”. To which Ella Risbridger, who is in her early 30s,... Read more »
There Is no Antimemetics Division by qntm (Del Rey, £18.99)There have been stories before about mysterious alien entities existing, hidden, within our world, and secret government departments tasked with protecting humanity. This... Read more »