Fiction Fiction The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Kiran Desai This Booker-shortlisted novel is about work as much as it is about the relationship between Sunny Bhatia and Sonia Shah, whose families... Read more »
Fiction Fiction Dream Count Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dream Count is billed as “a publishing event 10 years in the making”. Composed of the interlocking stories of four women, Chiamaka (“Chia”), Zikora, Omelogor... Read more »
Fiction Fiction Cursed Daughters Oyinkan Braithwaite Repeat a family story often enough, and it becomes a kind of legend – or a curse. The Faloduns at the centre of Cursed Daughters share... Read more »
Fiction Fiction What We Can Know Ian McEwan McEwan’s future-set new novel describes the “Inundation” of Britain after a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a... Read more »
Fiction Fiction The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Ocean Vuong’s second novel is a 416‑page tour of the edgeland between aspirational fantasy and self-deception. It opens with a long slow pan over... Read more »
Literary fiction Fiction Audition Katie Kitamura The opening pages of Katie Kitamura’s fifth novel establish a nervy, fraught physicality. The narrator is meeting a man at a restaurant. She is anxious, hyper-vigilant.... Read more »
Memoir A Jamaican childhood The Possibility of Tenderness Jason Allen-Paisant The Possibility of Tenderness Jason Allen-Paisant A Jamaican childhood Go these days to any independent bookshop or art gallery or zine fair,... Read more »
Fiction A visionary epic The Third Realm Karl Ove Knausgård The Third Realm Karl Ove Knausgård A visionary epic The Third Realm is quite different from the first two books in Knausgård’s... Read more »
Biography The head that wears the crown A Voyage Around the Queen Craig Brown A Voyage Around the Queen Craig Brown The head that wears the crown As Craig Brown recognises, throughout... Read more »