Best international fiction of 2024
Every year our staff vote for their favourite books of the past year. Here are the best international fiction books of 2024, as voted by Readings' staff!
The titles are displayed alphabetically by author.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
‘American author Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel Headshot followed up on the success of her Whiting Award-winning short story collection, Belly Up, with a Booker Prize longlisting. Headshot has been variously described as “poignant and visceral” (The Guardian); “the complete deal” (The Observer); “fresh and strong and sinuous” (The New York Times); and “a knockout of a debut” (Chicago Review of Books). It's a tightly woven novel about eight teenage girl boxers fighting for the (fictional) Daughters of America Cup in a rundown warehouse in Nevada.
Set over two days, with glimpses into the competitors’ futures, Bullwinkel’s focus on the interior battles of the boxers and the intimate physicality of the action in the ring is vividly specific and gripping, offering a portrait of contemporary young womanhood in America unlike any other.’
– Elke Power, editor of Readings Monthly
Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin
‘Anna lives in an apartment in the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris. It’s 2019. In her late 30s, she’s recently suffered a painful miscarriage and has deferred returning to work as a psychotherapist. Anna becomes friends with the younger Clementine, part of a feminist collective ...
In 1972, Florence is in the midst of her own feminist awakening, living in the same Belleville apartment. Studying psychotherapy, Florence attends Jacques Lacan’s legendary seminar series with her pregnant friend and sometimes with her married lover Max.
In this space filled with ghosts that echo across history – and in the hammering of household renovations – Florence and Anna both discover the limits of fidelity and how their unconscious desires interact with the boundaries of their physical world.
Like its title suggests, Elkin has erected a solid framework under which some kind of transformative marvel is performed. I couldn’t put it down.’
– This is an edited quote from Joanna Di Mattia’s review for Readings Monthly
James by Percival Everett
‘James by Percival Everett is narrated by Jim, the escaped enslaved man who accompanies Huck Finn when the two flee down the Mississippi River in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. While on the river, James narrates his version of the events with which we are familiar from Mark Twain’s seminal text.
This book encapsulates the feeling we have as readers: that we have discovered a secret power, and we are both empowered and defined by what we read and write. Normally, I would be daunted by the task of attempting to review a book by an intellect this towering, but in this case, I feel most of us are underqualified. I feel that this haunting novel will linger in my memory for a long time. It’s definitely a contender for book of the year.’
– This is an edited quote from Pierre Sutcliffe’s review for Readings Monthly
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
‘ ... [W]hen I finished reading Our Evenings I felt quite bereft. I can’t recall when I was last so invested in the lives of fictional people. Some tears were shed.
In his seventh novel, Alan Hollinghurst writes the life of Dave Win, from youth to old age, roughly 60 years. Like most Hollinghurst protagonists, Dave is gay and middle-class, an outsider to British power and privilege. He’s also a person of colour, the son of a white English mother and a Burmese father he has never known.
Dave’s first cue to his difference arrives on the cusp of puberty, when he commences a scholarship to a local public school. An Oxford education awaits, but Dave’s true love is acting ... Politics happens in the background, humming along, muted. Much is suggested by what is barely said.
Our Evenings is a masterclass of characterisation, restraint, and compassion, and certainly one of the outstanding novels of the year.’
– This is an edited quote from Joanna Di Mattia’s review for Readings Monthly
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
‘Caoilinn Hughes is touted as a major new literary voice ... and while I don’t usually like to compare novels, I was dazzled and absorbed by this book in the same way I was reading Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting.
One might say this is a contemporary fairytale, the story of four Irish sisters orphaned in their youth after their parents died in tragic circumstances ... However, the novel is firmly set in the present and as adults the sisters lead separate, distant lives ... The sisters are forced to reconnect after Olwen [the eldest] unexpectedly vanishes from her home ... and for the first time in years all four sisters, one with a baby, end up together in an isolated rural shack on the Irish coast.
What ensues is a deep dive into the mechanics of a dysfunctional family, yet also so much more ... ’
– This is an edited quote from Danielle Mirabella’s review for Readings Monthly
All Fours by Miranda July
‘[Miranda] July is a multi-talented artist, performer, and writer, and it seems wrong to compare what she does to anyone else, so I won’t try, but her unique perspective attracts a cult-like following. In All Fours, her second novel, July looks to the life stage usually referred to as ‘midlife’, that is to say the phase where one might realise that there is more time receding in the rear-view mirror and less of it stretching out on the road ahead ... With the support of her partner and child and an unexpected windfall of cash, [the narrator] takes a life break and sets out on a road trip which becomes something more like an absurdist exercise in self-discovery. This book is funny and crazy, full of sex and desire and interior design, and contains so many brilliant one-liners, blistering observational passages and surprising plot twists, it’s thrilling.’
– This is an edited quote from Alison Huber’s review for Readings Monthly
Intermezzo (special edition hardback) by Sally Rooney
Also available in paperback
‘In her latest novel, Intermezzo, Sally Rooney has written a highly original permutation of the love story.
The book centres on two brothers: Ivan and Peter Koubek. On the surface, it seems like the brothers have little in common. Peter is a successful Dublin lawyer, who despite his chaotic social life is in firm command of the profession. Ivan is a 22-year-old chess genius; socially awkward and unsure what path he wants to take in life, he has lost the love he once had of playing competitive chess.
Throughout the novel, there is Rooney’s mastery of dialogue and the way characters push-and-pull at each other is always surprising. In chess, an Intermezzo is a move a player makes that is unexpected, when there is an obvious move to be made. Rooney’s characters are often doing this, saying or doing the unexpected thing that makes their interactions wholly more believable and engrossing.’
– This is an edited quote from Joe Rubbo’s review for Readings Monthly
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
‘ ... Long Island reunites readers with Eilis Lacey, the heroine from [Colm Tóibín's] wildly successful novel Brooklyn, published in 2009 ...
Twenty years have passed since Eilis left Ireland and returned to Brooklyn to resume her life with her husband, Tony Fiorello. Eilis is living in Long Island with her husband and her two teenage children. Tony’s dream of building five houses on a piece of land with his brothers has come true and Eilis is ensconced in the Fiorello compound. However, a shocking discovery quickly upends the life they have built and sends Eilis back to her hometown of Enniscorthy.
This is, like Brooklyn, a quiet novel. But the lives of its characters are so enthralling, the writing so elegant and empathetic to their plight, that I had a hard time putting this book down. It is a heartbreaking novel, and always surprising. I strongly recommend it.’
– This is an edited quote from Joe Rubbo’s review for Readings Monthly
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
‘Described as a health resort horror story, this novel conjures thoughts of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, as Olga Tokarczuk deconstructs and riffs on the 1924 classic. The Empusium is set in 1913 and centres on Mieczysław Wojnicz. Wide-eyed and sick with tuberculosis, he retreats to the mountains to a dwelling adjacent to the sanatorium known as The Guesthouse for Gentlemen, where he meets the other sickly yet pompous residents. They partake of a mysterious, hallucinogenic liqueur and discuss all the most important questions of the day ...
While the horrors inside the guesthouse are clear, the ones outside are less so. Something frightening and seemingly intangible lurks in the surrounding mountains, watching their movements and deciding their fates.
A suspenseful and comedic feminist parable, The Empusium is concerned with the lengths to which we go to shield ourselves from certain truths about the world, and the consequences when those truths inevitably rear their heads.’
– This is an edited quote from Joe Murray’s review for Readings Monthly
Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton
‘A self-proclaimed domestic goddess turned murderer and a quietly obsessive journalist desperate for a story meet in a prison to discuss boeuf bourguignon. They couldn’t have anything in common, right?
Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a twisty and quirky thriller that delves deep into the connections between food, gender and domesticity to ask: what is the true power of a good meal? Rika is a reporter accustomed to late nights and convenience store ramen, determined to make it in the man’s world of publishing. Manako Kajii is her ticket to a big story: reticent, opinionated and obsessed with food, Manako stands accused of luring three men in with her delicious cooking and murdering them for their money. Indeed, food is the only reason she’s talking to Rika, as a simple question about beef stew initiates a correspondence that draws Rika deep into Manako’s world of taste and pleasure ... ’
– This is an edited quote from Joe Murray’s review for Readings Monthly
