International fiction
Must-read international debut fiction from 2023
It's been a gargantuan year for debuts, both local and international. Below is a list of some of our favourite international debut fiction, published during 2023, to read this summer. You can explore must-read local debuts here.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars – the highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program inside America's private prison system. Harkening back to the time of gladiators, but watched by millions of live-stream subscribers, prisoners compete for the ultimate…
Best international fiction of 2023
Every year our staff vote for their favourite books of the past 12 months. Here are the best international fiction books of the year, as voted by Readings' staff, and displayed in alphabetical order by author.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Imagine a Squid Game-style gladiator program that combines elements of the ‘reality’ TV show and the ancient ‘sport’, but is run as a fight-to-the-death competition for freedom in the, near future, US prison system – and is…
Paul Lynch wins the Booker Prize 2023
Congratulations to Paul Lynch who has been named the winner of this year's Booker Prize for his fifth novel, Prophet Song. The Booker Prize is a £50,000 literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language, and published in the UK. Paul Lynch is the fifth Irish author to win the prize.
Prophet Song is an exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a country – and an ordinary family – on the brink…
The 2023 winners of the National Book Awards
The winners of this year's National Book Awards have been announced! Since 1950, the National Book Awards have been celebrating the best writing in America.
The winner for Fiction is Justin Torres for Blackouts
The winner for Nonfiction is Ned Blackhawk for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
The winner for Poetry is Craig Santos Perez for from unincorporated territory [åmot]
The winner for Translated Literature is Stênio Gardel for The Words That Remain …
Debut fiction to read this month
Before we race headlong into November new releases and the end of the year, we're taking the time to spotlight some of the wonderful debut novels that you may have missed over the past couple of months.
Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
This month we're reading fiction translated from Japanese, French, Norwegian, Korean & Italian.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (translated from Japanese by Eric Ozawa)
Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle…
The Goldsmiths Prize shortlist 2023
The shortlist for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize has been announced! This prize was established in 2013 to celebrate the qualities of creative daring and to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form. You can learn more about the history of the prize here.
The six titles shortlisted for the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize are:
Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold
The Long Form by Kate Briggs
Never Was by Gareth H. Gavin
…
My year of horror (reading)
Readings Carlton bookseller Jason Austin decided to return to a genre he’d enjoyed as a young reader and exclusively read horror books in 2023. Here he shares the results of his experiment.
Like a lot of kids, my love of reading began with comics, but sci-fi and horror were my gateway to reading long-form literature. Horror, in particular, was a genre I was hooked on as a child, and it started with Roald Dahl.
I don’t mean The BFG or…
Recommended short story collections
The last three months has seen an exciting array of short stories and anthologies ranging from some beloved long-time authors to those making their debut. Here is a selection of recent favourites that we hope you'll enjoy.
Normal Rules Don't Apply by Kate Atkinson
One of the world's great storytellers, and bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, conjures a captivating new book. In this first full collection since Not the End of the World,…
A spotlight on translated fiction this month
This month we're reading fiction translated from Japanese, Korean, German and Chinese.
Before We Say Goodbye by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot)
Toshikazu Kawaguchi's poignant Before We Say Goodbye explores the age-old question: what would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret menu time…
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