Following on from our list of Australian debut highlights of the year, here are some of the debut novels by international authors that delighted, surprised and stayed with us in the past 12 months. 

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Irish writer Louise Kennedy’s debut novel is a firm favourite with Readings staff. Set in a small town near Belfast at the start of the Troubles in the 1970s, it follows a young teacher who – against her better judgement – is drawn into the world of a married Protestant barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. 

Tender, honest and filled with complex characters, Trespasses is a vivid snapshot of a community of ordinary people about to be torn apart by the tides of history. 

Vagabonds by Eloghosa Osunde

Debut Nigerian author Eloghosa Osunde dives into a torrent of magic, myth and humanity set among the streets of Lagos. Structured as a series of interlinked stories, each featuring a ‘vagabond’ or outsider, this novel explores romance, family, queerness and the insidious nature of corruption and oppression in the Nigerian city. Threaded through all the stories is Èkó, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo, who scatter trouble into these interconnected lives.

Vibrating with a life and rhythm that is undeniable, Osunde’s prose is wondrous to read. 

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend, who’s left Auckland for Argentina; Greta’s crushing on her fellow English tutor, who can’t even pronounce Greta’s surname. From their shared apartment, brother and sister must navigate the pitfalls of modern romance and the stormy currents of their eccentric Māori–Russian–Catalonian family. 

Debut author Rebecca K. Reilly has created a genuinely hilarious modern comedy with a rare and genuine warmth to it that will appeal greatly to fans of Diana Reid and Meg Mason.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

At 16 years old, Leila Mottley was the Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, California. At 17, she completed the manuscript for this gut-wrenching debut novel. 

Inspired by a real-life case of sexual assault by the Oakland police, Nightcrawling tells the story of a 17-year-old Black girl forced into the paths of those who would take advantage her – chief among them the corrupt police and justice systems. 

Though the premise is harrowing, Mottley imbues the spirit of her protagonist, Kiara, with resilience and humanity. What results is an unflinching and powerful look at Black girlhood and what communities owe to their most vulnerable and marginalised members.

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

Julia May Jonas skewers the world of academia with this cutting campus novel about an English professor whose husband (the chair of the English department) is facing a slew of allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate relationships with past students. With a withering drollness, Jonas dissects the sexual politics of our current moment through the eyes of an older woman who has witnessed generational change with approval but cannot fully embrace the new rules of engagement. 

Vladimir is a funny and smart (but never sanctimonious) examination of the shifting nuances around power and desire.

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

Claire Kohda breathes fresh, undead life into the vampire story with this novel about a 23-year-old art graduate/vampire of Japanese, Malaysian, and British descent, who’s trying to navigate a vampire mother in aged care and a new job in a gallery with a predatory (in the human sense) boss. 

Woman Eating aches with existential concerns that will resonate with contemporary younger readers, exploring themes of loneliness, colonisation, powerlessness and agency. This is a clever, subversive take on a young woman’s appetites as she aims to find her place in the world. 

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archaeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle only to unearth an ancient virus that will reshape the world for generations. As we follow a cast of characters over hundreds of years, we witness the various ways humanity struggles to rebuild itself. 

Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey – spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies – to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit. This is a heartfelt work of grand imagination for fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

Set over one week in a run-down apartment building on the edge of a run-down Mid-western town, this ambitious debut captures you with its bold voices, sly humour and brilliantly drawn characters. 

The main character, Blandine, is a bright, beautiful teenager – a scholarship drop-out who has recently ‘aged out’ of foster care. Set around her is a large cast of eccentrics, burn-outs and ghosts, worn down by the demands of post-industrial American life and all vividly captured with the sharp insight of Gunty’s authorial pen. 

Gunty won British book retailer Waterstone’s Debut Fiction Prize for The Rabbit Hutch, and our reviewer was equally rapturous about the author’s talents. At its heart, this gorgeous, provocative tale is about searching for human connection in the face of alienation.

Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine

Irish author Emilie Pine impressed readers with her 2018 memoir-in-essays Notes to Self. Ruth and Pen is her debut novel, set over one day in 2019 in Dublin and featuring two perspectives: Ruth, a therapist in her 30s whose marriage is in crisis, and Pen, a teenage girl intent on declaring her feelings to her crush after a climate rally. 

Pine’s debut is charged with a bittersweet poignancy for the simple daily quest of living, and through its two characters, explores what it takes to navigate our inner and outer landscapes. 

Wahala by Nikki May

Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Nikki May’s debut concerns the lives of three British Nigerian women whose close-knit friendship was forged at university. When a fourth woman, the glamourous Isobel, arrives, she throws into sharp relief each of the friends’ secret anxieties and regrets. But what does Isobel really want?

With a keen eye for the cultural specificities of the British Nigerian community, and a deep understanding of the universal bonds of female friendship, May has spun a darkly comic, fast-paced drama that will have readers laughing and gasping in disbelief.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga and her brother, Pedro ‘Prieto’ Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the go-to wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite the glamour of their professional lives, Olga and Prieto’s family history is much less rosy, and when their estranged mother (now a radical activist) comes barrelling back into the picture, things come to a head.

Xochitl Gonzalez captures lighting in a bottle with this richly layered and warm story that takes aim at political and financial hypocrisy, seduces with a swoon-worthy romance and explores the effects of gentrification on Puerto Rican communities in the United States.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

In her satirical debut, Elaine Hsieh Chou impresses with a blistering send-up of the privileges and pratfalls of the American Academy and campus politics. When PhD student Ingrid Yang makes a surprising discovery about the subject of her research, she and her friend Elaine set off on a search for the truth, doggedly pursued by Ingrid’s academic nemesis and fellow researcher, Vivian Vo. 

With razor-sharp commentary about identity, appropriation, complicity and the hierarchy of ideas, Disorientation is a funny, insightful work about coming into your own consciousness. 

 Read review

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, Selby Wynn Schwartz’s polyphonic debut reimagines the internal lives and careers of prominent feminists, sapphists and writers, including Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Eleanora Duse, Lina Poletti, Josephine Baker, Virginia Woolf and more. 

Lush and poetic, this series of patchwork vignettes explores how these artists forged queer identities, building on one another’s work and ideas to claim the right to their own lives. It is a luminous meditation on creativity, education and identity.

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson

The love story at the heart of Greenland is that between English writer E.M. Forster and Egyptian tram driver Mohammed el-Adl, which occurred when Forster was sent to Alexandria during the First World War. Around this love affair, Donaldson adds the meta-narrative layer of Kip Starling, a young Black, British aspiring novelist who has been rejected by multiple publishers and has three weeks to revise his historical novel about this relationship.

Donaldson writes a beautiful literary novel-in-a-novel, highlighting the parallels between Kip and his characters. Though this is a short book, it is crammed with big ideas about identity, place, desire and the pressures of being a writer in a restless, ever-shifting world.