International fiction
The Seamstress of Sardinia by Bianca Pitzorno
I think the beauty of The Seamstress of Sardinia is that it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Bianca Pitzorno’s unadorned storytelling brings an honest and sympathetic clarity to the story of a modest young woman living a, mostly…
Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
The young female narrator of this debut novel set in China and America in the 1880s is kidnapped in its first sentence. Shocking as this act is, it proves to be merely anotherdownwards step in a sequence of increasingly bad…
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
Mieko Kawakami is not a writer who misses an opportunity to make a bold statement, and this is certainly the case with her new novel. Her two previous books, Breasts and Eggs and Heaven, told profound, powerful stories about…
Companion Piece by Ali Smith
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, her series of subtly interconnected state-of-the-nation novels, was among the most ambitious and impressive fictional projects of recent years. When taken together the novels had a grandness – not just in scale and structural beauty…
Sundial by Catriona Ward
Catriona Ward’s latest psychological horror, Sundial, is a harrowing, grisly tale of the bonds between mother and daughter, and how the buried secrets of the past are reflected in our children. The book employs dual perspectives; on one side…
Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin & Anton Hur (trans.)
In 1970s rural South Korea, two girls share a moment of physical intimacy in a minari field. One of the girls vehemently rejects the other, setting her on a path of destructiveloneliness and repressed desire. We meet the rejected girl…
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Described succinctly as ‘the millenial take on the vampire novel’, Claire Kohda’s debut novel Woman, Eating is both exactly that and so much more. Written in the first person, this is the story of Lydia: a young woman who is…
Devil House by John Darnielle
John Darnielle is the singer and songwriter for the astonishing band, the Mountain Goats. Tremendously prolific, Darnielle has released more than 20 albums, and in my very humble opinion, is one the greatest songwriters in this dimension, with lyrics that…
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
Imagine winning one of the world’s biggest literary awards with your debut. In 2020, Scottish author Douglas Stuart became one of just six authors to win the Booker Prize for a first novel. Shuggie Bain was one of those miracles…
Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
It’s perhaps inevitable that a book written by an author in lockdown and grappling with a virtual Zoom book tour during a pandemic would feature a character in that exact scenario. In Sea of Tranquility, Olive Llewellyn is that…
Browse our reviews by category
