International fiction
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Scour the formal historical record and you won’t find much about the woman known as Marie de France beyond information that she lived in the 12th century and wrote a series of Breton lais, or short romantic rhymes. But in…
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
‘I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times. This will be my last try…’ So begins Claire Vaye Watkins’ crackling original novel I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness. Its narrator is a woman called Claire Vaye…
The Magician by Colm Tóibín
Until recently, the only book I’d read by Colm Tóibín was his excellent nonfiction work on the fathers of Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know. A few weeks ago, I found myself listening…
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ It has been almost 20 years since I first read that opening line of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and it still gives me goosebumps. I remember reading the novel late into…
Travelling Companions by Antoni Jach
My brother Luke says this thing: ‘It’s not the destination. It isn’t even the journey. It’s the company.’ Antoni Jach’s novel Travelling Companions, which presents a particularly untroubled dream-vision of pre- pandemic European travel, bears this out. While it…
The Magpie Wing by Max Easton
Max Easton is the creator of the brilliant podcast Barely Human, which explores the underground music scene and the musicians who fascinate him. (The episodes on Randy Newman, Poly Styrene and R.L. Burnside are well worth checking out.) Music is…
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Harlem Shuffle, centres on Ray Carney, a furniture store owner who is doing a bad job of flying straight. His father was an infamous crook, and despite Ray’s best efforts to jettison the family legacy…
The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir & Lauren Elkin
In 1954, five years after she published The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir wrote a short novel. Beauvoir believed the unnamed work wasn’t serious enough to publish in her lifetime, leaving it to her adopted daughter and literary executor…
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Calling Sally Rooney’s third novel (in only four years) highly anticipated doesn’t quite cut it. Thanks to the immense global success of both Conversations with Friends and Normal People, which topped bestseller charts and spawned film and TV adaptations…
Believe in Me by Lucy Neave
When American teenager Sarah is sent away on a mission with the married pastor of her family’s church, Sarah’s mother, Greta, tells her: ‘don’t worry about us. Be as free as a bird, as a fox. You know?’ These parting…
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