International fiction
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
In The Women of Troy, Pat Barker returns to the bloodied sands of ancient Greece to continue the story of her acclaimed retelling of The Iliad, The Silence of the Girls. The novel begins in the belly…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
A radio play, a trilogy of five (or six, depending on whether you count Eoin Colfer’s 2009 contribution to the series), a TV series, multiple comic books and stage shows, a video game, a film, and now a new illustrated…
The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta
Never mind the view, this whole misbegotten year has been exhausting. I don’t know about you but lockdown after lockdown has scrambled my hidden wiring into a truly cursed tangle of nerves, anxiety and emotions, so I was relieved and…
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Ada is 16 years old and struggling to fit in. She’s lost her mother, Defne, and she can’t connect with her father, Kostas. He’s physically present but emotionally distant. One day at her school in North London, Ada snaps, screaming…
Mrs March by Virginia Feito
We are completely alone with Mrs March; we are privy only to her view, her inner meanderings and her actions. Mrs March lives in an Uptown New York apartment with her son and her famous novelist husband, George March. She…
The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura & Lucy North
Not very much of consequence happens in this compelling but odd little novel – until it does, with a speed that knocks the reader off balance.
The story begins some way into our narrator’s obsession with the Woman in the…
The Liquid Land by Raphaela Edelbauer & Jen Calleja
Austrian writer Raphaela Edelbauer studied Sprachkunst – Language Art – in Vienna. Her disturbing metafiction, Das flüssige Land, was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2019 and this English translation by Jen Calleja has been published as The…
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade
Thirty-three-year-old Amadeo Padilla is unemployed, alcoholic and still living with his mother, Yolanda. One day, while Yolanda is away holidaying in Las Vegas, Amadeo comes home to find his pregnant 15-year-old daughter, Angel, sitting on the doorstep. Having failed to…
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
‘It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.’ A great opening line: nervous, brittle, crackling withheat, with sweat, with real electricity and the threat of…
The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin
In Willy Vlautin’s The Night Always Comes, Lynette lives across the road from the Interstate 5 in Portland, with her Mum and her brother Kenny, who has an intellectual disability. She works at a bakery by day and as…
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