International fiction
Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
Lee Lai’s Stone Fruit finds queer couple Bron and Ray at a turning point in their relationship, but the Tuesdays they spend looking after Ray’s six-year-old niece Nessie provide a cherished respite. On these days, the three can disappear into…
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Great Circle is a brilliantly researched 20th-century epic set across Montana, Alaska, New Zealand and wartime London.
In 1914 Marian Graves and her twin brother Jamie are rescued as tiny babies from a sinking ship. Their troubled mother deliberately disappears…
How to Kidnap the Rich by Rahul Raina
Working his way from being the son of an abusive chai seller to the ‘manager’ of one of India’s most beloved television game show hosts, Ramesh Kumar has done many things, including securing the top place at the All India…
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
My son-in-law’s cousin was married a few months ago to a Punjabi man she’d never met. The marriage, by her own report, is going well. For some of us in the West, the idea of an arranged marriage seems completely…
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
Whereabouts is Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel written in Italian – a remarkable feat considering she learnt the language later in life. It’s incredible then to discover that after the Italian publication Lahiri also translated the work back into English herself…
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
‘Jane Smith’ is a security consultant wary of search engines, who mistrusts all her colleagues, has disabled her smart-fridge as a privacy precaution, and keeps an emergency ‘go-bag’ in her gym locker even though she isn’t entirely sure why. So…
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor
We start in peril. This is Antarctica; the weather can, and will, change without a moment’s notice. This is the first season working at the bottom of the earth for Thomas and Luke whereas Robert, or ‘Doc’, is an old…
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy challenged my understanding of the novel. It is so unlike what I expect from plot or character, that I now no longer read contemporary fiction the same way. As described in the New Yorker, Cusk effected…
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood is known for – among other things – saying very clever things on the internet. The unnamed protagonist of her highly anticipated first novel seems to have the same gig: she reckons she’ll be best remembered for asking…
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
There’s been a flush of novels based around feminist retellings of ancient myths lately. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes depicted the fall of Troy as seen through the eyes of…
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