International fiction
Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell
While some readers may only know Rainbow Rowell for her young adult bestsellers, she is just as good when writing for adults. This is exemplified by Slow Dance, a tender and heartfelt novel of rekindled friendship (but you can…
Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa & Stephen Snyder (trans.)
After the death of her father, 12-year-old Tomoko is sent to live with her aunt’s family in their colonial-style house in Ashiya, a Japanese town nestled between the mountains and the sea. She spends a year there, befriending Mina, her…
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Behind You Is the Sea is a moving collection of short stories following the lives of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. The work transcends generations, each story offering a vivid glimpse into the lives of immigrants from the ’90s…
My First Book by Honor Levy
My First Book is a collection of short stories loaded with satirical musings that playfully interact with the online world, language and culture of those who could be thought of as ‘terminally online’. A generational hot take on adolescence, love…
Perfume & Pain by Anna Dorn
Like Etat Libre d’Orange’s cult scent Sécrétions Magnifiques, Anna Dorn’s Perfume & Pain straddles the boundary between intoxicating and uncomfortable. Messy, indulgent and, at times, disarmingly earnest, it’s a love letter to lesbian pulp fiction, reality television, perfume and women…
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
After a decade of dating a man she now knows is a megalomaniac, Margaret (‘Moddie’) Yance moves back to her hometown to reconnect with old ‘friends’ and forget the number of years she wasted on her narcissistic boyfriend. She was…
Hard Copy by Fien Veldman & Hester Velmans (trans.)
The workplace novel is having a quiet moment, and it’s hard to resist the set-up of this example of the genre, in which its narrator, a lowly administrator at a start-up, develops an obsession with her only ally and confidante…
Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson
Words feel paltry, inadequate to synthesise the essence of Anyone’s Ghost. Doomed romance is spelled out from the start; the prelude is a bitter omen of the inevitability of the end and how the people we love and hate…
Spontaneous Acts by Yoko Tawada & Susan Bernofsky (trans.)
Patrik lives in Berlin as a literary researcher with an appetite for opera, the poetry of Paul Celan, and coffee that must be served with milk. While the city is just coming back to life after lockdown, Patrik finds it…
Misrecognition by Madison Newbound
Elsa has a problem with obsessions. She’s failing to recover from the abrupt breakup with the polyamorous couple she was dating. Then, after watching a romantic queer film set in Italy, Elsa falls in love with the lead actor, with…
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