Contemporary fiction: literary and general

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Book SynopsisImpoverished Egyptian teacher Helmy is desperate to find a better life for himself, his wife and little boy, seeing no future at home in Cairo. He dreams of working in oil-rich Kuwait and its boom in construction being the answer, just like many thousands before him. He manages to borrow the huge cost of a visa and is at last on his way to Kuwait City. He has no idea of the hellish nightmare, instead of the dream, that awaits him – the relentless summer sun and temperature of 56ºC and more, the choking dust and sweat, having to do construction work instead of teaching. And always, no money, and no answers from the many officials that he comes up against. Instead of achieving his dream, he falls into trap after trap. The author is himself a character in the novel, an engineer with the construction company who is writing a novel about the humiliating and degrading experiences of the migrant foreign workers arriving in Kuwait to make their fortunes. In the Preface to the novel, author Taleb Alrefai writes: "The novel casts lights on the lives of thousands of workers who come to the Gulf states with dreams of money and wealth, but who are confronted with the harshness of a desolate reality. It exposes specifically the suffering of migrant workers in Kuwait, be they Arabs or foreigners, and how their every moment is shaped by need, injustice and cruelty. Some commit suicide, but that has no effect on the work on site under the blazing sun that’s like the lash of hell. "Almost a historical document on my life and the lives of the workers with whom I lived for fifteen years, Shadow of the Sun presents a human landscape set in and reflecting Kuwait."

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Book Synopsis"Smart, fierce, and poignant: perhaps the most exciting novel yet by this very talented writer." Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West and The Reluctant FundamentalistA Young Pakistani photographer and his American born Pakistani-German lover travel from California to Pakistan in an attempt to exorcize their pasts, in order to build their shared future. Up in the glaciers of Northern Pakistan, a tragedy at a mountain lake entwines the fates of the two lovers with the people they encounter there: Miryam, a nomad, travelling with her family into the mountains to escape persecution, and Irfan, haunted by ghosts and hoping that the mountains may offer him a reprieve from his troubles. An expansive look at the intersection of cultures and what happens at those intersections, Thinner Than Skin is a powerful and moving read.

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Book SynopsisIn Bolt from the Blue, Jeremy Cooper, the winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, charts the relationship between a mother and daughter over the course of thirty-odd years. In October 1985, Lynn moves down to London to enrol at Saint Martin’s School of Art, leaving her mother behind in a suburb of Birmingham. Their relationship is complicated, and their primary form of contact is through the letters, postcards and emails they send each other periodically, while Lynn slowly makes her mark on the London art scene. A novel in epistolary form, Bolt from the Blue captures the waxing and waning of the mother-daughter relationship over time, achieving a rare depth of feeling with a deceptively simple literary form.Trade Review‘A novel written in epistolary form, Cooper has maximised the potential of this literary convention to achieve a work of great depth and quiet power. Over three decades, a mother and her artist daughter communicate only by letters, excavating their relationship as it evolves with melancholic, astute precision. At times spellbinding and mesmerising, the work also proves provocative and inspirational. As much a love letter to the lost art of letter-writing as it is a thirty year-long dialogue of familial love, Cooper has produced an understated book that nonetheless resonates powerfully. This book is deeply sensitive to the ebb and flow of relationships over time and the way love is disguised, expressed and experienced, and it achieves that elusive dream of all authors and finds new meaning in the recording of life.’ — Helen Cullen, Irish Times‘Bolt from the Blue is a venturesome, epistolary fiction spanning over 30 years.’ — Catherine Taylor, Financial Times‘A novel in epistolary form, the writer and art historian’s latest work is both an intimate account of a mother-daughter relationship and a lively history of London’s art scene. It is October 1985 when Lynn moves to the capital to study at Saint Martin’s, later making a successful career as an artist. She and her mother, who is back at home in Birmingham, begin a 30-year-long written relationship – via letters, postcards and emails. Their contact is irregular, and by turns affectionate and combative, making the relationship feel engrossing, deep and utterly true.’ — New Statesman‘Jeremy Cooper’s work is consistently haunting and layered, built on a refreshing trust in the reader to delve deeper behind the quiet insinuations of his prose. His work resists every modern accelerant, creating a patient and precise tonic. He is easily one of the most thoughtful British fiction writers working today.’ — Adam Scovell, author of How Pale the Winter Has Made Us‘Bolt from the Blue is a scintillating, wistful exploration of a good career and a poor relationship. Pithy yet expansive, it’s an essential, engrossing, illuminating read for any aspiring artist.’ — Sara Baume, author of Handiwork‘There’s a strange magic to Jeremy Cooper’s writing. The way he puts words together creates an incantatory effect. Reading him is to be spellbound, then. I have no idea how he does it, only that I am seduced.’ — Ben Myers, author of The Offing‘For a book that has the word ‘love’ on almost every page, Bolt from the Blue is endlessly inventive in showing us how love is often hidden, rationed, coded and disguised. It is an epistolary dialogue between a life of possibilities – as shown through the maturing vision of an artist – and one of disappointments, expressed through the wise and seasoned scepticism of the artist’s mother. Jeremy Cooper is a deft and sensitive writer who understands how to entrust his book to his characters.’ — Ronan Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

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Book SynopsisOn the trail of Roger, a brother who has gone north in search of football fame in Europe, Choupi, the narrator, takes with him the older Simon, a neighborhood friend. The bus trip north nearly ends in disaster when, at a pit stop, Simon goes wandering in search of grilled caterpillars. At the police station in Yaounde, the local cop tells them that a feckless boza who wants to go to Europe is not worth police effort and their mother should go and pleasure the police chief if she wants help! Through a series of joyful sparky vignettes, Cameroon life is revealed in all its ups and downs. Issues of life and death are raised but the tone remains light and edgy.Trade Review‘A Long Way From Douala reads like a love letter to Cameroon. A clever and compelling new voice in African literature’ (The Monthly Booking)‘There is something about the way the novel ends that is both fitting but leaves you hungry for more. I want to see where the characters go next and be swept away in Lobe’s poignant descriptions of Cameroon’ (Bad Form Magazine‘This very enjoyable novel with a loveable narrator is all about the journey, I for one, didn’t want him to arrive’ (Shiny New Books) 'Redolent with the sights, sounds and smells of modern Cameroon, this is in fact a classic road trip, a Homeric quest in which our two young heroes may not discover what they were seeking but learn a great deal about themselves, each other and the state of Africa. A jostling, poignant tale, it left me hungry for more' (Michela Wrong, author Borderlines and It's Our Turn to Eat) 'His eye is as compassionate as his characterisations are rich. I only wish this novel had been twice the length. You are in for a treat' (Patrick Gale) 'Max Lobe immerses us in the Cameroon of today... All this churns up the daily life of the novel's characters whose lives are narrated with humour and satire.' (Amnesty ) 'The role played by mothers, the fascination of football, and the influence of Boko Haram over daily life is chronicled with total delight' (Tribune de Geneve)

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Book SynopsisMarshall Sarjeant is born at the beginning of the 20th century in Paradise, Jamaica. As a young man, he is entrusted with a mythical quest to overcome a curse that has been put on his family. He must do this by returning to Africa from where family members were brought as slaves. Marshall's journey is a long, taking him first to wartime Liverpool and then, London where he marries and mixes with a clubland crowd of gamblers, musicians and politicians. In Africa, he finds a continent in the turbulent throes of attempting to escape a colonial past. Returning to Paradise, Marshall's life turns full circle in his epic mission to defeat the duppy, or ghost that started him on his voyage.Trade Review'Duppy Conqueror brims with humour and low comedy. It is a pleasing change from the wilfully ponderous treatment of historical memory in much contemporary post-colonial fiction' (TLS); 'This novel may well prove a landmark in British fiction in capturing a breadth of diasporic experience and a moment in empire' (GUARDIAN); 'This is a novel packed to the brim with layers of symbolism, individual and cultural memories, and fascinating historical stories. Reading it once just won't be enough' (THE INDEPENDENT)

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Book SynopsisIn the title story, Inspector Dreadlock Holmes and his sidekick Rudeyard Fly are sent for by the Criminal Investigation Department of Middleham-by-Sea - a little town known for tea shops, pet shops, and florists - in short, a rustic retreat for naughty weekends. Keen to kick-start their diversity policy, the Department sends for two Black cops who see this as a chance to prove their cross-cultural mettle and solve the brutal attack on Lord Montagu, a controversial political figure found unconscious with a courgette by his side. In other stories, an Anansi spider stows away on the Windrush, Cod and Chips are usurped by Chicken Tikka Marsala, and a white landscape gardener who admires Capability Brown has a mixed-race child, Cosmopolitan Brown, who is dispossessed by voices from history, including that of Martin Luther King. Surreal and playful, John Agard's stories reveal hidden truths that subtly change our view of who we are and where we come from.Trade Review'... If Agard had not already been forged in the roller-coaster aftermath of empire, there would be an urgent need for society to invent someone like him' FINANCIAL TIMES

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Book SynopsisThe narrator, Mwana, is a young man from Bantuland, living in Geneva. A graduate from a Swiss university, we first encounter Mwana waiting for a bus in the hills of Lugano gazing at a poster calling for "black sheep" to be sent home. Mwana's efforts to find work are fruitless until he lands an internship in an NGO campaigning against racial discrimination. The team is busy organising a demonstration against the black sheep poster. Mwana has one foot in each culture. He sees Swiss society through African eyes, with all its contradictions: its moderation, stunning landscapes and its eccentricities, but also its intolerance and inflexibility. He also casts a critical eye on his native Africa, the weight of its traditions and beliefs. Is belonging nowhere the price Mwana has to pay for these insights? Sad and playful Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside? is a moving reflection on the immigrant.

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Book SynopsisAnne’s diagnosis of terminal cancer shines a spotlight onto fractured relationships with her daughter and granddaughter, with surprising, heartwarming results. A moving, elegant and warmly funny novel by the Norwegian Anne Tyler. ‘Helga Flatland writes with such astuteness … Her portrayal of a fractured family trying to cope through emotional personal circumstances was perfect. I devoured this in two sittings and was overwhelmed with feelings for the characters’ Nina Pottell, Prima ‘Sometimes you simply don’t have words to express the beauty and experience of a book – this is one of them’ Louise Beech _______________ Anne’s life is rushing to an unexpected and untimely end. But her diagnosis of terminal cancer isn’t just a shock for her – and for her daughter Sigrid and granddaughter Mia – it shines a spotlight onto their fractured and uncomfortable relationships. On a spur-of-the moment trip to France the three generations of women reveal harboured secrets, long-held frustrations and suppressed desires, and learn humbling and heart-warming lessons about how life should be lived when death is so close. With all of Helga Flatland’s trademark humour, razor-sharp wit and deep empathy, One Last Time examines the great dramas that can be found in ordinary lives, asks the questions that matter to us all – and ultimately celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, in an exquisite, enchantingly beautiful novel that urges us to treasure and rethink … everything. For fans of Elena Ferrante, Maggie O’Farrell, Mike Gayle, Joanna Cannon, Sally Rooney and Carol Shields. _______________ ‘The most beautiful, elegant writing I’ve read in a long time. If you love Anne Tyler, you will ADORE this’ Joanna Cannon ‘Flatland is hailed as “the Norwegian Anne Tyler”, but, for me, she writes like Flatland, which is more than good enough’ Saga ‘A poignant and beautifully written story ... intimate, evocative and moving’ Kristin Gleeson ‘Helga Flatland possesses a pen made from fluent wisdom, subtle humour and elegance’ Carol Lovekin ‘Absolutely loved its quiet, insightful generosity’ Claire King 'So perceptive and clever' Rónán Hession ‘A thoughtful and reflective novel about parents, siblings and the complex – and often challenging – ties that bind them’ Hannah Beckerman, Observer ‘This is a super exploration of families that I’d urge you to read for the subtle prose, with well defined characters and a strong storyline’ Sheila O’Reilly ‘Love the sophistication, directness and tenderness of this book’ Claire Dyer ‘The most clear-eyed, honest, yet sympathetic examination of relationships that I have ever read’ Sara Taylor ‘The author has been dubbed the Norwegian Anne Tyler and for good reason … If you love books about dysfunctional families, you’ll love this’ Good Housekeeping ‘In quiet prose, Helga Flatland writes with elegance and subtle humour to produce a shrewd and insightful examination of the psychology of family and of loss’ Daily Express

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Book SynopsisA lyrical tale of family secrets and self-discovery. Denis knows his mother kept things from him. His godmother, Clemence, knows the truth. In rich, sensuous prose, Roberts interweaves Denis's search for answers with Clemence's memories of the time she spent working for Matisse.Trade Review‘A wonderful writer: one in possession of immense feeling’ * The Observer *‘Roberts writes with wit and honesty.’ * The Independent *‘A magnificent writer.’ * The Guardian * ‘Brimming with delights, as full of life and colour as Matisse’s cut outs. Beautifully written with many sharp and original ideas about life and loss and creativity. A novel of deep pleasures.’‘Lyrical, atmospheric, wonderful. This novel has all the romance of the most delicious hot French summer. No-one writes quite like Michèle Roberts.’‘One of Britain's best novelists.’ * Independent on Sunday *The story is alive with vivid women. * Financial Times *Impressive. * The Sunday Times *This lyrical tale of family secrets and self-discovery is heavenly. * Woman's Weekly *Roberts tells her tale carefully, in small brightly coloured segments that can’t help but recall the style of Matisse’s famous cut-out artworks, and with an eye for domestic detail so sumptuous you can almost feel the linen and smell the sage leaves. * Daily Mail *A subtle and delicate new work of fiction imagining the unsung lives of women in the orbit of Henri Matisse. * Mail on Sunday *A sumptuously written and life-affirming examination of what it is to be an artist, a woman, a feminist... * Literary Review *It’s a book to be read slowly, taking time to pause, remember, picture and dream. * The Scotsman *A tender exploration of friendship and love in its many forms. * The Tablet *Beautifully written * Woman *

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Book SynopsisIn 1916 a young woman, Rahvaema, leaves the forest community where she grew up, and sets off for a century-long adventure whose struggles and sufferings she could never have imagined. She becomes a campaigner for her Surelik language and culture, and in doing this she expands her horizons and is paradoxically drawn away from the language she loves and wants to defend. The novel confronts the personal costs of political activism and questions our ability to mould our future rationally and morally, whilst also suggesting that we have no choice but to attempt just that. A fortuitous coincidence of events allows her to establish an autonomous republic for her people, the Surelikud, but power brings no only opportunities but also compromises and betrayals. She lives too long and thus she lives to see her achievements crumble. The novel has has many themes, but the way progress is used or abused in order to worsen the living conditions of humanity is the primary one. Rahvaema is the first-person narrator but her ideas about progress are not necessarily the author's, but would be understandable in someone coming from her background.Trade Review[A Woman's War against Progress] is a majestic, always original work. I was most excited by passages where personalities drove stories, the relationships with Osip, for example, and with Andrei as interrogator. Giving the novel the voice of a 'First People' somebody opens a quite new way of feeling one's way into that Soviet period, too. All the parables and extended dialogues [are] well written, of course, and always striking in the social/political criticism they carry. But [they are] so massive and discursive that they slow everything down and feel like digressions, which they aren't. [It is suited to] the sort of intelligent reader in no hurry who would be happily captured and moved by The Woman. A Russian river of a novel. - Neal Ascherson ;; “I fear the readership for A Woman’s War against Progress may not be vast, but those who read it will find their minds stretched, challenged and enlarged by the experience. It’s a remarkable achievement, but I am not quite sure why I think that.” – James Robertson

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Book SynopsisA Sunday Independent Book of the Year Against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and Europe’s sexual revolution, the fates of two families in London and Beijing become unexpectedly intertwined, in this dazzling new novel from the author of Mrs Engels. In London, sisters Iris and Eva plan an attack on the West End theatre where their mother is playing the title role in Miss Julie; in Beijing, Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, rehearses a gala performance of her model ballet, which she will use to attack her enemies in the Party. As the preparations for these two performances unfold, these three ‘sisters’ find themselves bound together by the passions of love, by the obsessions of power, and by the forces of history. Exquisitely observed, relevant, and wise, The Sisters Mao shows us that the political is always personal.Trade Review‘McCrea’s portrait of Jiang Qing is a masterpiece of characterisation: at once monstrous and pitiable. The Sisters Mao is dazzlingly clever and original.’ -- Antonia Senior * The Times *‘The work of a master storyteller.’ -- Joseph O’Connor‘A capacious work of social realism … dazzlingly ambitious yet modestly human.’ -- Lara Feigel * The Guardian *‘A study of political madness … modifying the old cliche that the personal is political, the message here is a reminder that the political is always personal.’ -- Phil Baker * The Sunday Times *‘It is impeccably researched and he interweaves the personal and the political to great effect.’ -- Lucy Popescu * Financial Times *‘Manages to combine vast research with lightness of touch and superb insights.’ -- Caitriona Lally * Sunday Independent *‘McCrea’s observations are a joy … this is a novel worth taking time over, for readers anywhere on the political spectrum.’ -- Christopher Harding * The Telegraph *‘Written with McCrea’s trademark confidence and virtuosity, this is a sumptuous, winning book. Its characters are not so much drawn from life (Imelda Marcos makes an entrance) as strange revenants from a turbulent dream. Its high intelligence throws light everywhere, and suggestive shade.’ -- Sebastian Barry‘McCrea has conducted exceptionally deep research to conjure up nuanced, authentic portrayals of the worlds of the book — but the text carries his knowledge lightly, supporting rather than dominating the story. The Sisters Mao is the best sort of historical fiction; one that illuminates the contemporary moment with great insight. Profoundly brilliant, it will no doubt be a huge contender on the literary awards circuit, but also one that is pushed feverishly from reader to reader with excitement.’ -- Helen Cullen * The Irish Times *‘The tremors of Gavin McCrea’s prose thrillingly record what happens as a world spins off its axis, shattering public and private lives. This electrifying fiction confirms McCrea’s status among the leading novelists of his brilliant generation.’ -- Frank McGuinness, author of Someone Who'll Watch Over Me‘The Sisters Mao is a spectacular novel, utterly enthralling and insightful; every voice is penetrating, dazzling. In spite of the setting, it is full of relevance for these times; it manages to be both historically authentic and thrillingly contemporary. Gavin is a writer of extraordinary talent, and I cannot think of a kind of reader who I would not recommend this novel to.’ -- Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither‘Gavin McCrea is a wonderful writer: bold, innovative, and fiercely intelligent, and these qualities shine from this magnificent novel. I was enthralled from the first sentence to the last.’ -- Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers‘A sweeping political saga spanning East and West. McCrea’s confident and lucid prose gives us both the personal and the political. Mesmerising.’ -- Xiaolu Guo, author of A Lover’s Discourse‘Dynamic.’ -- Sebastian Barry * The Irish Times *‘The writing has an engrossing flow of energy, a vigour, and a flair which have the audacity of invention … Given its immensity and arguments the novel could invite comparison with some of the great Russian writers.’ -- Mary Leland * Irish Examiner *‘Major recommendation ... The incredible Gavin McCrea, beloved author of Mrs Engels, publishes his second novel, The Sisters Mao ... It’s profoundly brilliant!’ -- Helen Cullen‘Brilliantly chronicles the corrosive collision between the personal and the political.’ -- Jane Shilling * Daily Mail *‘A new novel that's so powerful I think it's going straight onto my shelf of favourite books. It's a moving, thrilling, and thoughtful story that will captivate you.’ -- Eric Karl Anderson * Lonesome Reader *‘Ideas flow ceaselessly and impact in unexpected ways in Gavin McCrea’s compendious novel.’ -- Neil Hegarty * The Irish Times *‘Ambitious … McCrea writes insightfully about mother-daughter dynamics, the power of theatre, and women’s roles in revolutionary movements.’ * Publishers Weekly *‘A stirring, perceptive exploration of radical politics … a sweeping portrait of three women shaped by fanaticism, dysfunctional families, intra-group sexism, and politics-as-performance … This excellent novel, populated by maddening, memorable characters, offers a timeless reminder of extremism's perils.’ -- Kevin Canfield * Minneapolis Star Tribune *

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Book SynopsisA poisoned breeze blows across the waves ... Operation Cauldron, 1952: Top-secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst. And one government scientist wrestles with his own inner anguish over the testing, even if he believes extreme deterrent weapons are needed. When a noxious cloud of plague bacteria is released into the path of a passing trawler, disaster threatens. Will a deadly pandemic be inevitable? A haunting exploration of the costs and fallout of warmongering, Donald S Murray follows his prize-winning first novel with an equally moving exploration of another little-known incident in the Outer Hebridean island where he grew up.Trade Review'A moving portrait of a place and its people ... a quiet, sad but brilliant novel.' Antonia Senior, Times, Book of the Month in best historical fiction; 'Set in [Murray's] native Lewis as firmly as the stones at Callanish ... it is so credibly drawn that the book is almost a ticket to the island ... it seems an even more impressive achievement than ever.' David Robinson, Books from Scotland; 'Shows yet again how a good novel is capable of making you think and feel at the same time … a rich and sympathetic portrayal of island life in all its diversity … timely and compelling … a novel to savour.' Allan Massie, Scotsman; 'A well-written and well-crafted novel from an author at the height of his powers.' Eric Macintyre, Oban Times

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Book Synopsis"One of the most provocative, intelligent and original novelists working in Britain today." Irvine Welsh. My dad taught us to be prepared for whatever was coming. He said we should know the facts about how long we could survive without food, water or fresh air, and to remember that we couldn't live at all without hope. It was better, he said, to be ahead of the game. Better to be ten years too early than one minute too late. That's why he did what he did, on that morning ... Inspired by her father's advance planning and her own ingenuity and courage, this is one teenage girl's survival guide for navigating life under a new, even more deadly pandemic from the confines of a prepper compound. Will she ride out the collapse of everything she knows, and how can she save her family - and sanity?Trade Review"I wasn’t sure there could be a great pandemic novel. Here it is." Ian Rankin; “One of the most provocative, intelligent and original novelists working in Britain today.” Irvine Welsh; “A terrific and gripping story… a masterclass in storytelling … echoes of Salinger’s Holden Caulfield … Haley is a triumph … often very funny … It’s unusual for a dystopian novel to be rich in humanity, but this one is. … Morrison has been recognized as the best or certainly most interesting Scottish novelist of his generation, and this is the best book he has yet written.” Alan Massie, The Scotsman; “A complex, thought-provoking drama about fake news, real fears and frayed family ties … both exciting and terrifying … a bold and compelling book by a writer whose creative risks continue to pay huge dividends.” Malcom Forbes, Herald; "Urgent and exciting, harnessing our current global anxiety with a beautifully observed family drama." Atom Egoyan; “Terrifying … a terrifically written thriller that puts a very contemporary dysfunctional family at the heart of a very contemporary dystopian reality.” Lynda Obst, Producer of Interstellar; “How To Survive Everything is a gritty and (tragically) cool novel. The collision of a broken family and a global pandemic, it reads as a survival guide and feels like (is) a warning.” David Shields; “A riot to read … occasionally extremely funny. The plot twists and turns at a spanking pace.” Charlotte Metcalf, Breakout Culture; “Acutely realised and perfectly pitched … poignant, heart-rending and hilarious … This is a beautiful book in many ways … an exploration of love in all its guises, emerging, enduring, failed, set against an all too real dystopian setting, full of broken people trying to endure. Highly recommended.” The Literary Shed; “One of our best living authors, his voice is unique, his style is magnificent and his imagination knows no bounds … Terrifying and harrowing, yet also deeply touching … Most certainly a novel of our time. One that will stay with me, and haunt me.” Anne Cater, Random Things Through My Letterbox; Praise for Nina X; "Sensational. Like nothing I've ever read. A tour de force" Ian Rankin; "Chilling. Compelling" Lionel Shriver; "An amazing book. There are few writers left in Britain who have his ambition, vision and empathy. Nina is marvellous creation and this is an important novel" Irvine Welsh; "Brilliant, funny, clever, inspired, really powerful and also moving. A literary tour de force." Fay Weldon; "Literary gold...Morrison has published his masterpiece." Sunday Times; "Convincing, moving and successful. It is also extremely funny... [Nina X explores] the boundaries of the self, the clash between extremes of historical attempts at collectivism and the hyper-individualism of contemporary society . . . It's Nina's voice...that really sets this book apart, as Morrison seeks to represent the deep traumas of Nina's upbringing.... Morrison asks us to examine what is meant by freedom and how not all forms of control are visible" Observer (Book of the Day); "Darkly, heartbreakingly funny, Nina X is an assured new work from an author writing with a justified confidence." The Irish Times; "The narrative voice in Nina X is an absolute triumph - completely unique and yet empathetic and familiar at the same time...At heart, this is an emotional story about trauma and survival, but it's funny along the way too... A wonderful, disturbing, brilliant book." The Big Issue; "A parable for our times. His most brutal and innovative novel. Challenging, horrific and visceral. Most importantly, apart from being humane and experimental, it is also deeply, deeply serious. Judges of Prizes, take note" Scotland on Sunday; "Nina's story hit me hard; both her ignorance and deprivation whilst isolated from the outside world and the shock of being exposed to it as an adult were brilliantly and movingly depicted. I am rarely convinced or comfortable with men portraying intimate female experience but this was handled with insight and sensitivity." The Literary Sofa; "An absorbing novel about a woman growing up in a Maoist cult." Choice; "Extraordinary ... harrowing ... bleak, but the light just pours in at the end." Tim Minchin

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Book SynopsisAn elegant young Lebanese man carrying diamonds in his bag is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel, a drug mule on the return journey. At the Basel train station, Hunkeler is waiting for him after a tipoff from the German police. The courier manages to get to the station toilet and flushes the stones away. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage worker, finds the diamonds in the pipes under the station. To him they mean wealth and the small hotel he always wanted to buy near his family village. To his older Swiss girl-friend Erika, employed at a supermarket checkout counter, the stones signify the end of their life together. She knows that Erdogan has a wife and children in Turkey. For the courier, finding the stones is a matter of life and death. His employers are on their way to "tidy things up". For Hunkeler the stones are the only way to get to the people behind the drug trade. They turn out to include not only the bottom-feeding drug gangs but bankers and politicians very high up the Basel food chain.

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Book SynopsisHe is the self-appointed sheriff of Raufarhöfn, a sleepy town in northern Iceland, and has everything under control. There’s no need to worry. Day by day, he treks the wide plains which surround the almost deserted village, hunts Arctic foxes and lays shark bait in the sea — to process the fish into the Icelandic fermented delicacy, hákarl. But inside Kalmann’s head, the wheels sometimes spin backwards. One winter, after he discovers a pool of human blood in the snow, the swiftly unfolding events threaten to overwhelm him. But with his naive wisdom and pure-hearted courage, he makes sure everything takes a turn for the better. There’s no need to worry. "It can get pretty dark under a polar bear." KalmannTrade Review"Schmidt’s novels show a sensitivity to how the accumulation of seemingly small events makes up the drama of human life. In his recent works, he has built literary bridges between his birth country Switzerland, and Iceland, the country he lives in. In them, as elsewhere, he proves that it is by telling our shared histories and sharing our individual stories that we overcome being strangers and instead meet eye to eye as citizens of a single world." Sjón

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Book SynopsisHelsinki, June 1953, at the heart of the Cold War. Hella, now a reluctant private investigator, has been asked by her former boss at the Helsinki murder squad to do a background check on a member of the Finnish secret services. Not the type of job Hella was hoping for, but she accepts it on the condition that she is given access to the files concerning the roadside death of her father in 1942, at a time when Finland joined forces with Nazi Germany in its attack against the Soviet Union. German troops were sent to Finland, the Gestapo arrived in Helsinki and German influence on local government was strong, including demands for the deportation of local Jews.Colonel Mauzer, his wife and other family members were killed by a truck in a hit and run incident. An accident, file closed, they said. But not for Hella, whose unwelcome investigation leads to some who would prefer to see her stopped dead in her tracks.Praise for Katja Ivar:'A captivating first novel… ‘My dear girl,’ her patronizing boss instructs, ‘justice in a cold climate is not a natural phenomenon’. But the stubborn and resourceful Sgt. Mauzer seems just the police officer to deliver it.' — Wall Street Journal'The misdirection and manipulation of the evidence is worthy of Agatha Christie, but the quirky humour is Katja Ivar’s own. Ultimately, though, it is her portrait of Helsinki — 'a city of lost souls’ — that is most impressive.' — The Times

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Book SynopsisFor Inspector Hunkeler the New Year begins with a most unwelcome phone call. He is summoned back to Basel from his holiday to unravel a gruesome killing in a gardening allotment on the city's outskirts. An old man known as Anton Fluckiger has been shot in the head and found hanging from a butcher's hook from the roof of his garden shed - like butchers hang the carcasses of dead animals. Hunkeler must deal not only with the quarrelsome tenants of the allotment but with the challenges of investigating a murder that has taken place outside his jurisdiction, across the French border in Alsace. The clues lead to the Emmental in Berne, and then events from the last weeks of the Second World War in Alsace come to light, the wounds of which have never healed in the region.

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Book Synopsis"I wrote five days a week for a year, no more than a page, writing only for the length of the analytic hour, fifty minutes, following Freud's model of train travel for his theory of free association, acting 'as though, for instance, [you were] a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views [...] outside'. Many of my women character's names begin with A: their first names; there are few surnames, save those of the secondary male characters. . Some of these women exist or existed, others are from fiction, or write fiction. Some are friends or acquaintances. None are credited but a keen reader could recognise many of them. I invented nothing. I am the aleph."Trade Review"Sharon Kivland is a phenomenal writer, thinker and artist." Ali Smith

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Book SynopsisBack in print after two decades, Junglist tells the compelling, comic, stream-of-consciousness story of four young Black men coming of age among the raves and Jungle music scene in London during the 1990s. Layered with poetic verse, prose and humour, this cult classic of underground British fiction documents the rollercoaster ride of a weekend spent raving during Jungle’s cultural takeover in the summer of 1994. Jungle, with its booming basslines and Jamaican patois, burst from the pirate radio stations and mixtapes into cavernous clubs, pulling a generation of Black British ravers with it. Originally written as a way to document street culture as it became a feature of London, charting a time when working-class kids, both Black and white, merged to dance as "one family", Junglist is both a testament to Black British sound system culture and a rawthentic account of inner-city life.Trade Review‘‘A brilliant, neglected text of London gnosis, backstreet Modernism.""The world's first "Jungle novel", and a real headtrip... here is a living language, taking on new and weird shapes from its concrete habitat.""An amazing document of what London and UK clubbing was like at this time... Like the best club nights, you just don't want it to end."“Junglist doesn’t just allow you to hear the sound of a subculture through its pages, it implores you to feel it.”“A text that speaks to the soul of what was nothing less than a revolutionary moment in the unfolding of British multiculturalism.”“A hypnotic, immersive novel.”“A hypnotic, immersive novel.”

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Book Synopsis"Unfortunately making the greatest rap album of all time was to be put on hold as the insidious Job Centre advisors had finally had enough of my shit. I would be forced to sign up to one of the town's two recruitment agencies, or I would be starved of weed money." Leonard Swanson lives in an obscure north-western town — the kind that "has a knack for swallowing you whole". He is supposed to be making the greatest rap album of all time, Swan Songs, but instead is forced to work in one of the town's factories, "picking things up and putting them down for twelve hours in a giant white room". Swan Songs follows Leonard as he works, quits, signs on, and travels the country, playing in small capacity venues for even smaller capacity audiences, for which he gets "paid in booze, drugs and a night on a bed bug-ridden mattress somebody dragged in from the street", all the while making the album he thinks will change hip-hop forever. Part Alan Sillitoe and part William Burroughs, UK rapper Lee Scott's debut novel, partially based on his own experiences of becoming a rapper in Runcorn, is an experimental and humorous modern satire about the perils of being a hip-hop visionary far from the beaten track...

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Book Synopsis40 feminist writers come together to respond to the crisis of 2020 - and what happens next - in this unique and essential fundraising** collection edited by the Feminist Book Society! **20% from EVERY BOOK SOLD goes to Women's Aid and Imkaan** Spring 2020. The moment everything changed. The moment stark gender inequalities were brought ever more prominently to the fore, even as, all around the world, lives retreat behind closed doors. More important than ever was - and is - the message, to womxn of all backgrounds and experiences, you are not alone. How we can, and will, come together to fight inequalities has fundamentally changed. So, what happens now? Hard-hitting but ultimately uplifting, published on the one-year anniversary of lockdown for the US and the UK, This Is How We Come Back Stronger is an essential intersectional feminist collection for our times. In essays, interviews, fiction, and more, forty feminist writers from both sides of the Atlantic reflect on what matters most to them right now, and what comes next. With brand new contributions from:Akasha Hull, Amelia Abraham, Catherine Cho, Dorothy Koomson, Fatima Bhutto, Fox Fisher, Francesca Martinez, Gina Miller, Glory Edim, Hafsa Qureshi, Helen Lederer, Jenny Sealey, Jess Phillips, Jessica Moor, Jude Kelly, Juli Delgado Lopera, Juliet Jacques, Kate Mosse, Kerry Hudson, Kuchenga, Laura Bates, Lauren Bravo, Layla Saad, Lindsey Dryden, Lisa Taddeo, Mariam Khan, Melissa Cummings-Quarry and Natalie Carter, Michelle Tea, Mireille Harper, Molly Case, Radhika Sanghani, Rosanna Amaka, Sara Collins, Sarah Eagle Heart, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Sophie Williams, Stella Duffy, Virgie Tovar, Yomi Adegoke . . .

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Book SynopsisMillennia ago, Ginny's family farm was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it'll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it's a hotbed of lust and resentment, because Ginny's just cheated on her husband with the man who lives next door. When a crowd of locals-including Ginny's bitter sister Ella-turn up to help out on the farm, a day of chores turns into a night of serious drinking, and then of brutal, communal retribution. By morning, Ginny's been left for dead. But dead is the one thing she isn't. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into the mountains, and a small posse of her tormentors gears up to give chase-to bring her home and beg forgiveness, or to make sure she disappears for good? With detours through time, space, myth, and into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules, Pity the Beast heralds the arrival of a major new force in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and the nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew-if we want to avoid becoming beasts ourselves.Trade Review‘[Pity the Beast is] full of casually perfect writing, especially about animals and nature . . . The crux of this review is that Pity the Beast is a work of crazy brilliance. It’s a worthy successor to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, and the rare book that creates more space for later writers to work in.’ Sandra Newman, The Guardian (Book of the Day) ---- ‘[Pity the Beast's] ambitious and innovative narrative moves through time, space and myth in order to explore a larger philosophical canvas beyond the immediate drama.’ Fanny Blake, Daily Mail ---- ‘Promotional material has likened Pity the Beast to Cormac McCarthy and there is a resemblance, particularly with the Judge’s insane pursuit of the Kid in Blood Meridian. But where Mr. McCarthy is grandiose and portentous, Ms. McLean is strikingly down-to-earth. Her characters may amuse themselves with flights of philosophizing, but mostly they bicker, wisecrack and daydream, their behavior—crude but engaging, and often even endearing—so grippingly at odds with their drift into savagery. It sounds impossible but for all its horrors, there is little that is lurid about the writing in Pity the Beast. I have never read a book that made evil seem so natural—which is both the most unsettling thing about this novel and its greatest accomplishment.’ Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ---- ‘A category-defying novel of revenge, survival, and transcendence . . . Raw and elemental, searing yet wry, this has much to say on law and lawlessness, sexual politics, and humans’ animal nature.’ Publishers Weekly ---- ‘Ambitious, inventive.’ Kirkus Review ---- 'Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity.' J M Coetzee----'Pity is in short supply in Pity the Beast, but compassion is not: set in the kind of country in which ploughs break against hidden rocks and running water is a girl sprinting with a bucket, it's a revenge narrative that never loses sight of the power of empathy, a love song to all of those animals domesticated for our support, a startlingly open-minded meditation on good and evil, a how-to manual on survival in the wilderness, a primer on how to negotiate all of the blind and ruthless violence we're forced to face in a world formed by trauma, and a passionate celebration of those small comforts that can and do get us through.' Jim Shepard----'Mythic in scope and vision, ingenious in form and style, Pity the Beast is a magnificent work of art by a fearless and utterly original writer. I read it with wonder and terror, exhilaration and admiration.' Chris Bachelder----'Robin McLean's gonna get you. She will take you out into deep, and then deeper, water.' Noy Holland, author of Spectacle of the Body and I Was Trying to Discover What It Feels Like----'Robin McLean sees the world like no one I've ever read before. In PITY THE BEAST, her exacting eye gives us human behavior in all of its beastliness while simultaneously reminding us that it's not moral judgment that ugliness calls for, it's even more careful attention. McLean insists that if we face the worst of ourselves, and if we find some way to articulate what we see, we may emerge battered but filled with a compassion we didn't know we had, and didn't know we needed.' Karen Shepard, author of An Empire of Women and What Have We Done----'Robin McLean writes scenes that feel as vibrant, terrifying, and wondrous as your most adrenalized memories. Her country is never merely the backdrop for human dramas but a living, breathing entity, alive with the poetry of mules and skittering stone. "Pity the Beast" is a thrilling ride and McLean's world feels so real that every cloud and creature in it casts a shadow.' Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Swamplandia! and Orange World and Other Stories----'Harrowing, gripping, the product of a deranged mind, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a brutally gorgeous fever-dream of a novel. This metaphysical Western feels like something new.' Sabina Murray, author of The Human Zoo and Valiant Gentlemen----'Not since I stood in a Washington D.C. bookstore back in 1992 to read the first few pages of All the Pretty Horses, have I known so quickly and surely that I was in the hands of a writer whose skills and sensibilities soared in a direction both thrilling and foreign to me at the same time. But where Cormac McCarthy uses his gifts to solidify the west we have always known - men on the edge, defining and redefining freedom - Robin McLean turns the tables on him (and us) by putting a woman in charge. Though Pity the Beast is, through and through, a feminist novel, however, there isn't a sentence in it that preaches, not a word that calls attention to its political undercurrents. Robin McLean may be a literary newcomer, but in years to come we might be calling her a literary master.' Richard Wiley, author of Soldiers in Hiding

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Book SynopsisLonglisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize Winner of the 2023 Jabuti Prize in the Brazilian Book Published Abroad category Federico and Lourenco are brothers. Their father is black, a famed forensic pathologist for the police; their mother is white. Federico - distant, angry, analytical - has light skin, which means he's always been able to avoid the worst of the racism that Brazilian culture has to offer. He can 'pass' as white, and yet, because of this, he has devoted his life to racial justice. Lourenco, on the other hand, is dark-skinned, easy-going, and well-liked in the brothers' hometown of Porto Alegre - and has become a father himself. As Federico's fiftieth birthday looms, he joins a governmental committee in the capital. It is tasked with quelling the increasingly violent student protests rocking Brazil by overseeing the design of a software program that will adjudicate the degree to which each university applicant is sufficiently black to warrant admittance under new affirmative-action quotas. Before he can come to grips with his feelings about this initiative, not to mention a budding romance with one of his committee colleagues, Federico is called home: his niece has just been arrested at a protest carrying a concealed gun. And not just any gun. A stolen police service revolver that Federico and Lourenco hid for a friend decades before. A gun used in a killing. Paulo Scott here probes the old wounds of race in Brazil, and in particular the loss of a black identity independent from the history of slavery. Exploratory rather than didactic, a story of crime, street-life and regret as much as a satirical novel of ideas, Phenotypes is a seething masterpiece of rage and reconciliation.Trade Review'A searing indictment of racism and privilege in Brazil, and an uncompromising challenge to the country's idealised view of itself as a racial democracy.' Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times ---- 'An artfully plotted tale about race, privilege and guilt . . . careful reading proves richly rewarding.' Lucy Popescu, The Observer ---- 'Phenotypes underscores how difficult antiracist projects can be at any scale...Scott's characters quickly abandon the possibility of a comprehensive solution in favor of stopgap measures that may or may not work. Such are the inadequacies, the novel asserts, of treating entrenched and systemic issues as if they are only skin-deep.' New York Times Book Review ---- 'A compelling exploration of the fraught reality of race relations in Brazil . . . there is much that English-speaking readers stand to gain from the considered, quiet fury of Paulo Scott's novel, not least the expansion of and challenge to modern-day discourses on race.' Laura Garmeson, Times Literary Supplement ---- 'A blistering examination of Brazil's fraught racial history told through two brothers, one light-skinned and one dark-skinned.' Katie Goh, i-D (Books to Read 2022) ---- 'Phenotypes is...brilliant and emotionally resonant. I put it down days ago, and I'm still walking around with it.' Star Tribune ---- 'Phenotypes is a complex, stream-of-consciousness novel about race, culture, and deciding for oneself where one belongs.' Foreword Reviews ---- '[A] profound story of colorism and familial loyalty set in Brazil...The multiple layers combine for a mesmerizing and mature story.' Publishers Weekly starred review ---- 'Scott pours out his indictment of Brazil in long, overflowing sentences that are equal parts outrage and cutting humor. Originally titled Brown and Yellow when it was published in Portuguese...it is not easy to shake off.' Kirkus Review ---- 'Scott seems to have managed to produce a novel that will survive the test of time, a profound interpretation of our time and our country.' Folha de Sao Paulo ---- 'Federico, the white-passing mixed-race narrator of Paulo Scott's stirring new novel Phenotypes, grips you from his opening words, and what a story he has to tell. Ostensibly sending up a Brazilian governmental bureaucracy's attempts to address problems with the racial quota system in its higher education, Scott quickly shows that he has penned a profound, coruscating exploration of race, racism, colorism, family dynamics, class, culture, regionalism, politics, radicalism, and so much more. Scott's intricate, ironic, entrancing narration, skillfully rendered into English by Daniel Hahn, confirms Scott as one of Brazil's finest contemporary writers.' John Keene ---- 'A powerful, complex and very ambitious voice. In the contemporary Latin American literature scene, Paulo Scott is a must-read.' Juan Pablo Villalobos ---- 'Phenotypes demonstrates how the traumas of growing up in a racist society can propel a person of color forward while never letting them escape their past.' Southwest Review ---- '[Phenotypes'] deftly engaging plot . . . twists and turns while exploring race, brotherhood, privilege, and the lasting impact of guilt. Hahn's translation is exemplary, and although this is not an easy read, it is a journey worth taking.' Joshua Rees, Buzz ---- 'Phenotypes is innovative, deftly precise in its form, and utterly profound in its content. Scott's work in bringing contemporary urgencies into fiction is uncomfortable and often unsettling, but necessary-and, ultimately, unforgettable.' Rachel Farmer, Asymptote

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Book SynopsisCompleted by Robert Aickman in 1975, but never before widely available, Go Back at Once is a delicious, delirious comic fantasia about the joys and terrors of a life devoted to resisting the degradations of conformism. It tells the story of Cressida Hazeborough and her friend Vivien, two mordantly intelligent young women trying to find their ways in a misty, pre-Depression Britain. The pair have little patience for the company of the marriageable men they are meant to endure, yet neither do they possess the means to live as they might wish: together, and apart from the demands of modern society. What's a girl to do? Having left school and taken the sorts of London job available to women of their age and station, remarkable arrives: a great foreign poet, playwright, athlete, and soldier named Virgilio Vittore has successfully conquered the tiny country of Trino, on the Adriatic Sea, and is now governing it 'according to the laws of music'. Could this new utopia be a refuge for Cressida and Vivien, and indeed all who seek a life less ordinary? Or should the women, having arrived in this chaotic land, where love, life, and politics must submit to the rules of the beautiful, take to heart the advice of the novel's title? Snobbish yet humane, reactionary yet camp, strait-laced yet queer, old-fashioned yet radical, Go Back at Once reveals Robert Aickman as a master not only of the 'strange story', but a satirist deserving of a place alongside the mischievous and venomous greats of the inter-war canon: Firbank, Compton-Burnett, Waugh, Powell.Trade Review‘To try and make sense of [Go Back at Once’s] assortment of images and metaphors is like trying to interpret a feverish dream . . . the pleasure comes not from retaining a firm grasp on meaning, but in yielding to “the greater power of imagination than reality”, something Cressida comes to appreciate herself.’ Andrew Michael Hurley, The Telegraph ---- ‘Aickman's hitherto unpublished second novel . . . is an oddity, a puzzlebox of queerness and a utopian fantasia . . . The prose vibrates with energy.’ Catriona Ward, The Times ---- 'Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.' Neil Gaiman ---- 'In Aickman's fiction, peculiarity is intertwined with a drab twentieth-century realism that is very English and sometimes dryly funny. Think Philip Larkin, or Barbara Pym, gone eldritch.' Anwen Crawford, The New Yorker ---- 'His name should be placed among the greats-Flannery O'Connor, Irwin Shaw, Raymond Carver . . . You will never forget the first Aickman story you read, nor be satisfied when you've read them all.' John Darnielle ---- 'Unsettling is a key description for Aickman's writing, not merely in the sense of creating anxiety, but in the sense of undoing what has been settled: his stories unsettle the ideas you bring to them about how fictional reality and consensus reality should fit together . . . He was drawn to ghost stories because they provided him with conventions for unmaking the conventional world, but he was about as much of a traditional ghost story writer as Salvador Dali was a typical designer of pocket watches.' Matthew Cheney, Electric Literature ---- '[The] most profound writer of what we call horror stories.' Peter Straub ---- 'With brilliant dialogue and oblivious schlepping, a la Stoppard's Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, Aickman's two hilarious ladies-in-waiting wander through the horrors of war, men of all disastrousies, and political upheaval unfazed.' Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop ---- 'For fans of cutting remarks, philosophy, and scandalous divorcees.' Booklist ---- '[T]his novel offers readers...a witty, sophisticated work of 20th-century British fiction.' Kirkus Reviews ---- 'Mesmerizing. This unconventional story gets by on the author's sly wit.' Publishers Weekly ---- 'There's a nice light touch to the writing...it all skips along nicely and if it all isn't quite clear, the sheer oddity of the place and events is just as baffling to its two protagonists...It makes for a quite charming novel of two young innocents learning about life.' The Complete Review

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Book SynopsisOn the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, C is flat broke. Once a renowned textile artist, she's now the sole proprietor of an arts supply store in Lower Manhattan. Divorced, alone, at loose ends, C is stuck with a struggling business, a stack of bills, a new erotic interest in her oldest girlfriend, and a persistent hallucination in the form of a rogue garden gnome with a pointed interest in systems collapse . . . C needs to put her medical debt and her sex life in order, but how to make concrete plans with this little visitor haunting her apartment, sporting a three-piece suit and delivering impromptu lectures on the vulnerability of the national grid? Moreover, what's all this computer code doing in the story of her life? And do the answers to all of C's questions lie with an eco-hacktivist cabal threatening to end modern life as we know it? Replaying recent history through a distorting glass, The Visitors is a mordantly funny tour through a world where not only civic infrastructure but our darkest desires (not to mention our novels) are vulnerable to malware; where mythical creatures talk like Don DeLillo; where love is little more than a blip in our metadata. It peers into How We Got Here and asks What We Do Next, charting the last days of a broken status quo as the path is cleared for something new.Trade Review‘It’s as if The Big Short were set in the dreamworld of Rachel Ingalls's Mrs. Caliban . . .’ Audrey Wollen, New York Times ---- ‘The Visitors addresses it subjects through a blurry, somewhat hypnotic dance of symbols and signifiers.’ Wall Street Journal ---- ‘It’s both a bold, imaginative play on very recent history and a trenchant prophecy of the terrifying times we’re collectively staring down the barrel of.’ Anna Cafolla, The Face Summer Reads 2022 ---- ‘[A]s its semi-fictional world frays at every edge, we stay close with C., a deeply written character who could be any of us: beset by the stresses of debt, anxious about decisions made and decisions to come, yet filled with all the rich longing, desire, and tenderness that renews our humanity, even at the worst of times.’ Lithub, included in ‘35 Novels You Need to Read This Summer’ ---- ‘Here is a refreshing novel by an author willing to take chances...The Visitors stands as a pensive and important work...rare and exciting company.’ Necessary Fiction ---- ‘“Is it possible to imagine something so fully that it takes on a life of its own? So many systems run only on belief.” It's possible that a novel, like this one, does, too.’ Star Tribune ---- '[A] mordantly funny requiem for the early 21st century . . . The odd touch of magic does nothing to diminish the story's uneasy relevance to the contemporary state of affairs. Fans of such paranoia masters as DeLillo and Pynchon should give this a look.' Publishers Weekly ---- 'The Visitors is a slim book with a lot going on. . . The book accepts, and even delights in, the strenuous absurdity of its characters' efforts to index the relationship between the virtual and the material, or to locate the source of reality in imagination.' Daisy Hildyard, The Guardian ---- 'The Visitors is conceptually bold. Stevens threads through needles of political theory so deftly you barely feel them piercing the brain. Her work calmly suggests this: the apocalypse is coming for us all, baby - so, what are you doing about it?' Annie Hayter, The Big Issue ---- 'Jessi Jezewska Stevens's frighteningly brilliant new novel The Visitors is both a bold reimagining of the recent past and an all-too-likely prophecy of what's to come. Caustic, intimate, and consistently surprising, this novel cements Stevens's place as one of the great chroniclers of our cruel and terrifying times.' Andrew Martin ---- 'In Jessi Jezewska Stevens' timeless novel, The Visitors, nothing is as it seems, everything is in motion, and progress and decay are simultaneous. Amidst credit scores and talking spectres, revolutionary impulses and the indissoluble truths found in a lifelong friendship, Stevens paints a brilliant and richly captivating portrait of an artist teetering between her own past and an American collapse happening in real time. Stevens' intimacy with history borders on the telepathic. The Visitors is transcendent and astounding in every way.' Michael Zapata ---- 'Jessi Jezewksa Stevens' scalpel-fine prose - slicing with wit and pathos - belies the bewildering scope of The Visitors, which lays bare everything from the audacity of modern finance to the visceral costs of debt, love, and success. Yet while collapse looms nigh, every page beams with defiant jubilance and gut-punch insights. Equal parts revelatory and moving, The Visitors cuts to the core of the delusion and disillusionment of our era.' Jakob Guanzon ---- 'The Visitors is such a unique gem of a novel-an intimate and affecting character study that is somehow also a DeLillo-esque container for diamond-sharp insights into big data, eco-terrorism, and the subprime mortgage crisis-that, like the garden gnome who haunts its protagonist, I'm half-convinced it couldn't possibly exist. But it does, and it is dazzling, and Stevens' readers are incredibly lucky to have it.' Adam Wilson ---- 'This book is a speedball, with lines as beautifully sad and weary as John Berryman's lines, and a premise as wild and lit as one of Philip K. Dick's premises. Stevens is a writer who makes you want to slow down and read each sentence carefully, even as you want to race forward and see what happens.' Benjamin Nugent ---- 'One of my favorite writers has written another imaginative and attentive marvel. The Visitors is about business: the business of staying alive, the business of being with others, the business of staying sane, and the business of business.' Rivka Galchen ---- 'An orgy of synaptic firing and flourish, The Visitors is a novel of longing, lostness, and late capitalism told with roving imagination and warmth.' Tracy O'Neill Bookseller Praise ---- 'Jessi Jezewska Stevens has created a parallel timeline as tumultuous and dread-inducing as our own, yet somehow this distorted reality reveals more about the preoccupations of existing than it's lived counterpart ever could. Part time capsule, part user manual, and part hallucinatory malware, The Visitors will still be with you long after the lights have gone out.' Josie Smith, Greenlight Bookstore ---- 'What would you do if an interrogating gnome appeared in your apartment one morning and never left? If you are C, the artist-protagonist of Jessi Jezewska Stevens' enthralling novel, The Visitors, you constantly question whether your gnome is real or imagined, all while operating a NYC art supply store, mourning the end of your marriage and your fertility, hiding from personal bankruptcy, and longing for a romantic relationship with your oldest friend, Zo. Apart from C's personal troubles, a terrorist group called GoodNite is destroying city power grids and staging protests around the world. Stevens fully immerses readers into C's world, exploring the artist's relationship to her craft, how loneliness exploits our deepest fears and vulnerabilities, the affection and jealousy between childhood girlfriends, and the permanent scar of immigrant trauma. A clever, thought-provoking novel that is as surprising as it is satisfying.' Lori Feathers, Interabang Books ---- 'Stevens' writing is vicious and cerebral, an enthralling combination. she has a lovely knack of hinting and alluding to goings-on elsewhere (the best kind of narration, imho). a cynical sophomore novel that deserves all the praise it will no doubt receive.' Doug Riggs, Bank Square Books

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Book SynopsisJuan Pablo Villalobos's fifth novel adopts a gentle, fable-like tone, approaching the problem of racism from the perspective that any position as idiotic as xenophobia can only be fought with sheer absurdity. In an unnamed city, colonised by an unnamed world power, an immigrant named Gaston makes his living selling exotic vegetables to eateries around the city. He has a dog called Kitten, who's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a good friend called Max, who's in a deep depression after being forced to close his restaurant. Meanwhile, Max's son, Pol, a scientist away on a scientific expedition into the Arctic, can offer little support. Gaston begins a quest, or rather three: he must search for someone to put his dog to sleep humanely; he must find a space in which to open a new restaurant with Max; and he must look into the truth behind the news being sent back by Pol: that human life may be the by-product of an ancient alien attempt at colonisation . . . and those aliens might intend to make a return visit.Trade Review‘This is a book about xenophobia and racism and the conflicted tug between isolation and community. It makes a fine – and deliciously strange – addition to Villalobos’ already grand personal canon. Wrought with tenderness, wit, and a wonderful sense of absurdity, Villalobos’ latest novel is a triumph.’ Kirkus Starred Review ---- ‘Invasion of the Spirit People is a celebration of closeness, of friendship . . . It implies a vision of the world that is anti-essentialist and anti-territorial, but is instead inclusive.’ Nadal Suau, El Mundo ---- ‘An extraordinary novel that you can read in one sitting and which confirms Villalobos's place among the great writers of the city. Stories of rootlessness like these are as valuable as a sociological treatise, especially when they let you know that there's always a friend nearby to give you a hand, which is something that never appears in manuals.’ Jordi Garrigos, Ara

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Book SynopsisItaly’s great chronicler of the macabre and of growing up geeky. Long before the latest vogue for autofiction, Michele Mari, one of Italy's most beloved authors, cast his mind back to the days of his own childhood, and found it crawling with monsters. Raised on comic books and science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver and Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well grow up beastly-or never grow up at all. Waking or sleeping, the obsessions of Mari's youth seem to haunt his every adult thought. You, Bleeding Childhood stands as his first attempt to catalog this cabinet of wonders. Cult classics since their first publication, these loosely connected stories stand as the ideal introduction to a fantasist on a par with Kafka, Poe, and Borges.Trade Review'Short stories from an Italian maestro finally translated into English [...] Amusing, disturbing, intoxicating tales of childhood terrors and obsessions.' Kirkus Reviews, starred review ---- 'Mari makes his English-language debut with a dazzling and sometimes surreal collection of reminiscences on childhood obsessions. [...] Mari delivers trenchant satires of nostalgia with deadpan grace and wit, resulting in stories that are as heartfelt as they are humorous, with great care given to descriptions of the characters' foibles and idiosyncrasies. This is not to be missed.' Publisher's Weekly, starred review ---- 'If I were to give a book award to a living Italian writer, man or woman, I'd pick Michele Mari.' Domenico Starnone, I-Italy ---- 'The greatest living Italian writer.' Andrea Coccia, Linkiesta ---- 'Michele Mari has written only beautiful books. The most beautiful of the beautiful is the short story collection You, Bleeding Childhood.' Elena Stancanelli, La Repubblica ---- 'The charm that Mari exercises on his readers, from the most devoted to the most distracted, is incredible . . . More than anyone else, Michele Mari represents today a model of writer that seems on the point of disappearing - fully literary, lofty, in short, twentieth-century.' Sara Marzullo, Esquire ---- 'Emotion, anger, nostalgia: but also affectionate humour, indulgent sympathy [in] a work that masterfully combines elegance and irony, psychological acumen and an understanding of form, eclectic culture and emotional vulnerability. [The work of a child] who developed an unstoppable passion for adventure books, for comics . . . [who] cultivated a fetishistic relationship with thought, with the imagination; but also with a stubborn self, wounded by the intensity of his perceptions.' Alida Airaghi, SoloLibri ---- 'Michele Mari's mythology is that of the great darkness of Romanticism, even if he contemplates the oceans and the far places of the Earth from the safety of his library. I don't know if he is devoured . . . by an obsession, or if he is deeply enchanted . . . as by a vision he had in a dream . . . [But] he loves the darkness: crisscrossed by lightning, furrowed by thin trails of light. Around that night, his skillful rhetoric builds an endless echo chamber, in which his one voice resounds with the manifold voices of literature itself.' Pietro Citati, La Repubblica ---- 'The world of Michele Mari is a world where monsters and tutelary gods (interchangeable?), where sixteenth-century literature and classic sci-fi pocket paperbacks coexist in sinister harmony; where writing is exorcism and never punishment: the only way to escape the quotidian . . . Mari is one of those writers who feed on their own obsessions, know how to paint them with words and phrases, to arrange those phrases into novels embodying those same obsessions.' Tiziano Gianotti, Linkiesta

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Book SynopsisEzekiel Hooper Stark is a cultural anthropologist nudging forty. His interest is family snapshots. At home, he is absorbed by his own family's idiosyncrasies, perversities, and pathologies, until romantic betrayal sends him spiralling into a crisis. All the old models of masculinity are broken. Zeke embarks on a new project, studying the 'New Man', born under the sign of feminism. What do you expect from women? he asks his male subjects. What do you expect from yourself? Meanwhile, what will the reader make of Zeke is he enlightened, chauvinistic, or simply delusional? Kaleidoscopic and encyclopaedic, comic, tragic, and philosophical, Men and Apparitions showcases Lynne Tillman not only as a brilliantly original novelist but also as one of our most prominent contemporary thinkers on art, culture and the politics of gender.

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Book SynopsisA piercing meditation on love and music, and the silence and inscrutability which underpins the performance of each. Luc has lived a long time as a soloist. She has not seen Billy for many years. A visit to a major show of his sculptures sends her arrowing back to a younger version of herself: to a time when she had to make room to love him when she'd felt no room within herself. To a time when she was forced to make a choice between being one thing or another. To a time when he was a sculptor, but she was not yet a cellist. In exquisite and crystalline prose, The Cellist explores how you might make room for beauty and mastery for yourself, and still leave space for someone else. It asks what love and companionship costs: what happens when you are forced to cast yourself in the distorting light of another person's needs?

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Book SynopsisManhattan, 2014. Erin Adamo is locked out of her apartment. Her husband has just left her and her keys are at her parents' apartment, abandoned when she exited mid-dinner after her father-once again-lost control. Erin takes refuge in the library of the university where she is a grad student. Her bag contains two manuscripts she's written, along with a monograph by a faculty member who's recently become embroiled in a bizarre scandal. Erin isn't sure what she's doing, but a small, mostly unconscious part of her knows: within these documents is a key she's needed all along. With unflinching precision, Life Is Everywhere captures emotional events that hover fitfully at the borders of visibility and intelligibility, showing how the past lives on, often secretly and at the expense of the present. Multifarious, mischievous, and deeply humane, Lucy Ives's latest masterpiece rejoices in what a novel, and a self, carry.Trade Review"If Lucy Ives is as smart as her novel Life Is Everywhere, then I am in complete awe. The novel is challenging in all the best ways and an absolute joy to read. How many books in one and yet one book. This is great writing."-Percival Everett; "Lucy Ives is a daring writer with a wicked sense of humor. She brilliantly observes society and culture, and invents stories only she could imagine."-Lynne Tillman

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed cult writer of Weird Fucks For the narrator of Motion Sickness life is an unguided tour, populated with hotels and strangers, art, books, and films. Adrift in Europe, her life becomes a carousel of unusual encounters, where coincidences and luck shape la vita nuova. In London our narrator is befriended by an expatriate American Buddhist and her mysterious husband. In Paris she meets Arlette, an art historian obsessed with Velazquez’s painting ‘Las Meninas’. In Barcelona she meets two generations of Germans. She tours the hill towns of Italy in a London taxi with two surprising Englishmen in pursuit of art and Henry Moore. She buys postcards to send, but often tears them up, not sure of what the pictures mean. At once dreamlike and tough, hilarious and melancholic, Motion Sickness is a contemporary picaresque in which a young woman drifts and reinvents herself with every new encounter.Trade Review‘A true force in American literature.’ – George Saunders; ‘A new thought in every sentence.’ – Lydia Davis

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Book Synopsis'Our lives do not start entirely with our births.' Prussia, the early 19th century. As he attempts to bury his recently deceased wife, Redo Hauptshammer uncovers the frozen body of a uniformed soldier. As he continues to dig, the bodies start to pile up - all of them fallen cavalrymen bearing the secrets of an earlier era. For readers of W. G. Sebald and Agustin Fernandez Mallo, this archaeological novel digs into Europe's soil, uncovering a long history of violence and expropriation. Mora's writing is audacious, melancholy, and formally experimental. Each chapter is longer than the one that precedes it – as the bodies proliferate, the story keeps getting more complicated. In a bold yet lyrical translation by Rahul Bery, Centroeuropa introduces English-speaking readers to one of Europe's pre-eminent experimental prose writers currently at work.

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Book SynopsisLorem Ipsum, the debut novel from poet Oli Hazzard, consists of a single, 50,000-word sentence. An epistolary fiction addressed to an unidentified email recipient, the novel is modelled after the Japanese prose genre of the zuihitsu, which means ‘following the brush’.This playful, disruptive and digressive novel is written out of and towards a moment of crisis in the ordinary, in which the experience of attention has changed entirely.Lorem Ipsum is also an intimate, singular exploration of being a parent and a child, of dreams, work, fantasies, reading, happiness, secrets, memory, protest, repetition, intergenerational conflict, and the forms of community which appear or disappear based on how we conceive of 'shared time'. It is a book about the foundations upon which we build our lives, and what happens when they are shaken.

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Book SynopsisOur Last Year is a book about change; through the internal narration of its two characters, the novel follows the disintegration and renewal of a marriage, in synthesis with a much wider natural reality. It tells a story of damage and destruction, both painful and restorative, and necessary. The trajectory of the novel – of becoming part of the evolutionary process, awake to it, enlivened by it, compassionate towards it – is dramatised through two minds, asking readers to reconsider their relationship with themselves, with others, and with the planet itself.‘A lucid and refreshingly uplifting masterpiece about a fraught period in the life of a married couple, Our Last Year surprised and moved and entranced me, calming and healing me with its wisdom and perspectives.’ – Tao LinTrade Review‘Mountain Road, Late at Night is a wondrous thing and deserves to win prizes. [...] This novel is a difficult read in all the right senses: emotionally devastating, morally ambiguous, with questions left unanswered and no ideal solutions on offer. Nicholas’s section in particular is devastating […] an extraordinary achievement, and whilst it is a difficult book to come to terms with it is absolutely not a difficult book to read. Rossi’s narrative burns off the page – I kept thinking of it as a stream of lights, of cat’s eyes, illuminating each new stretch of the road it travels, offering partial but transformative glimpses of what is to come. There are times you read a book and think: this writer loves and reveres the written word. This was one of those times for me. The imagery, the thought process, the densely articulated emotion, the lack of sentimentality, the heartfelt compassion and depth of empathy – these are the effects and attributes of Rossi’s writing and you will find this novel, slim though it is, circumscribed though it is in terms of its canvas and cast of characters, impossible to forget.’ Nina Allan, author of The Dollmaker and The Rift on Moutain Road, Late At Night'I was really moved by this extraordinary stream of consciousness accessing the deepest layers of four flawed people facing an unimaginably terrible situation. Compassionate and profound, this is the kind of novel that puts even difficult things into perspective.' Isobel Costello, Literary Sofa on Mountain Road, Late At Night'A minor miracle: a Buddhist instruction manual that is also a deeply compelling novel.' David Shields, author of Reality Hunger on Mountain Road, Late At Night'An enormously engaging novel. We don’t so much read it as live it with these troubled characters and the child, Jack, robbed of his parents by the shocking car crash on a lonely mountain road. This is a complex, deeply moving novel, given completely to the interrogation of its witnesses. An extraordinary debut for an extraordinary new talent.' Frederick Barthelme, author of There Must Be Some Mistake on Mountain Road, Late At Night

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Book SynopsisIt is 1967. A mysterious disease appears in an English town. People fall down suddenly, poleaxed, and many die. Is it caused by a bacterium, a virus, a poison? Nobody knows, and top doctors squabble over its cause. But then two junior doctors and a young anthropology student, who has recovered from the disease, join together. The three investigators continue their work to find out the cause of the disease, a virus whose worst effects are only shown in those who are very anxious. They think they have found the cause and the solution. But will they be in time? This is a gripping dystopian tale, very much relevant to events unfolding today and written by Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry at Imperial College, London, Peter Tyrer whose long-standing interest in the connections between mental and physical health informed the novel.

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Book Synopsis‘Maps Full of Borders’ is a delicately and wryly written fresh take on the coming-of-age novel, exploring questions of personal identity, gender and whether we are a human being or a human doing. Fifteen-year-old Molly doesn’t understand the world around her and feels as though she doesn’t belong. By chance, she comes across an old photo album that leads to an unlikely obsession with the boy in the images – a ghost child who allows Molly to express herself more freely than ever before.

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Book SynopsisRomantic and intriguing, this story draws the reader into mystery and danger with a thrilling and surprising ending. Inheriting a ranch in Wyoming from an unknown cousin called Willard, Sandy Carson goes to investigate. On meeting Kyle, the sexy ranch foreman outside town, their instant attraction is mutual, but having expected to inherit the ranch himself, Kyle is shocked to discover Sandy is the owner. Unable to keep his hands to himself when Sandy responds, it isn’t long before things intensify. With Willard and Mary’s headstone indicating they had been parents, what secret is hidden in the barn’s locked attic and why does Sandy get abducted?

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Book SynopsisLucy Woodrow, a life-loving Dublin girl, tries hard to make sense of her life and her family. Her romantic and personal adventures are full of charm, wit and are illuminating and highly entertaining. She goes on a worldwide adventure of self-discovery, returning to Thailand three times. Each time her experiences there are radically different. This is a story, full of soul, of one woman’s determination to find and live the life she loves. Along the way Lucy experiences the devastating loss of her older brother, Shane, and finds true love with a wonderful man, Charlie. As Lucy’s life takes off in different directions she holds on tight to her self-belief. Although at times she goes through painful personal growth, she refuses to give in and ultimately finds her very own happy ever after.

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Book SynopsisTranslated by Christina E. Kramer Gavdos: a remote island south of Crete, the southernmost point of Europe, surrounded by an endless expanse of sea. To Oksana, who has come from Ukraine with her friends to recover from illness in the aftermath of Chernobyl, it seems like a dream to live in a blue-and-white house with a lemon tree. To Penelope, a Greek woman who was married off to an unsuitable man by nuns from the convent where she spent her teenage years, it is a kind of prison. Their two narratives, interwoven with other stories - of the other women of the sparse community, of their own past lives and loves - are skilfully combined with themes of otherness and the notions of 'foreign' and 'barbaric' in this poetic and timely short novel by acclaimed Macedonian writer Petar Andonovski, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. Translated from Macedonian

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Book SynopsisFINALIST FOR THE 72ND NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS – BOOK CLUB CATEGORY ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES' BEST HISTORICAL FICTION BOOKS OF 2022 ‘Zimler is an honest, powerful writer’ The Guardian 'A memorable portrait of the search for meaning in the shadow of the Shoah.' – The Sunday Times From the acclaimed author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon and The Warsaw Anagrams comes an unforgettable, deeply moving ode to solidarity, heroism and the kind of love capable of overcoming humanity's greatest horror. Maybe none of us is ever aware of our true significance. Benjamin Zarco and his cousin Shelly are the only two members of their family to survive the Holocaust. In the decades since, each man has learned, in his own unique way, to carry the burden of having outlived all the others, while ever wondering why he was spared. Saved by a kindly piano teacher who hid him as a child, Benni suppresses the past entirely and becomes obsessed with studying kabbalah in search of the 'Incandescent Threads' - nearly invisible fibres that he believes link everything in the universe across space and time. But his mystical beliefs are tested when the birth of his son brings the ghosts of the past to his doorstep. Meanwhile, Shelly - devastatingly handsome, charming and exuberantly bisexual - comes to believe that pleasures of the flesh are his only escape, and takes every opportunity to indulge his desires. That is, until he begins a relationship with a profoundly traumatised Canadian soldier and artist who helped to liberate Bergen-Belsen - and might just be connected to one of the cousins' departed kin. Across six non-linear mosaic pieces, we move from a Poland decimated by World War II to modern-day New York and Boston, hearing friends and relatives of Benni and Shelly tell of the deep influence of the beloved cousins on their lives. For within these intimate testimonies may lie the key to why they were saved and the unique bond that unites them.Trade ReviewPraise for The Incandescent Threads 'A memorable portrait of the search for meaning in the shadow of the Shoah.' - The Sunday Times 'AN ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE.' - Acoriano Oriental 'Deep [and] moving [with] an enormous emotional charge.' - Time Out 'Six magnificent narratives that are tied together by absolutely wonderful characters.' - Diario de Noticias 'Benni and Shelly Zarco, cousins who carry their guilt for having survived the Holocaust, are unforgettable characters (and) Zimler invests them with an extraordinary emotional depth.' - Jornal de Noticias 'A beautifully intricate and interwoven novel about how to go on living after the Holocaust - and most poignantly, about how to cope with the guilt of having survived. Zimler writes poetically throughout, and his extremely compelling narrative also serves to alert readers to current threats.' - O Publico Praise for Richard Zimler Unforgettable, poetic and original' - Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Pacey and accessible... deeply moving' - The Observer 'Scrupulously researched... Fascinating' - The Independent 'Luminously written' - Historical Novel Society 'Remarkable' - Times Literary Supplement 'Compelling' - The Spectator 'Captivating' - Publishers Weekly 'A triumph of modern fiction... absolutely gripping' - Andrew Solomon

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Book SynopsisIn February 2000, the writer Richard Zimler met a mysterious dancer at an Australian literary festival, only to witness her tragic suicide the next day. This shocking act was to trigger an investigation into her past that would alter the course of his life forever. His search initially leads him to the tranquillity and tolerance of 1950s Israel, where he learns of the powerful sisterhood forged between two girls – one Palestinian, one Israeli. But as Zimler is drawn deeper into their story, he uncovers illusion, deceit and – most shocking of all – a connection to the most horrifying atrocity of the twenty-first century. At once a memoir and a thriller, The Search for Sana sees the internationally bestselling author of the Sephardic Cycle create an unflinching exploration of lifelong friendship, loyalty, cruelty and dispossession.Trade Review‘a bold investigation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’ – Michael Eaude, Tikkun

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Book SynopsisLondon 1988: Agata grew up in post-war Prague and believes that her mother was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.But not everyone died. Agata's search for her ‘lost’ family, set against the background of revolutions in Eastern Europe, threatens to tear apart not only the family she already has, but her own identity.

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