Contemporary Fiction
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1
Everything Is Not Enough
Everything Is Not Enough follows three Black women navigating ambition, relationships, and belonging in contemporary Stockholm. Kemi Adeyemi, a Nigerian-born marketing executive, has built a successful career but struggles with the emotional costs of her choices. Brittany-Rae Johnson, an American socialite, finds that wealth and privilege cannot protect her from personal turmoil. Meanwhile, Yasmiin Abdullahi, a Somali-Swedish entrepreneur, faces the challenges of balancing her cultural heritage with her professional ambitions and personal desires.
As their lives intersect, the women confront the pressures of social expectations, the complexities of interracial relationships, and the inequalities that shape their experiences. Each must question what success means and whether the lives they have worked so hard to build truly fulfil them.
Through interconnected stories of love, friendship, ambition, and self-discovery, Åkerström explores race, class, migration, and the search for belonging. The novel examines the tension between outward success and inner fulfilment, asking whether achieving everything society values is enough to create a meaningful life.
Sweden
2023
2
Colony
In The Colony, Emelie, exhausted by her demanding urban life, escapes to the Swedish countryside, where she encounters a mysterious group of seven people living together outside conventional society. Each member carries personal wounds, disappointments, or a desire to escape the expectations of the modern world. Their unusual community offers the possibility of a different way of living, built around shared responsibilities and distance from mainstream life. Yet as Emelie becomes more involved, the boundaries between freedom, belonging, and dependence grow increasingly complicated. Norlin examines the human longing for connection and the temptation to create an alternative society when existing structures feel unbearable. The novel asks whether a community can truly escape the inequalities and conflicts of the world it leaves behind.
Sweden
2023
3
Someone Like Her
Someone Like Her explores the lives of women navigating the social expectations, gender inequalities, and cultural pressures of contemporary Pakistan. Through interconnected personal experiences, Awais Khan examines how family honour, class divisions, and traditional ideas about femininity shape women’s choices and relationships. The characters struggle to reconcile their private desires with the demands placed upon them by their families and communities, often confronting difficult decisions about love, independence, and their futures.
Set against the contrasting worlds of privilege and vulnerability, the novel examines the unequal power structures that influence women’s lives and the consequences of challenging established conventions. Khan’s storytelling highlights the emotional complexity behind outward appearances, revealing the compromises people make to protect themselves and those they love. At its heart, Someone Like Her considers what it means for a woman to claim her own identity in a society that often defines her worth through her relationships, reputation, and conformity to expectations.
Pakistan
2023
4
Tehrangeles
The Milanis have everything money can buy: a sprawling Los Angeles mansion, a successful frozen-food empire, and four daughters ready for their close-up. When the wealthy Iranian American family lands a reality television deal, each sister sees an opportunity to claim the spotlight. Violet, an aspiring model, longs for love and acceptance; Roxanna, an ambitious influencer, thrives on attention; Mina, a sharp-witted overachiever, guards secrets of her own; and teenage Haylee dreams of becoming a wellness sensation. Their parents, Ali and Homa, have secrets they would rather keep hidden, too. But just as the cameras prepare to roll, political tensions, family revelations, and the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to unravel their carefully curated lives. With biting humour and unexpected tenderness, Tehrangeles satirises celebrity culture, social media, and the pursuit of the American dream while exploring the complicated realities of growing up Iranian American. Beneath the glitter and extravagance lies a story about family, identity, and the difference between being seen and being truly understood.
Iran
2024
5
Hyper
Hyper follows the Kermanj family, whose lives are shaped by migration, political upheaval, and the growing influence of global capitalism. After Rafiq Kermanj, a Kurdish communist activist, is forced to flee Tehran for London with his conservative wife and three children, the family struggles to adapt to life in exile. As the children grow up, each develops a different relationship with money and success. Siver escapes an unhappy marriage in Baghdad and raises her daughter in Dubai, Mohammed pursues a career in London’s financial sector, and Laika becomes immersed in the world of algorithmic trading near Wall Street. Their increasingly disconnected lives reveal how financial ambition can reshape personal relationships and cultural identity. Ismaïl examines the pressures of modern capitalism, the experience of statelessness, and the search for meaning in a world where economic success increasingly defines human worth.
Iraq
2024
6
In the Shadows of Love
In the Shadows of Love follows Mona Ahmed, a wealthy woman living in Lahore whose seemingly perfect life conceals years of heartbreak and unresolved secrets. Married to successful businessman Bilal, she enjoys financial comfort, a beautiful home, and a respected position in high society. Yet beneath this privileged exterior, Mona struggles with memories of a lost love and the emotional consequences of a past affair that continues to affect her marriage and family.
To protect her reputation, Mona maintains the appearance of a devoted wife, hosting glamorous gatherings and fulfilling the expectations of Lahore’s elite social circles. Her carefully controlled life begins to unravel when an unexpected message brings the past back into the present. As buried secrets threaten to emerge, Mona must confront the consequences of her choices and the fragile foundations of her marriage.
Set against the contrasting worlds of wealth, privilege, and social pressure in contemporary Pakistan, Awais Khan’s novel explores love, betrayal, forgiveness, and the price of maintaining appearances. It also examines how rigid social expectations can trap people in lives that look perfect from the outside but conceal profound emotional suffering.
Pakistan
2024
7
Good Girl
In Berlin’s underground techno scene, nineteen-year-old Nila is searching for freedom, belonging, and a voice of her own. Born in Germany to Afghan refugee parents, she moves between her family’s expectations and the city’s intoxicating nightlife, trying to escape the weight of her past and imagine a different future. When she meets Marlowe, an older American writer whose fading literary fame opens the door to a world of artistic possibility, Nila becomes drawn into a relationship that challenges her independence. Meanwhile, beneath Berlin’s cosmopolitan surface, racism and unresolved historical tensions threaten the fragile worlds she inhabits. Sensual, restless, and deeply perceptive, Good Girl explores the contradictions of growing up between cultures—and the messy, liberating struggle to decide who you want to become.
Germany
2025
8
Far Away from Here
Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, three young Black American Muslims find themselves confronting the losses, choices, and secrets that have shaped their lives. Fatima returns to the city she fled after the murder of her fiancé, reluctantly taking on the care of his dying mother. Tahani, a single mother who has struggled to reconcile her independence with her religious upbringing, longs for a life that leaves room for her own ambitions. Meanwhile, Saif must face his troubled past and the role he played in his cousin’s death. As their lives intertwine once more, all three must reckon with grief, faith, and the possibility of a different future. A tender, thought-provoking novel about community, belonging, and the courage to reclaim your own story.
United States
2025
9
Dust Settles North
Set in 2012, in the aftermath of Egypt’s revolution, Dust Settles North follows Hannah and Zain, two Egyptian American siblings whose lives are upended by their mother’s sudden death and their father’s devastating betrayal. Travelling from New York to Cairo to bury their mother, they find themselves confronting not only their grief but also the painful secrets that have shaped their family.
Hannah abandons her plans to attend Columbia Law School and stays in Egypt, where she navigates unfamiliar surroundings, complicated romantic relationships, and a growing political consciousness. Meanwhile, Zain remains in the United States, where his self-destructive behaviour threatens his relationships and forces him to question whether he is repeating his father’s mistakes.
When the siblings reunite in Cairo, Hannah becomes caught up in the atmosphere of political upheaval surrounding the Arab Spring, while both struggle to reconcile their conservative Muslim upbringing with their evolving beliefs and desires.
Tender and introspective, the novel explores grief, faith, cultural identity, and the complicated ties between parents and children. Through Hannah and Zain’s journeys, ElGenaidi examines what it means to belong to two cultures while searching for a sense of home—and whether a fractured family can find a way to heal.
Egypt
2025
10
Soyangri Book Kitchen
After leaving behind the pressures of city life in Seoul, Yoojin unexpectedly opens the Book Kitchen in Soyangri, a peaceful village in the South Korean countryside. Part bookshop, part café and part guesthouse, this welcoming retreat offers visitors a place to rest, enjoy homemade food and rediscover the comfort of books. Over the course of a year, as the seasons change, people arrive at the Book Kitchen during difficult turning points in their lives. Among them are a singer struggling with an identity crisis, a promising lawyer facing a troubling medical diagnosis, and a young musical director whose dreams have been diminished by repeated failures. Through quiet conversations, shared meals and the stories found on the shelves, each visitor begins to reconsider their circumstances and imagine new possibilities. With its gentle atmosphere and interconnected characters, the novel celebrates the restorative power of literature, the kindness of strangers and the importance of finding a place where one can pause, reflect and begin again.
South Korea
2025
11
A Beautiful Lack of Consequence
A Beautiful Lack of Consequence is a collection of thirty short stories that explore the complexities of contemporary womanhood through a blend of realism, surrealism, dark humor, and feminist commentary.
Across its stories, Monika Radojevic depicts women confronting the pressures and expectations imposed on them by society. A woman enters a bar and finds herself completely invisible; a newly married couple faces a disturbing punishment for their childlessness; and a young girl trades her vocal cords for the possibility of freedom. These strange and unsettling scenarios transform familiar experiences of exclusion, fear, and powerlessness into imaginative explorations of resistance.
Moving between the everyday and the fantastical, the collection examines how women navigate relationships, social conventions, anger, and the struggle to make their voices heard. Radojevic combines tenderness with biting humor, capturing both the vulnerability and the strength of women pushed to their limits. Her stories ask what happens when those who have been expected to remain silent finally refuse to comply.
Dark, inventive, and sharply observed, the collection explores the possibilities of reclaiming agency in a world that continually attempts to define women’s lives.
United Kingdom
2025
12
What a Time to Be Alive
What a Time to Be Alive follows twenty-one-year-old Sickan Hermansson, a young woman who arrives at Stockholm University determined to reinvent herself. After a lonely childhood in a small Swedish town, marked by social exclusion and a lack of meaningful connections, she sees university as an opportunity to experience the things she has missed: friendship, intimacy, love, and the freedom to become someone new.
Just as Sickan begins to find her place among a group of friends, she meets Abbe, a charming and confident young man who seems to offer the possibility of romance and belonging. Yet navigating relationships proves more complicated than she imagined, forcing her to confront her insecurities and the compromises she is willing to make to be accepted.
With sensitivity and understated humor, Jenny Mustard explores loneliness, class, sexuality, and the pressures of young womanhood. The novel captures the awkwardness and intensity of early adulthood, asking how much of ourselves we are willing to change in the pursuit of love and acceptance.
Sweden
2025