Fiction

All countries Afghanistan Albania Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Bhutan Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Cabo Verde Canada Central African Republic Chile China Congo, Democratic Republic Croatia Cuba Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt Fiji Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lebanon Libya Malaysia Mexico Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Singapore Slovenia Somalia South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Türkiye Turkmenistan Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uzbekistan Yemen Zambia

Newest first Oldest first

Perfumist of Paris

Perfumist of Paris

The Perfumist of Paris follows Radha, the younger sister introduced in The Henna Artist, as she builds a career in the world of perfumery in 1970s Paris. Having developed her talent for creating fragrances, Radha works to establish herself professionally while navigating marriage, motherhood, and the expectations placed upon her as an Indian woman living abroad. Her ambition to become an accomplished perfumer requires her to make difficult choices about the balance between her professional aspirations and her responsibilities to her family. As she encounters new opportunities and challenges, Radha must confront questions about independence, belonging, and the kind of future she wants to create. Joshi explores the relationship between creativity and self-expression, using the evocative world of perfume to examine memory, cultural heritage, and the complex process of developing an identity that embraces both personal ambition and family ties.

By the Sea

Abdulrazak Gurnah

By the Sea follows Saleh Omar, an elderly man from Zanzibar who arrives in England seeking asylum, carrying little more than a small suitcase and a box of fragrant incense. Unable or unwilling to explain his past fully, he becomes entangled in a complex history of family conflict, political upheaval, and personal betrayal. His story gradually intersects with that of Latif Mahmud, another Tanzanian exile whose family history is closely connected to Saleh’s own. As the two men confront their shared past, the novel explores displacement, memory, and the uncertain meaning of belonging. Through their conflicting recollections, Gurnah reveals how personal narratives are shaped by loss and resentment, while examining the emotional and cultural challenges faced by those forced to rebuild their lives far from home.

Apple in the Dark

Apple in the Dark

Clarice Lispector

The Apple in the Dark follows Martim, a man who flees his home after believing he has committed a terrible act against his wife. Seeking refuge in the Brazilian countryside, he finds work on a remote farm owned by two women, Vitória and Ermelinda. Away from the structures of his former life, Martim begins to experience the world as if he were discovering it for the first time. His escape becomes a profound journey into the nature of consciousness, language, morality, and personal identity. Through introspective prose and philosophical reflections, Clarice Lispector explores what remains of a person when familiar social roles and established beliefs fall away. Rather than offering a conventional narrative of guilt and redemption, the novel examines the unsettling possibility of creating oneself anew. It is a deeply existential work about freedom, responsibility, and the struggle to understand what it means to be human.

Seven Empty Houses

Seven Empty Houses

Samanta Schweblin

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents. In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.

The Furrows

Namwali Serpell

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.” When Cassandra Williams, known as C, is twelve years old, her seven-year-old brother, Wayne, disappears during a swimming accident. His body is never found, leaving C trapped in a grief complicated by guilt and unanswered questions. Their mother refuses to abandon hope and dedicates herself to searching for missing children, while their father eventually leaves the family. As C grows older, the loss refuses to remain in the past: she begins seeing Wayne everywhere, recognising his face in strangers on trains, in cafés, and in crowded streets. Then she meets a man who shares her brother’s name and seems connected to the mystery of her loss. Moving between perspectives and shifting versions of reality, Namwali Serpell explores how grief distorts memory and how the stories we tell ourselves can become inseparable from what we believe to be true. Both intimate and formally adventurous, The Furrows is a haunting meditation on sibling love, racial identity, and the impossible desire to recover those we have lost.

United States 2022

Ti Amo

Hanne Ørstavik

Can love survive when the person you love is disappearing before your eyes? In this intimate, autobiographical novel, a woman in her fifties discovers that her husband has cancer. As they confront his illness together, their shared life takes on a new intensity, and ordinary moments become charged with tenderness, fear, and impending loss. The Italian words ti amo—“I love you”—become a quiet expression of devotion in the face of something neither of them can control. Through spare, precise prose, Hanne Ørstavik explores the strange isolation of caring for someone who is dying, the vulnerability of the body, and the ways love changes when time becomes painfully limited. Neither sentimental nor detached, the novel captures the contradictions of grief before death has even arrived: the desire to hold on, the exhaustion of caregiving, and the desperate wish to make every remaining moment count.

Cautery

Lucía Lijtmaer

A woman in Barcelona is trapped in a relationship that looks perfect from the outside, yet she cannot shake the feeling that her life is quietly falling apart. Haunted by fantasies of an impending apocalypse, she begins to question the promises of romantic love, modern feminism, and the freedom she thought she had achieved. Four centuries earlier, Deborah Moody, a fiercely independent Englishwoman, escapes to colonial America after losing almost everything. Despite their vastly different worlds, both women confront the same uncomfortable truth: independence does not guarantee freedom from the expectations and disappointments imposed by men. Darkly funny, provocative, and sharply observant, Cautery explores heartbreak, female anger, and the radical possibility of starting over when the life you’ve built becomes unbearable.

Jawbone

In Jawbone (Mandíbula), Ecuadorian writer Mónica Ojeda explores the disturbing intersection of adolescent desire, female friendship, violence, and fear. The novel opens with Fernanda, a wealthy teenager who has been kidnapped and imprisoned in a remote cabin by her literature teacher, Miss Clara. As the circumstances surrounding the abduction gradually emerge, the story reveals the intense and unsettling relationship between Fernanda and her best friend, Annelise, whose shared fascination with horror, mythology, and the macabre has drawn them into increasingly dangerous territory. At their elite bilingual school in Guayaquil, Annelise leads a group of girls in elaborate rituals devoted to a fictional deity they have created. Their games blur the boundaries between imagination and reality, intimacy and cruelty, fascination and obsession. Meanwhile, Miss Clara struggles with her own psychological disintegration, haunted by her dead mother and the pressure to maintain control. Drawing on horror fiction, internet creepypastas, mythology, and literary theory, Ojeda constructs a multilayered narrative that captures the volatility of adolescence. The novel examines how young women negotiate power, sexuality, identity, and belonging in a world where affection can become possessive and fear can transform into desire. Its unsettling atmosphere challenges readers to confront the darker possibilities of growing up.

Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan

Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan

Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan is a landmark anthology bringing together 24 short stories and essays by 13 women writers from three generations of Kazakhstani life. Translated from Kazakh and Russian into English, the collection offers an intimate portrait of a country negotiating the complicated legacies of Soviet rule, independence, and rapid social change. Its stories move between rural villages and urban landscapes, family homes and public spaces, exploring the lives of women whose experiences have often remained outside international literary conversations. Some pieces revisit the trauma of Stalinist repression, famine, and political protest, while others examine marriage, motherhood, loneliness, generational conflict, and the uncertainties of contemporary life. Together, the writers reveal a society shaped by competing cultural influences and evolving ideas about identity and belonging. The title, Amanat, evokes a trust, promise, or precious legacy entrusted to another for safekeeping. True to this meaning, the anthology preserves and shares the voices of Kazakhstani women, creating a literary bridge between generations, languages, and cultures.

Kazakhstan 2022

Yñiga

Yñiga Calinauan leads a quiet, unremarkable life in Manila until a retired army general accused of murdering peasants and political activists is arrested across the street from her home. Days later, her neighbourhood is burned to the ground, in what some suspect is retaliation. Forced to flee, Yñiga returns to M—, the small fishing town where she grew up, hoping to recover the peaceful existence she has lost. But the violence she thought she had escaped follows her, drawing her into a history of political repression and family trauma that she can no longer ignore. As the boundaries between her past and present begin to collapse, Yñiga must confront the legacy of her activist father, who disappeared years earlier, and the unresolved wounds that continue to shape her family. Blending political thriller, dark humour, and literary fiction, Glenn Diaz’s novel examines the enduring consequences of state violence in the Philippines. Against a landscape haunted by disappearances and historical injustice, it explores the possibility of resistance—not only through dramatic acts of rebellion, but also through the determination to remember, endure, and refuse silence.

Philippines 2022

Time of the Flies

Time of the Flies

Claudia Piñeiro

The Time of the Flies follows Inés, a woman rebuilding her life after spending fifteen years in prison for murdering her former husband’s lover. Released into a society that has changed considerably during her imprisonment, Inés struggles to understand the new social landscape, including shifting attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and women’s rights. She establishes a small fumigation business with another formerly imprisoned woman, hoping to achieve independence and leave her troubled past behind. However, an unexpected request draws her into a new mystery that threatens the fragile stability she has created. Blending crime fiction, dark humour, and social commentary, Piñeiro explores punishment, reintegration, and the difficulties women face when attempting to begin again. The novel asks whether freedom is simply the absence of prison walls or the more complicated ability to shape one’s own future.

Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories portraying the lives of ordinary people in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The stories follow children, adolescents, adults, and elderly characters as they confront family obligations, unfulfilled ambitions, religious expectations, and the limitations of their social environment. Some experience moments of sudden insight that reveal the compromises and disappointments shaping their lives, while others remain trapped by fear, habit, or economic necessity. Joyce presents Dublin as a city where political stagnation, social conventions, and the influence of the Catholic Church affect even the most private decisions. His restrained prose captures the significance of everyday encounters and seemingly minor events. The collection explores paralysis, longing, and the desire for escape, offering a powerful portrait of individuals who recognise the possibility of change but often struggle to act upon it.

1 … 11 12 13 14 15 … 34