Fiction

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Here Comes the Sun

Here Comes the Sun

Nicole Dennis-Benn

Set in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Here Comes the Sun follows three women from the same family as they struggle to survive in a society shaped by poverty, social inequality, and the pressures of tourism. Margot works at a luxury resort and secretly takes on sex work to pay for her younger sister Thandi’s education, hoping to give her a future beyond the hardships they have known. Their mother, Delores, is equally determined to secure the family’s financial stability, while Thandi struggles with expectations about beauty, class, and success. When plans for a new hotel threaten their community, the women must confront difficult truths about their desires, relationships, and sacrifices. Beneath Jamaica’s image as a tropical paradise, Dennis-Benn reveals a more complicated reality of exploitation, colourism, homophobia, and the lingering effects of colonialism. The novel is a powerful exploration of identity, belonging, and the price of pursuing a better life.

A Quiet Place

Seicho Matsumoto

A Quiet Place follows Tsuneo Asai, a reserved government official whose life is disrupted when he learns that his wife, Eiko, has died suddenly while he is away on a business trip. Although she had a heart condition, the circumstances of her death trouble him: she collapsed in a small shop in a Tokyo neighbourhood she seemingly had no reason to visit. Determined to understand what happened, Asai investigates the area and discovers clues suggesting that his seemingly quiet and devoted wife may have been hiding a secret life. His search gradually draws him into a world of clandestine relationships, suspicion, and uncomfortable revelations. As he uncovers details about Eiko’s movements, his grief gives way to jealousy and doubt, threatening the orderly existence he has carefully maintained. Through this psychological mystery, Matsumoto examines the hidden tensions beneath respectable appearances, the constraints of marriage, and the effects of ambition and social expectations in postwar Japanese society. The novel reveals how little people may truly know about those closest to them.

Time of White Horses

Time of White Horses

Ibrahim Nasrallah

Set in Palestine, before the creation of the state of Israel, this lyrical and deftly written novel spans three generations living in the small village of Hadiya. Reaching back into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the immense history of this period is brought into focus by the very human stories of Hajj Mahmoud, his son Khaled, and grandson Naji. As the cruel hand of history hovers above them, their destinies are shaped by outside forces - first the crumbling Ottoman Empire, then the British Mandate, and finally the Nakba. Nasrallah's elegant and epic tale is one of both suffering and survival, heart-break and hope.

Stork Mountain

Miroslav Penkov

Stork Mountain follows a young Bulgarian-American man who returns to his ancestral village in Bulgaria after the disappearance of his grandfather, a former communist official. Hoping to uncover the truth about his family’s past, he becomes immersed in the history and traditions of a rural community near the Turkish border, where generations have lived through political upheaval, shifting national identities, and religious tensions. As he investigates his grandfather’s life, the narrator encounters stories of forbidden love, ancient rituals, and the complicated legacy of Bulgaria’s communist era. The village’s inhabitants preserve memories and customs that seem increasingly distant from the modern world, while the narrator struggles to reconcile his American upbringing with the homeland he has inherited through family history. Miroslav Penkov blends folklore, historical fiction, and contemporary storytelling to explore belonging, migration, and the ways personal identity is shaped by collective memory. The novel reveals how the past continues to influence the present, even when its stories have been forgotten, distorted, or deliberately concealed.

The High Mountains of Portugal

The High Mountains of Portugal

The High Mountains of Portugal weaves together three interconnected stories spanning nearly a century, exploring grief, faith, and the mysteries of human existence. In 1904, a young Portuguese archivist named Tomás discovers an ancient religious artifact and embarks on a journey through the countryside in search of its meaning. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist confronts a personal tragedy that challenges his understanding of love and belief. In the final story, a Canadian senator living in contemporary Portugal finds himself drawn into an unexpected relationship with a chimpanzee, prompting him to reconsider the boundaries between humans and animals. Through these unusual narratives, Yann Martel explores the ways people respond to loss and search for meaning in a world that resists easy explanations. Blending philosophical reflection, historical fiction, and elements of the surreal, the novel examines faith, mortality, love, and humanity’s connection to the natural world.

Red Water

One summer evening in 1989, seventeen-year-old Silva Vela disappears from a small coastal village in Dalmatia. At first, the police suspect she has run away, but as Yugoslavia begins to unravel, her disappearance becomes a mystery that will haunt two families for decades. Silva’s brother, Mate, refuses to give up searching for her, while the investigation exposes buried secrets, fractured loyalties, and the quiet transformations of a society caught between socialism, war, and capitalism. Spanning thirty years, Red Water is more than a gripping crime novel: it is a portrait of a community slowly changing beyond recognition. Against the backdrop of Croatia’s turbulent recent history, Pavičić explores how a single disappearance can reshape lives, reveal uncomfortable truths, and leave a wound that never quite heals.

Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise

Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise

Thirteen-year-old Fang Si-Chi loves literature and believes that beautiful words can help her understand the world. When a respected literature teacher offers to tutor her, her parents see an opportunity for their gifted daughter. Instead, their trust exposes her to a devastating betrayal that will transform her understanding of love, desire, and herself. As Si-Chi struggles to make sense of her experience, she turns to the books she once believed held all the answers. Inspired by the author’s own experiences, this haunting novel examines sexual abuse, the manipulation of innocence, and the social structures that protect perpetrators while silencing victims. With lyrical prose and unflinching psychological insight, Lin Yi-Han exposes the terrifying distance between the romantic ideals we inherit from literature and the realities of human cruelty.

Heaven on Earth

Heaven on Earth

What would happen if science made it possible to remain young forever? Set in Jordan in the 2090s, Heaven on Earth imagines a future transformed by advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology that allow people to reverse the aging process. Yet the promise of eternal youth brings unexpected moral, social, and emotional dilemmas. At the heart of the novel is Janna Abdallah, a journalist navigating a world where humanity has gained unprecedented control over life and death. Her brother, Jamal, who contributed to the scientific breakthroughs behind this new reality, makes the controversial decision to reject age suppression and allow himself to die naturally. His choice unsettles the family and challenges the assumptions of a society that has come to regard aging as a problem to be solved. Meanwhile, strict reproductive regulations complicate the family’s hopes for the future. Blending speculative fiction with social commentary, Zaghmout explores the ethical limits of scientific progress, individual autonomy, family relationships, and the meaning of a fulfilling life. By placing these questions within a distinctly Jordanian cultural setting, he invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between technological possibility and human freedom.

Home Fire is a contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy Antigone, exploring family loyalty, political power, and the struggles of British Muslims to reconcile cultural identity with national belonging. The novel follows Isma Pasha, who has spent years caring for her younger twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz, after their mother’s death. When Isma finally leaves London to pursue her studies in the United States, she remains deeply concerned about her siblings. Parvaiz, haunted by the legacy of his deceased jihadist father, travels to Syria to join ISIS, only to discover that he has made a devastating mistake. Desperate to bring her brother home, Aneeka becomes involved with Eamonn Lone, the son of a powerful British politician whose hard-line policies threaten her family’s future. As personal relationships become entangled with national security and political ambition, Shamsie examines the painful consequences of divided loyalties. The novel explores how governments define belonging, whose grief is considered legitimate, and what people are willing to sacrifice for those they love. Home Fire won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

United Kingdom 2017

Djinn City

Saad Z. Hossain

Djinn City is a darkly comic fantasy novel set in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where ancient supernatural forces exist alongside the chaos of modern urban life. The story follows ten-year-old Indelbed, a lonely boy living in a decaying mansion with his eccentric father, Dr. Kaikobad. When his father falls into a mysterious supernatural coma, Indelbed discovers that his family has a secret connection to the world of djinn—powerful, long-lived beings drawn from Islamic and Middle Eastern mythology. With the help of his older cousin Rais, Indelbed uncovers the truth about his origins and learns that he has become the target of a dangerous hunt. His journey draws him into the complicated politics of the djinn world, where ancient rivalries, strange creatures, and powerful factions threaten both humans and supernatural beings. Blending fantasy, science fiction, mythology, and sharp social satire, Hossain creates an imaginative adventure that explores family, power, and the consequences of ancient conflicts. The novel also offers a distinctive portrayal of Bangladesh, using its vibrant capital as the setting for a world where the extraordinary hides beneath the everyday.

Bangladesh 2017

On Earth As It Is Beneath

On Earth As It Is Beneath

On Earth as It Is Beneath takes place in a remote Brazilian penal colony that has been abandoned by the authorities, leaving prisoners and guards trapped in a brutal and isolated environment. As the prison deteriorates, the people within it become increasingly subject to violence, cruelty, and arbitrary power. The boundaries between those responsible for maintaining order and those imprisoned begin to blur, exposing the moral corruption of a system that has effectively abandoned its own rules. Maia writes in stark, uncompromising prose, creating an atmosphere of dread in which the surrounding landscape intensifies the characters’ sense of confinement. The novel examines punishment, institutional neglect, and the dehumanising effects of unchecked authority. It asks what happens when a society removes people from view and then abandons responsibility for their lives.

A Luminous Republic

A Luminous Republic

In A Luminous Republic, a narrator looks back on a disturbing episode from his time working in the subtropical town of San Cristóbal. A mysterious group of children appears in the town, living on its margins and communicating in an unfamiliar language. When some of them begin committing acts of violence, the community struggles to understand their behaviour and decide how to respond. What initially seems like a social mystery gradually becomes a troubling examination of the boundaries between civilisation and savagery, childhood and adulthood, and order and chaos. Barba challenges the idealised image of childhood innocence, asking how societies define outsiders and how fear shapes collective behaviour. The novel reads like a modern fable about the fragility of social norms and the limits of human understanding.

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