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1
The City of Mist: Stories
In The City of Mist, Carlos Ruiz Zafón returns to the shadowy, enchanting Barcelona of his celebrated Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. This posthumous collection brings together eleven stories filled with mysterious characters, forgotten histories, supernatural encounters, and the irresistible magic of literature. Some stories expand the universe of Zafón’s bestselling novels, while others explore new corners of his richly imagined world.
A young boy discovers that writing can win the attention of the girl he loves. A labyrinth maker escapes plague-stricken Constantinople to build a library designed to withstand the destruction of time. Miguel de Cervantes encounters a mysterious stranger who offers him an extraordinary literary bargain, while the celebrated architect Antoni Gaudí embarks on a journey to New York that could determine the fate of one of his greatest creations.
Throughout the collection, Zafón blends Gothic mystery, historical imagination, dark humour, and a profound love of books. His stories transform cities into labyrinths of secrets and libraries into places where the past remains alive. Both a celebration of storytelling and a farewell to one of Spain’s most beloved modern novelists, The City of Mist invites readers to lose themselves once more in a world where every book conceals another mystery.
Spain
2020
2
Newcomers: Book Two
The second installment of Lojze Kovačič’s Slovenian masterpiece begins with our hero, Bubi, once again making mischief in the labyrinthine streets, rooftops, bridges, abandoned butcher shops, and cinemas of wartime Ljubljana, with a coterie of scrappy sidekicks. Scenes of first sexual encounters – which are more mimicry than acts of desire – are interspersed with hijinks that replicate the violence raging across Europe. From the goofy, heady plots of childhood, Bubi emerges as a determined student of art, trading his handmade comic books for scraps of food and working day and night on a mural of Snow White for a nearby orphanage.
Kovačič’s control of language, and Michael Biggins’s expert translation, form a remarkable fidelity to a time in which a thirteen-year-old Swiss kid, exiled and yet protected from the worst horrors of the Holocaust, envisions Nazi Germany as “a gigantic, black, marble block filled with Hitler Youth brats with whom I would have to stand at attention, striking some drum.” Book Two is so packed with arresting historical detail, so attentive to the intricate material world of 1940s Ljubljana, as to render the contemporary moment flimsy in comparison.
Slovenia
2020
3
Money to Burn
Maggie and Kurt live in an old farmhouse in Nyborg, Denmark, struggling to maintain their marriage after their only daughter leaves home. Although they share a life, they seem unable to reach one another, trapped in a relationship shaped by longing, disappointment, and painful silences. As their story unfolds, the novel explores the circumstances that brought them together and the forces that have gradually shaped their lives. Their personal history intersects with one of Scandinavia’s most devastating tragedies: the 1990 fire aboard the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, which killed 159 people. The disaster, later linked to insurance fraud, becomes a lens through which Nordenhof examines the relationship between private suffering and wider economic systems. Moving between intimate family drama and a broader critique of capitalism, the novel asks whether love can survive in a world where money determines so much of human existence. With fragmented storytelling and emotionally intense prose, Nordenhof explores how economic inequality, gender, and violence shape intimate relationships. Money to Burn is the first instalment in the Scandinavian Star series, an ambitious literary project connecting individual lives with the consequences of greed and exploitation.
Denmark
2020
4
Gaia, Queen of Ants
In Gaia, Queen of Ants, Uzbek novelist Hamid Ismailov weaves together political intrigue, mythology, Sufi philosophy, and the complicated legacies of Central Asian history. Set primarily in contemporary England, the novel follows three characters whose lives have been shaped by displacement and ethnic conflict. Domrul, a young Meskhetian Turk who fled Uzbekistan as a child, struggles to reconcile his Muslim heritage with his life in the West. His Irish girlfriend, Emer, carries her own painful memories of growing up amid the violence of the Bosnian War. Their lives become entangled with Gaia, an eighty-year-old Russian-Uzbek woman whose formidable personality conceals a disturbing past connected to Soviet political power. As their stories unfold, Ismailov moves between contemporary Europe and the turbulent history of Central Asia, blending realistic encounters with fables, religious parables, and surreal imagery. The result is a richly layered exploration of exile, cultural identity, corruption, and the ways people use stories to make sense of their lives. With dark humour and lyrical prose, the novel challenges readers to question the boundaries between truth, myth, and personal memory.
Uzbekistan
2020
5
The Discomfort of Evening
Ten-year-old Jas lives with her deeply religious family on a dairy farm in the rural Netherlands. Her world is shaped by strict religious beliefs, the rhythms of farm life and the unspoken rules governing her family. When her older brother Matthies dies in an accident, Jas struggles to understand the loss and begins to believe that her childhood prayer may somehow have caused his death. As grief settles over the household, her parents withdraw into their own suffering, leaving Jas and her siblings increasingly isolated. Unable to express her fear and confusion directly, Jas retreats into a disturbing inner world filled with strange fantasies, bodily anxieties and dark imaginings. Through the child’s unsettling perspective, Rijneveld portrays a family gradually disintegrating under the weight of unprocessed grief and religious guilt. The novel’s vivid, often shocking imagery captures the vulnerability of childhood and the desperate search for meaning when familiar structures of belief and family life begin to collapse. Winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, the novel is a haunting exploration of loss, repression and the limits of understanding.
Netherlands
2020
6
Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories
In Your Ad Could Go Here: Stories, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko brings together a collection of fiction exploring the intimate connections between personal experience, collective memory, and national identity. Originally published in Ukrainian in 2014, the collection moves between the political upheavals of independent Ukraine and the seemingly ordinary dramas of everyday life, revealing how history shapes even the most private moments.
Through stories involving the Orange Revolution, family rivalries, romantic encounters, and unexpected personal triumphs, Zabuzhko examines the stories people tell themselves to make sense of their lives. Her characters navigate the complicated relationship between truth and illusion, individual desires and collective expectations, and the past and present. Myth, folklore, and fairy-tale elements frequently enter these recognisable settings, unsettling the boundary between what is real and what is imagined.
Lyrical, intellectually playful, and sharply observant, the collection explores how personal narratives become intertwined with cultural memory. Zabuzhko asks how individuals and nations construct their identities—and what happens when the stories that sustain them begin to unravel.
Ukraine
2020
7
Grey Bees
In a deserted village in eastern Ukraine, deep inside the so-called Grey Zone between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, only two residents remain: Sergey Sergeyich, a retired mine safety inspector and devoted beekeeper, and Pashka, his former schoolmate and longtime rival. With no electricity and the constant threat of shelling, Sergeyich finds comfort in tending to his bees, whose orderly world offers a fragile contrast to the violence surrounding him.
As spring approaches, he decides to transport his beehives to safer pastures, embarking on a journey across a war-torn landscape. Along the way, he encounters soldiers and civilians on opposing sides of the conflict, including Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. His encounters reveal the human consequences of political division while challenging the boundaries between enemies and neighbours.
Combining dark humour, quiet compassion, and political insight, Grey Bees is a moving portrait of ordinary life amid extraordinary violence. Through Sergeyich’s devotion to his bees, Kurkov explores the persistence of humanity, the absurdity of war, and the possibility of finding common ground in a fractured world.
Ukraine
2020
8
The Fisherman King
Set in Brunei, The Fisherman King blends folklore, fantasy, and national history into a story about ancestry, destiny, and the search for identity. Lisan, a fisherman raised in a traditional water village, has always believed he is descended from Brunei’s royal family. After leaving his wife, Bhatia, and disappearing for eight years, he returns, claiming that he can finally prove his royal lineage.
As Lisan’s mysterious past begins to unravel, the narrative shifts between his present-day quest and events from six centuries earlier, when a forbidden relationship between two royal children set in motion a chain of events threatening both a king and a god. The two storylines gradually converge, revealing connections between personal ambition, historical memory, and the fate of the kingdom.
Drawing on Bruneian folklore and maritime traditions, Daud creates an atmospheric tale of magic, sacrifice, and buried secrets. Beneath its fantastical elements, the novel explores the desire to understand one’s origins and the consequences of pursuing an inheritance that may come at a profound personal cost.
Brunei
2020
9
Sleep Well, Mommy
Sleep Well, Mommy, also published in English as The Only Child, is a psychological thriller that explores the disturbing connections between childhood, violence, and the origins of evil.
Seonkyeong, a criminal psychologist, receives an unexpected opportunity when Yi Byeongdo, a notorious serial killer who has refused to speak publicly, agrees to be interviewed by her. At the same time, her husband brings his eleven-year-old daughter, Hayeong, to live with them following the mysterious deaths of the grandparents who had been raising her. Seonkyeong initially tries to welcome the girl into their home, but Hayeong’s unsettling behaviour soon begins to trouble her.
As Seonkyeong investigates the pasts of both the killer and her stepdaughter, she discovers disturbing similarities between them. The more she learns, the more she questions what she thought she understood about Hayeong and the circumstances surrounding her family’s deaths.
Blending domestic suspense with criminal psychology, Seo’s novel examines the relationship between childhood trauma, family secrets, and the nature of evil.
South Korea
2020
10
Serenade for Nadia
Serenade for Nadia follows Maya Duran, a single mother working at Istanbul University who is asked to assist an elderly German-born professor, Maximilian Wagner, during his visit to Turkey. Initially puzzled by his unusual behaviour, Maya gradually discovers that his connection to Istanbul reaches back to the Second World War. Through his memories, she learns about a forbidden love story and the fate of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution aboard the ship Struma, which sank in 1942. As the past emerges, Maya confronts painful aspects of Turkish history and the human consequences of political decisions. Livaneli weaves together romance, historical tragedy, and contemporary social tensions, exploring how love can endure across decades while examining the responsibilities of remembering those whose lives were lost through war, prejudice, and indifference.
Türkiye
2020
11
Above Us the Milky Way
Above Us the Milky Way is a story about war, immigration, and the remarkable human capacity to create beauty out of horror. As a young family attempts to reconstruct their lives in a new and peaceful country, they are daily drawn back to the first land through remembrance and longing, by news of the continued suffering and loss of loved ones, and by the war dead, who have immigrated and reside with them, haunting their days and illuminating the small joys and wonders offered them by the new land.
The novel's structure is built around the alphabet, twenty-six pieces written in the first person that sketch a through-line of memory for the lives of the five daughters, mother, and father. Ghost stories and fairytales are woven with old family photographs and medieval-style watercolor illuminations to create an origin story of loss and remembrance.
Afghanistan
2020
12
Well-Behaved Indian Women
Well-Behaved Indian Women follows three generations of Indian women as they navigate the expectations of family, culture, and personal ambition. Simran Mehta, a young Indian American woman living in New York, dreams of becoming a writer, but her aspirations conflict with her family’s hopes that she will pursue a more conventional future. Her mother, Nandini, has spent much of her life meeting the expectations placed upon her as a wife and mother, while her grandmother, Bindu, carries memories of a different India and the sacrifices required of women in her generation. As their stories intersect, long-standing tensions emerge around marriage, independence, and what it means to be a good daughter. Dave explores the complexities of cultural identity and intergenerational relationships, showing how women can honour their heritage while questioning traditions that no longer reflect who they want to become.
India
2020