Literary Fiction

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Silken Gazelles

Silken Gazelles

Set between a small mountain village and the bustling capital of Muscat, Oman, Silken Gazelles explores the enduring bonds between women, the pain of separation, and the complicated ways childhood relationships shape adult lives. Ghazaala and Asiya grow up as milk-sisters, sharing a bond considered as close as that between biological siblings. But tragedy tears them apart, and Asiya is forced to leave their village. Her disappearance leaves a lasting wound in Ghazaala’s life, prompting her to search for love and belonging elsewhere. Years later, Ghazaala falls in love with a violinist and moves to Muscat, where she attempts to balance marriage, motherhood, and her education. At university, she befriends Harir, who begins documenting their deepening friendship in her diary. Unbeknownst to either woman, Asiya’s mysterious past connects their lives in unexpected ways. Moving between past and present, Jokha Alharthi weaves together the stories of three women navigating love, loss, family expectations, and the pursuit of independence. The novel offers an intimate portrait of Omani society while examining how friendships evolve over time—and how the absence of someone can continue to shape the lives of those left behind.

Missy

Madras, India, 1974. Seventeen-year-old Savi has grown up in St Ursula’s convent, where orphaned girls are expected to become nuns or domestic servants. Intelligent and gifted with languages, she dreams of a different future. When she becomes a governess for the wealthy Nandiyar family, she encounters a world of privilege and possibility—and falls in love with Ananda, a young apprentice sculptor. But a night of horrific violence forces them to flee India and begin new lives under different identities. Four decades later, Savi has reinvented herself as Missy, a successful driving school owner in Chicago and a respected member of the South Asian community. A devoted mother to her two daughters, Mansi and Shilpa, she appears to have achieved the American dream. However, when a charming young doctor named Varun enters their lives, secrets from her past threaten to unravel everything she has built. Spanning continents and generations, Missy explores migration, reinvention, family loyalty, and the lasting consequences of the choices people make to survive.

A Woman on a Suitcase

A Woman on a Suitcase

Shazaf Fatima Haider

Newly married Seema Hyderi has been thrown out of her husband’s home for the third time in just ten months. Sitting on her suitcase outside her in-laws’ house, she faces a life-changing decision: return to her husband and submit to his demands, or walk away from her marriage and reclaim her independence. What follows is a journey from Karachi to London and back, taking Seema through complicated family relationships, manipulative matchmakers, unspoken expectations, and the uncomfortable realities of married life. As she confronts the pressures imposed on women to preserve their marriages at any cost, Seema begins to question what happiness, freedom, and love truly mean. Blending sharp humour with emotional depth, Shazaf Fatima Haider’s novel offers an incisive look at marriage, domestic control, and the courage it takes to choose a different life within a society where a woman’s reputation is often tied to her relationship status.

Land of Milk and Honey

Land of Milk and Honey

In a world choked by smog, where crops are disappearing and food is becoming scarce, an unnamed young chef accepts a job at an isolated mountain estate reserved for the wealthy elite. Behind its borders, the sky is clear, rare ingredients flourish, and extravagant meals offer a taste of a world that no longer exists. Working for a mysterious benefactor and his enigmatic daughter, the chef discovers unexpected pleasures, forbidden desires, and unsettling truths about the people determined to survive at any cost. Sensuous and quietly dystopian, C Pam Zhang’s novel explores the morality of privilege, the politics of appetite, and the question of who deserves pleasure when the world is falling apart.

United States 2024

A Farewell To Imperial Istanbul

A Farewell To Imperial Istanbul

Ayşe Osmanoğlu

Istanbul, 1922. The Ottoman Empire is collapsing, and the imperial family faces the loss of the world they have known for centuries. As the Turkish nationalist movement brings an end to the Sultanate, Prince Nihad struggles to protect his family and preserve the legacy of a fading dynasty. His son, Prince Vâsıb, dreams of a future in which Istanbul can recover its freedom from foreign occupation. Against a backdrop of political upheaval, personal sacrifice, and a city caught between empires and a new republic, Ayşe Osmanoğlu tells a moving story of family loyalty, displacement, and the painful end of an era. Inspired by her own imperial heritage, this historical novel brings the final days of Ottoman Istanbul vividly to life.

Tehrangeles

Porochista Khakpour

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.

Yassini Girls

Shereen Malherbe

In the ancient streets of Jerusalem, Fatima receives an unexpected phone call that awakens memories she has spent years trying to bury. Thousands of miles away in the English countryside, Layla discovers a family heirloom hidden beneath her attic floor, setting her on a journey into the painful, long-silenced history of Palestine. As the two women’s stories begin to converge, family secrets reveal the enduring consequences of displacement and the fragile threads connecting generations to their homeland. Inspired by the author’s own discovery of her family’s history during a BBC documentary, Yassini Girls is a deeply personal novel about Palestinian identity, inherited trauma, and the power of storytelling to preserve what history threatens to erase. Through the traditions, memories, and resilience of Palestinian women, it explores how understanding the past can become an act of resistance and a way of safeguarding the future.

Obligations to the Wounded

Obligations to the Wounded

Mubanga Kalimamukwento

In Obligations to the Wounded, Mubanga Kalimamukwento presents a collection of interconnected stories exploring the burdens, expectations, and contradictions that shape the lives of Zambian women and girls. Spanning different generations and geographical settings, the stories portray women negotiating the demands of family, religion, tradition, and community while struggling to preserve their individuality. Through formally inventive storytelling, Kalimamukwento explores subjects including intimate partner violence, migration, racial discrimination, the loss of language, sexuality, and the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. Her characters inhabit worlds where inherited customs can offer a sense of belonging while simultaneously restricting personal freedom. Some seek escape; others attempt to reconcile their desires with the obligations imposed upon them. Moving between personal experiences and broader social questions, the collection examines what women owe their families and communities—and what they owe themselves. Kalimamukwento combines emotional sensitivity with sharp social observation, revealing how pain can be passed between generations but also how solidarity and self-determination can create possibilities for change. The result is a nuanced portrait of contemporary Zambian womanhood, including the experiences of Zambian women living abroad.

Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea

Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea

How many lives can one person inhabit before losing sight of who he really is? Adam Dannoun was an infant when the 1948 Nakba tore his family apart and destroyed his childhood home in Lydda, Palestine. Years later, after fleeing an oppressive stepfather, he arrives in Haifa determined to reinvent himself. He becomes Adam Danon, a young man with a fabricated past who claims to be Jewish and born in the Warsaw Ghetto. His new identity offers him a chance to escape his history, but it also traps him in a web of lies, particularly when he falls in love with the daughter of the man who has taken him in. As Adam moves between identities, Elias Khoury explores the devastating consequences of displacement and the impossibility of escaping collective memory. Both a deeply personal story and a sweeping reflection on Palestinian history, this novel asks whether reinvention can ever erase the wounds of the past.

Waist Deep

Linea Maja Ernst

Five university friends reunite for seven summer days at a lakeside house in the Danish countryside, hoping to recapture the freedom and intimacy of their younger years. Sylvia, who has always dreamed of a more unconventional way of living, finds herself increasingly disillusioned as her friends arrive with careers, children, and established relationships. The situation becomes even more complicated when Esben, the object of Sylvia’s long-standing crush, announces that he intends to marry Karen at the end of the week. Meanwhile, Sylvia’s relationship with her girlfriend, Charlie, forces her to confront the tension between romantic commitment and her desire for something less conventional. As the friends swim, drink, flirt, and argue beneath the midsummer sky, old attractions resurface and carefully maintained boundaries begin to dissolve. Through their conversations and intimate encounters, Linea Maja Ernst explores the contradictions of adulthood, the changing nature of friendship, and the difficulty of reconciling youthful ideals with the realities of everyday life. Sensual, witty, and emotionally perceptive, Waist Deep asks whether growing up necessarily means abandoning the freedom to imagine a different kind of life.

Intermezzo

Intermezzo follows two Irish brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, as they struggle to navigate life after the death of their father. Peter, a successful Dublin lawyer in his thirties, appears to have everything under control, but beneath his confident exterior he is struggling with grief, insomnia, and complicated relationships with two women: Sylvia, his former partner, and Naomi, a much younger university student. Ivan, a socially awkward twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player, finds himself drawn to Margaret, an older woman whose own life is undergoing a period of uncertainty. Despite their shared loss, the brothers find it increasingly difficult to understand one another. Their differences in temperament, age, and approach to relationships create tension as they attempt to make sense of their changing lives. Through intimate psychological portraits and shifting perspectives, Rooney explores grief, masculinity, love, sibling relationships, and the ways people seek connection during periods of emotional upheaval. The title refers to an intermezzo, a musical interlude, reflecting a transitional moment in the brothers’ lives as they confront loss and reconsider who they want to become.

The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

Safekeep is set in the Netherlands in 1961 and follows Isabel, a solitary woman living in the family home inherited after the death of her mother. Her carefully ordered existence is disrupted when her brother Louis arrives with his new girlfriend, Eva, who is invited to stay in the house. Isabel finds Eva intrusive and becomes increasingly suspicious of her behaviour, interpreting small disturbances as signs that something is wrong. Yet her growing fixation on Eva gradually reveals deeper tensions involving desire, family history, and the secrets embedded in the house itself. As their relationship changes, Isabel must confront assumptions she has long used to protect herself from emotional uncertainty. Van der Wouden combines psychological suspense with an exploration of postwar Dutch society, examining belonging, repression, and the ways personal histories can conceal larger historical injustices. The novel asks what it means to claim a home and what may be hidden behind the things people believe they own.

Netherlands 2024

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