Literary Fiction

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Salt Slow

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

United Kingdom 2022

Hafsatu Bebi

Twenty-two-year-old Hafsatu Gaya seems to have everything in place: a promising career running a fashion label in Abuja, a loving family, and a relationship with one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. But when an impulsive decision brings long-buried family secrets to the surface, Hafsatu’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. She must confront painful truths about her family’s past and question how well she really knows the people closest to her. Running alongside Hafsatu’s story is the heartbreaking love story of Zuwaira, an orphan whose hopes for a better life are repeatedly thwarted by social expectations and circumstances beyond her control. Although the two women belong to different generations and occupy very different positions in society, their lives are connected by secrets that will eventually reshape both their futures. Set in Northern Nigeria, Hafsatu Bebi explores love, betrayal, faith, family obligations, and the tension between personal choice and destiny. It asks whether people can truly understand themselves when so much of their identity has been built on truths others have chosen to conceal.

Rose and the Burma Sky

Rose and the Burma Sky

In 1939, in a village in southeastern Nigeria, young Obi dreams of building a better life for himself and his family. When a colonial army jeep passes through his village, the prospect of a uniform and a steady wage appeals to him—not least because he hopes to impress Rose, the woman he loves. But when Rose becomes pregnant by another man, Obi’s world collapses. Haunted by unanswered questions about her lover, he joins the British colonial army and is sent to fight in the brutal Burma Campaign of the Second World War. As Obi confronts the horrors of war, his heartbreak becomes entangled with a mystery that will have devastating consequences. Through his journey from rural Nigeria to the battlefields of Southeast Asia, Rosanna Amaka brings attention to the often-overlooked experiences of African soldiers who fought for a colonial power. Blending an intimate story of unrequited love with the wider injustices of empire, Rose and the Burma Sky explores sacrifice, racial inequality, and the lasting consequences of choices made in moments of despair.

Nigeria Myanmar 2023

So Late in the Day

So Late in the Day

On a summer Friday in Dublin, office worker Cathal watches the hours pass, looking forward to the weekend. Yet his thoughts keep returning to Sabine, the French woman he was once engaged to—and to the small moments and disagreements that destroyed their relationship. As the evening unfolds, details of their time together reveal a troubling portrait of a man whose rigid expectations and lack of generosity gradually undermine the possibility of love. The 2023 collection brings together three stories: So Late in the Day, The Long and Painful Death, and Antarctica. Across these unsettling encounters, Claire Keegan examines the power dynamics between women and men, exposing how entitlement, indifference, and the threat of violence can shape intimate relationships. With extraordinary precision and emotional restraint, she finds profound meaning in ordinary conversations and seemingly insignificant gestures. The result is a quietly devastating exploration of gender, intimacy, and the harm people can inflict without ever recognising themselves as cruel.

Soldier Sailor

A new mother known as Soldier loves her baby son, Sailor, with a fierce intensity—but motherhood has transformed her life in ways she could never have anticipated. Exhausted by sleepless nights, endless childcare, and the relentless demands of caring for a young child, she struggles to recognise the woman she used to be. While her husband continues to work late and pursue his career, Soldier finds herself increasingly isolated, questioning the unequal division of parenting and the disappearance of her own ambitions. Told as an intimate address to her son, Soldier Sailor captures the contradictions of early motherhood: tenderness and resentment, overwhelming love and desperate frustration, joy and despair. When an encounter with someone from her former life offers a glimpse of the person she once was, Soldier begins to wonder whether she can reclaim part of herself without abandoning the child she adores. With sharp humour and unflinching honesty, Claire Kilroy explores the invisible labour of motherhood and the struggle to preserve one’s identity while caring for another person.

Summer Heat

In 1974, young Melike senses that something is terribly wrong. Her parents’ political gatherings have stopped, and whispered conversations about prison, invasion, and military coups fill the family home in Istanbul. Hoping to escape the growing unrest, the family moves to a quiet village in southern Turkey. For a while, life seems peaceful—until Melike’s beloved father disappears. Nearly thirty years later, Melike has built a respectable life as an art historian in Istanbul. She has a comfortable home and a devoted husband, yet a persistent dissatisfaction follows her. When she meets Petro, a mysterious and captivating stranger, she believes a new chapter is beginning. But Petro’s concealed identity forces her to confront the past she has spent years trying to leave behind. Against the backdrop of the 1974 Turkish military intervention in Cyprus and its political aftermath, Summer Heat explores family secrets, desire, and the long shadow of historical violence. It is a story about the identities we construct, the truths we bury, and the past’s power to disrupt even the most carefully arranged lives.

A History of Burning

A History of Burning

In 1898, thirteen-year-old Pirbhai leaves his village in India, lured by the promise of work in East Africa. Instead, he is forced into labour on the British railway, where a desperate act committed in the name of survival becomes a secret that will haunt his descendants for generations. Years later, Pirbhai builds a family with Sonal in Uganda. Their children and grandchildren grow up amid the final years of British colonial rule, the country’s struggle for independence, and the political turmoil that follows. Among the next generation are three sisters, each with her own ambitions and understanding of what it means to belong. When Idi Amin orders Uganda’s Asian population to leave in 1972, the family is scattered across continents, carrying with them the memories, silences, and secrets of their past. Spanning more than a century and moving between India, East Africa, and Canada, A History of Burning traces how one act of survival reverberates through generations. Janika Oza weaves together colonial exploitation, political upheaval, family loyalty, and the search for home in an intimate multigenerational saga about the stories families preserve—and those they struggle to forget.

Uganda India Canada 2023

Untethered

Leaving home promises freedom, but what happens when the life you find is more restrictive than the one you left behind? Zia secretly dreams of going to university, but growing up in a traditional Muslim family in Sri Lanka, she follows expectations and agrees to an arranged marriage with Rashid, a man she barely knows. At first, the security of family wealth and familiar customs softens the difficulties of their relationship. But when political unrest pushes the couple to immigrate to Australia, everything changes. Far from her family and the life she once knew, Zia faces isolation, financial hardship, and a marriage that becomes increasingly suffocating. The new country offers the promise of independence, yet visa restrictions and unfamiliar social expectations make building a life of her own far more difficult than she imagined. As she discovers friendship, experiences devastating loss, and begins questioning the choices made for her, Zia must decide whether she can find the courage to shape her own future. Inspired in part by Ayesha Inoon’s experiences as an immigrant Muslim woman, Untethered is a moving exploration of displacement, cultural expectations, and the complicated freedom of starting over. It asks what we must leave behind to discover who we truly are.

Sri Lanka Australia 2023

Small Boat

Vincent Delecroix

One night, a small boat carrying migrants across the English Channel begins to sink. Desperate passengers call for help again and again, but the rescue they need never comes in time. Twenty-seven people die. At the centre of Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat is the woman who answered those distress calls—and who must now confront her role in the tragedy. Inspired by the real-life Channel disaster of November 2021, this powerful novella unfolds through the perspective of an unnamed French rescue operator who insists that she alone cannot be held responsible. As she revisits the night’s events, her attempts to justify herself expose the uncomfortable distance between following procedures and doing what is morally right. Delecroix transforms a devastating news story into an unsettling examination of guilt, indifference, and collective responsibility. Who is to blame when a human life is lost? An individual, a system, a border—or a society that has learned to look away? Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, Small Boat is a brief but haunting work that challenges readers to consider what it means to witness suffering and choose whether to act.

Witness

What does it mean to witness someone else’s suffering—and what responsibility comes with seeing the truth? Set in contemporary New York City, Witness brings together ten stories about people caught between the desire to care for one another and the uncomfortable truths that make connection difficult. A young girl tries to navigate tensions within her family as the home she knows faces an uncertain future. A man struggles with memories he cannot escape. A woman living with the aftermath of violence searches for a way forward. Across these lives, ordinary encounters become moments of revelation, exposing the quiet decisions that can shape a family, a friendship, or an entire community. Jamel Brinkley writes about the spaces between people: the affection that survives disappointment, the secrets that fracture trust, and the moments when silence becomes its own kind of betrayal. His characters are neither wholly innocent nor easily condemned; they are human, complicated, and often uncertain about what doing the right thing actually requires. Tender, unsettling, and deeply observant, Witness explores grief, belonging, inequality, and the moral weight of looking away. It asks whether truly seeing another person is enough—or whether we must also find the courage to act.

United States 2023

The List

One anonymous post. One devastating accusation. One month until the wedding. Ola Olajide has built her career exposing powerful men accused of misconduct. As a successful journalist at Womxxxn magazine, she knows exactly what women should do when allegations surface—and what happens when they stay silent. Now, just weeks before her wedding, Ola wakes up to a message that threatens to destroy the future she has imagined: her fiancé, Michael Koranteng, has appeared on a viral online list of men accused of abusive behaviour. Until now, Ola and Michael have been the couple everyone admires. But as the allegations spread, their carefully curated love story begins to unravel. Ola must decide whether to stand by the man she loves or risk becoming the very kind of woman she has spent her career criticising. Meanwhile, Michael insists he is innocent, and the relentless online speculation leaves little room for uncertainty. Sharp, unsettling, and impossible to dismiss, The List explores what happens when the court of public opinion delivers its verdict before all the facts are known. Yomi Adegoke delves into the collision between feminism, accountability, loyalty, and the unforgiving machinery of social media. When the internet decides who you are, can the truth still save you?

United Kingdom 2023

A Broken People's Playlist

A Broken People's Playlist

Chimeka Garricks

Set primarily in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of twelve interconnected short stories about love, loss, family, betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. Each story takes its title from a song, using music as an emotional thread that connects the characters and their experiences. Together, the stories form a portrait of a city and its people, revealing the beauty and brokenness of everyday life. The collection introduces a diverse cast of characters navigating personal crises and complicated relationships. A teenage boy dreams of becoming a DJ while his family falls apart, only to reappear years later as a troubled middle-aged man. Elsewhere, a dying man attempts to organise his own funeral while he is still alive, and a husband struggles to cope with the aftermath of his wife’s miscarriage. Other stories explore infidelity, friendship, grief, and the consequences of choices that cannot easily be undone. Through its music-inspired structure and interconnected narratives, the collection explores how people endure heartbreak, make mistakes, and search for meaning amid life’s disappointments. It is ultimately a reflection on human imperfection and the possibility of finding connection and hope even when life feels irreparably broken.

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