Literary Fiction

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1
The Blue Between Sky and Water
The Blue Between Sky and Water
Susan Abulhawa
In 1947, the Baraka family lives in Beit Daras, a Palestinian village surrounded by olive groves and fertile farmland. When their home is destroyed and the family is forced to flee during the Nakba, siblings Nazmiyeh and Mamdouh embark on separate journeys that will shape the lives of generations to come. In Gaza, Nazmiyeh struggles to rebuild her life in a refugee community, preserving her family’s traditions and nurturing the people around her despite repeated hardships. Meanwhile, Mamdouh eventually settles in the United States, where his granddaughter Nur grows up far from her ancestral homeland, struggling with loneliness and a fractured sense of belonging. Decades later, Nur travels to Gaza, where she encounters Alwan and her son Khaled, whose mysterious condition connects their families in unexpected ways. Blending Palestinian history, magical realism, and the intimate stories of several generations, Susan Abulhawa’s novel explores displacement, inherited trauma, family bonds, and the enduring longing for home.
Palestine 2015
2
The Dream of My Return
The Dream of My Return
Horacio Castellanos Moya
El Salvador’s civil war is nearing its end, and exiled journalist Erasmo Aragón is preparing to return home after years in Mexico. Hoping to start a new life, he also wants to escape his troubled marriage and the anxieties that have consumed him. But when a doctor prescribes hypnosis to treat his persistent liver pain, Erasmo becomes obsessed with the memories and secrets buried in his subconscious. Haunted by political violence, uncertain recollections, and increasingly paranoid suspicions, he begins to lose his grip on reality. Darkly comic and psychologically unsettling, this novel explores exile, memory, and the complicated longing to return to a homeland transformed by violence.
El Salvador 2015
3
Yalo
Yalo
Elias Khoury
Set in Beirut in the aftermath of Lebanon’s long civil war, Yalo follows Daniel Habil Abyad, a young Lebanese man of Assyrian Christian background whose life has been shaped by violence, displacement, and fractured family relationships. Known as Yalo, he is arrested and accused of rape and armed robbery, then subjected to brutal interrogation and torture. His interrogators demand a confession, forcing him to write and rewrite the story of his life until his memories become entangled with their expectations. As he revisits his childhood, his troubled relationship with his mother, and his obsessive pursuit of a woman named Shireen, the boundaries between truth, guilt, and imposed identity begin to dissolve. Through this disturbing psychological journey, Elias Khoury examines how violence distorts memory and how authoritarian power can manufacture a person’s identity. Both unsettling and deeply humane, Yalo asks whether we can ever truly understand ourselves when our stories are shaped by fear, desire, and the need to survive.
Lebanon 2015
4
A Little Luck
A Little Luck
Claudia Piñeiro
A Little Luck follows Mary Lohan, a woman who returns to the Buenos Aires suburb she left twenty years earlier after a traumatic accident transformed her life. She has built a new identity far from the place where the tragedy occurred, changing not only her name but also her appearance and the way she relates to the world. Returning home forces her to confront memories she has tried to suppress and people whose lives remain connected to her past. As old secrets begin to surface, Mary must reconsider the choices that shaped her life and the guilt she has carried for decades. Piñeiro explores the fragile boundary between reinvention and denial, asking whether it is possible to escape the past or whether genuine freedom requires facing the truth about oneself.
Argentina 2015
5
Complete Stories
Complete Stories
Clarice Lispector
Complete Stories brings together the short fiction of Clarice Lispector, spanning her entire career and revealing the extraordinary range of one of Brazil’s most influential literary voices. Across stories set in ordinary homes, crowded cities, and unfamiliar landscapes, Lispector explores the hidden emotional lives of women, children, domestic workers, and other characters whose everyday experiences conceal profound inner conflicts. Often beginning with seemingly insignificant moments—a conversation, a household routine, an encounter with an animal—her stories gradually uncover unsettling questions about identity, desire, freedom, and the nature of existence. Characters experience sudden revelations that disrupt their familiar understanding of themselves and the world, exposing the tension between social expectations and private impulses. Lispector’s distinctive prose combines psychological intensity, philosophical reflection, and unexpected humour, frequently blurring the boundaries between the ordinary and the surreal. Rather than offering clear resolutions, these stories invite readers into the uncertainties of consciousness and the complexity of being human.
Brazil 2015
6
A Brief History of Seven Killings
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James
Set primarily in Jamaica during the 1970s and extending into the 1990s, A Brief History of Seven Killings explores the political violence, gang warfare, and social upheaval surrounding the attempted assassination of reggae legend Bob Marley in 1976. Told through the perspectives of an expansive cast of characters, including gang members, journalists, politicians, and CIA operatives, the novel examines the complex relationships between crime, political power, and international interference. As the narrative moves from Kingston to the United States, it traces the long-term consequences of violence on individuals and communities. Through shifting voices, Jamaican patois, and an unflinching portrayal of historical events, Marlon James explores inequality, corruption, identity, and the lasting scars of political conflict. The novel offers a multifaceted portrait of Jamaica’s turbulent history and the human cost of violence.
Jamaica 2015
7
Willow Trees Don't Weep
Willow Trees Don't Weep
Fadia Faqir
When Najwa’s mother dies, the young Jordanian woman finds herself facing a future she has never been prepared for. In the conservative society of Amman, an unmarried woman without a male guardian has few options. Her father, Omar, abandoned the family when she was a child to join a radical Islamist movement, leaving Najwa to grow up with unanswered questions about his disappearance and the beliefs that drove him away. Determined to find him, Najwa sets out on a dangerous journey from Jordan to Afghanistan, following the trail of a man she barely remembers. But the father she imagines is not the man she discovers. Her search eventually takes her to Britain, where she must confront painful truths about her family, her father’s ideology, and her own place in the world. As she crosses borders and encounters unfamiliar cultures, Najwa begins to understand that finding her father may be less important than discovering who she wants to become. Moving between the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Britain, Willow Trees Don’t Weep explores the consequences of political extremism through the intimate story of a daughter left behind. Fadia Faqir examines patriarchal expectations, religious identity, and the struggle for female independence in a world where women are often forced to live with the consequences of men’s decisions.
Afghanistan Jordan United Kingdom 2014
8
A Strangeness in My Mind
A Strangeness in My Mind
Orhan Pamuk
In 1969, twelve-year-old Mevlut leaves his village in central Anatolia and arrives in Istanbul, a city expanding so rapidly that familiar streets and entire neighbourhoods seem to disappear almost overnight. Hoping to build a better life, he works alongside his father selling boza, a traditional fermented drink, on the city’s streets. Over the years, he takes on different jobs, falls in love, marries, and raises a family while watching Istanbul transform around him. Mevlut is neither a great success nor a complete failure. While others grow wealthy from the city’s rapid development, he remains an outsider in a place he has called home for decades. Even as his life changes, he continues to wonder about the peculiar feeling inside him—a sense that the world he inhabits never quite matches the world he imagines. Spanning more than forty years, A Strangeness in My Mind is a sweeping portrait of urban migration, ordinary working lives, and the transformation of modern Istanbul. Through Mevlut’s quiet resilience, Pamuk explores love, social mobility, and the search for belonging in a city that is always becoming something new.
Türkiye 2014
9
The Blazing World
The Blazing World
Siri Hustvedt
What if your art were celebrated only when people believed it had been created by a man? Harriet Burden is a fiercely intelligent artist who has spent years watching the New York art world overlook her work. After the death of her husband, she decides to conduct an audacious experiment: she secretly recruits three men to present her artwork as their own, concealing her identity behind their names. When the exhibitions receive the recognition she has long been denied, Harriet finally reveals the truth. But instead of winning acclaim, she encounters disbelief—and her final collaborator, the enigmatic artist Rune, refuses to acknowledge her role. Told through diaries, interviews, reviews, and conflicting recollections assembled after Harriet’s death, The Blazing World becomes a literary puzzle in which the truth depends on who is telling the story. As the relationship between Harriet and Rune grows increasingly dangerous, questions of authorship, gender, power, and perception take centre stage. Intellectually playful and psychologically intense, Siri Hustvedt’s novel challenges the assumptions that determine whose creativity is valued and whose voice is believed. Longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, it is a provocative exploration of what it means to be seen—and what happens when recognition comes too late.
United States 2014
10
Kintu
Kintu
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Set across several centuries of Ugandan history, Kintu is an ambitious family saga that reimagines the history, mythology, and cultural traditions of the Buganda kingdom. The story begins in 1750, when Kintu Kidda, a powerful provincial governor, travels to the capital to pledge allegiance to the new king. During the journey, a tragic incident sets a curse in motion, bringing suffering to his descendants for generations. Centuries later, members of the Kintu family struggle with personal tragedies, fractured relationships, and unexplained misfortunes. As they confront their shared history, they must decide whether their suffering stems from an ancestral curse, historical circumstances, or the unresolved conflicts passed down through generations. Blending Ugandan oral traditions, mythology, spirituality, and historical storytelling, Makumbi challenges conventional approaches to African history. The novel places indigenous Ugandan perspectives at its centre, exploring how colonialism, religious change, and modernisation have transformed cultural identity. It is both a multigenerational family epic and a powerful exploration of the relationship between personal memory and national history.
Uganda 2014
11
The Story Hour
The Story Hour
Thrity Umrigar
When Lakshmi, an Indian immigrant trapped in a loveless marriage, attempts suicide, she meets Maggie Bose, an experienced African American psychologist who becomes unexpectedly invested in her recovery. Lonely and isolated from her family in India, Lakshmi struggles to find her place in a country where she feels powerless and misunderstood. Maggie, who initially believes she can help Lakshmi through therapy, gradually discovers that their relationship is becoming something more complicated than a professional one. As the women share stories about their pasts, they develop a deep friendship that crosses boundaries of culture, class, and experience. But both carry secrets that threaten to shatter their growing trust. When painful truths emerge, their relationship is tested in ways neither could have anticipated. The Story Hour explores the stories people tell to survive, the complexity of human relationships, and the difficult path toward forgiveness and self-acceptance.
India 2014
12
The Last Illusion
The Last Illusion
Porochista Khakpour
Born in a remote Iranian village, Zal spends the first ten years of his life imprisoned in a birdcage, his mother convinced that his unusually pale appearance marks him as a demon. Rescued and brought to New York, he must learn how to live among humans while struggling to understand who he is. Inspired by an ancient Persian myth, this imaginative novel weaves Iranian folklore into contemporary American life, exploring the boundaries between belonging and alienation, myth and reality, and the difficult journey toward selfhood.
Iran 2014