Literary Fiction

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1
Gloria Don't Speak
Gloria Don't Speak
Lucy Apps
Nineteen-year-old Gloria sees the world differently from those around her. With a learning disability and limited speech, she spends her days wandering the parks of East London, searching for companionship and small moments of happiness. Then she grows close to Jack, an unpredictable man whose attention makes her feel seen but gradually draws her into danger. Told through Gloria’s distinctive perspective, this tender, unsettling novel explores vulnerability, exploitation, and the universal need for connection.
United Kingdom 2026
2
Crocodilopolis
Crocodilopolis
John Manuel Arias
Born into a powerful Costa Rican political dynasty, brothers Seth and Osario Oreamundo grow up surrounded by privilege, ambition, and family secrets. Decades later, Seth finds himself exiled in Washington, D.C., convinced that his younger brother is responsible for his downfall. Driven by revenge, he plots a return to Costa Rica that threatens to unleash the family’s darkest secrets. Blending the drama of a family saga with biblical mythology and the absurdity of a political telenovela, this darkly compelling novel explores how power, rivalry, and inherited expectations can shape a nation’s destiny.
Costa Rica 2026
3
Daughters of the Same Secret
Daughters of the Same Secret
Haneen Al-Sayegh
In a secluded Druze village in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon mountains, Amal dreams of a life beyond the boundaries her family and community have drawn for her. Her father, a religious shaykh and blacksmith, believes he has the right to shape the futures of his four daughters. But Amal longs to pursue higher education and study English literature at the American University of Beirut. When a wealthy local businessman offers her a possible way out, she makes a bargain that promises freedom but brings new complications. As marriage, motherhood, and social expectations threaten to consume her ambitions, Amal must find the courage to claim ownership of her life. Poetic and deeply moving, this novel explores the hidden struggles of women caught between tradition and independence, revealing the quiet acts of resistance that can transform generations.
Lebanon 2026
4
Taipei Story
Taipei Story
Rebecca F. Kuang
What if returning to your cultural roots only makes you feel more like a stranger? When college student Lily Chen travels to Taipei for an intensive Chinese-language programme, she hopes to reconnect with the heritage she has never fully understood. Instead, awkward encounters, complicated relationships, and the sudden death of her grandfather leave her questioning everything she thought she knew about her family and herself. As Lily struggles with language, grief, and the silences surrounding her family’s past, she begins to realise that belonging cannot simply be inherited. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Taipei, this intimate coming-of-age novel explores the distance between cultural identity and lived experience—and the difficult search for a place to call home.
Taiwan 2026
5
Seven Heavens Away
Seven Heavens Away
Ashraf Zaghal
In Jerusalem, where everyday life unfolds under the shadow of escalating violence, fifteen-year-old Aziz faces a loss that will change everything. After his friend Hassan is killed, Aziz is pulled between grief, loyalty, and the growing political anger surrounding him. His feelings for Dafna, a Jewish girl he works with, further complicate his friendships and force him to question the divisions shaping his world. As his family searches for a way to protect his future, Aziz must confront a difficult choice: how to hold on to love, compassion, and hope when the world seems determined to take them away.
Palestine 2026
6
Music Against the Night
Music Against the Night
Yiyun Li
Set against the political and cultural upheavals of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Yiyun Li’s sweeping historical novel follows two gifted musicians whose ambitions take them across continents. John Field, born in Dublin in 1782, is a musical prodigy whose father dreams of making him the next Mozart. His talent carries him from Ireland to England, France, and eventually Russia, where he becomes a celebrated pianist and composer. He helps popularize the nocturne, a musical form later associated most famously with Frédéric Chopin. Meanwhile, in Pondicherry, French India, Adelaide Percheron—an orphan raised by her formidable grandmother—discovers her own passion for music. Determined to escape the limitations imposed by her circumstances, she pursues opportunities in Paris and Moscow, striving to build a life beyond the expectations placed upon women of her time. When their paths eventually converge, John and Adelaide must navigate the complexities of marriage, artistic ambition, and competing desires. Through their intertwined lives, Li examines the price of genius, the exploitation of talent, and the fragile boundary between artistic achievement and personal fulfilment. The novel asks what artists must sacrifice for recognition—and whether their work can outlive the people who create it.
China 2026
7
X Is Where I Am
X Is Where I Am
Sara Torres
In this intimate, lyrical novel, a young Spanish writer navigates the overlapping experiences of grief, desire, and complicated love. When twenty-eight-year-old Sara moves from London to Barcelona for a university teaching position, she leaves behind her long-term girlfriend while beginning an intense affair with a woman she calls Girl. At the same time, her mother is dying of cancer in Asturias, forcing Sara to confront the approaching loss of one of the most important relationships in her life. As these emotional worlds collide, she struggles with guilt, longing, and the impossibility of controlling either her own desires or the people she loves. Blending fiction with philosophical reflection, Torres explores the body as a site of pleasure, vulnerability, and suffering. Her prose moves between intimate encounters and meditations on attachment, sexuality, and mortality, capturing the messy contradictions of being human. X Is Where I Am is ultimately a moving exploration of how we continue to love amid loss—and how grief can transform our understanding of ourselves and our relationships.
Spain 2026
8
The Abyss
The Abyss
B. Jeyamohan
In the hidden world of India’s professional begging networks, human suffering has become a business. Pothivelu Pandaram is a respected, religious man who has built his prosperity on an appalling trade: he buys and breeds people with physical disabilities, then places them outside temples to beg for money. Among those he exploits are Mangandi Samy, a profoundly disabled man whose haunting songs express a longing for divine love, and others whose lives have been reduced to commodities. Pandaram treats them as possessions rather than human beings, convinced that his success and social standing justify his actions. But when an unexpected transaction disrupts his carefully controlled world, the moral foundations of his existence begin to crumble. Combining dark humour, grotesque realism, and spiritual inquiry, Jeyamohan confronts readers with uncomfortable questions about compassion, exploitation, and human dignity. Rather than offering easy answers, The Abyss challenges us to examine the cruelty people can inflict on one another—and the possibility of liberation even in the most degrading circumstances.
India 2026
9
Jérôme Lindon
Jérôme Lindon
Jean Echenoz
What makes a great editor—and what happens when the person who believes in your work is no longer there? In this intimate, witty memoir, French novelist Jean Echenoz remembers Jérôme Lindon, the formidable publisher who led Éditions de Minuit and helped shape modern French literature. Their relationship began in 1979, when Echenoz, an unpublished writer, nervously submitted his first novel to Lindon. Instead of rejecting the manuscript, Lindon offered him a contract, beginning a friendship and professional partnership that would last more than twenty years. Through recollections of early-morning phone calls, lunches, disagreements, and conversations about the smallest details of writing, Echenoz reveals a man whose stern exterior concealed generosity, conviction, and an unwavering commitment to literature. Both a personal farewell and a portrait of literary life, this slender book celebrates the often complicated bond between a writer and the editor who helps bring his work into the world.
France 2026
10
On the Relations of the Circle
On the Relations of the Circle
Elias Khoury
In Beirut on the eve of the Lebanese Civil War, a young orphan named Mansour searches for the fragments of his identity: his origins, his family name, and the father he has never known. Yet his journey unfolds in a world where reality and imagination constantly overlap. Birds speak, trees become companions, and ordinary objects seem to possess lives of their own. Through dreamlike episodes, shifting perspectives, and stories that circle back upon themselves, Elias Khoury creates a portrait of a city poised on the edge of catastrophe. Published in 1975, the same year the Lebanese Civil War began, the novel explores how individuals construct their identities amid uncertainty and how storytelling can preserve a sense of belonging when history threatens to destroy it. Both playful and haunting, this experimental work introduces themes that would become central to Khoury’s writing: memory, displacement, fractured identity, and the enduring power of imagination.
Lebanon 2026
11
Aside From My Heart, All Is Well
Aside From My Heart, All Is Well
Héctor Abad
Can a man devoted to God still hunger for everything life has to offer? Luis Córdoba is a Colombian Catholic priest with an extraordinary appetite for art, music, food, and human connection. A passionate film critic and opera enthusiast, he has built a life rich in intellectual pleasures and friendships. But when a serious heart condition leaves him waiting for a transplant, he must abandon his familiar home and move in with a female friend and her children. Surrounded by the unpredictable warmth of family life, Luis begins to reconsider the boundaries between faith and desire, duty and happiness, solitude and belonging. Narrated by his closest friend, fellow priest Aurelio Sánchez, the novel blends affection, humour, and melancholy into a tender portrait of a man confronting his mortality. Inspired by a real Colombian priest and film critic, this moving story celebrates the beauty of ordinary pleasures and the connections that make life worth living.
Colombia 2026
12
Murmurs from the Hills: Rwandan Tales
Murmurs from the Hills: Rwandan Tales
Scholastique Mukasonga
Before Rwanda became synonymous with tragedy, its hills held centuries of stories, traditions, and ancestral wisdom. In this evocative collection, Scholastique Mukasonga reaches back into her homeland’s cultural memory, weaving together Rwandan folklore, family recollections, mythology, and the history of colonialism. Rivers carry the echoes of childhood, sacred objects preserve the stories of generations, and the voices of elders bring forgotten worlds back to life. Through tales of kings, village communities, spiritual beliefs, and encounters between African traditions and European influence, Mukasonga creates a rich portrait of a society struggling to preserve its identity amid profound change. The stories move between the intimate and the legendary, revealing how collective memory shapes a people’s understanding of themselves. Both a celebration of Rwanda’s cultural heritage and a meditation on the power of storytelling, this collection seeks to recover a world that history threatened to erase.
Rwanda 2026