The best books for summer 2016 | Summer reading | The Guardian

reni eddo-lodge

I would recommend lindy west shrill (quercus). is a perfect antidote to the upcoming “summer body” tyranny targeting women every year at this time of year: She writes about fatness in a way that really made me question the toxicity of diet culture. It’s not just about being fat, it’s about being a stubborn fat woman, and the rejection she gets for it. thicker than water (william collins) by cal flyn is my serious recommendation: a meaty read on the tendrils and ledge of British colonialism. read it if you want to ask important questions about britain, race and responsibility. Finally, I’m three years late, but I just finished Americanah (4th estate) by chimamanda ngozi adichie. it was a complete joy. people recommended it to me because I used to blog about race, like the lead. but it is about much more: love, loss and politics. completely exciting, take it on some long train or coach trips and watch the time fly by.

yasmine el rashidi

I’m traversing the road to the (penguin) fountain of ben ehrenreich, which is a chillingly beautiful, yet harrowing, chronicle of Palestinian life in the West Bank. it’s written with immense empathy, but it’s equally grounded and urgently real.

I’m curious about ben lerner’s hatred of poetry (fitzcarraldo), which is a close reading of poetry, and why people hate it; this from someone who has essentially organized his life around art. I read and admire everything he writes.

confessions (ww norton & company) joins rabee jaber‘s oeuvre of novels that mine her conflict-torn country, lebanon. he expertly excavates history, over and over again.

forma aminatta

I’ve heard great things about the birth of elnathan john on Tuesday (cassava republic). John is a satirical columnist and lawyer in Abuja, and the novel is the story of a street kid unwittingly caught up in Nigeria’s tumultuous politics. Sounds like one to read alongside ellah allfrey editor ellah allfrey‘s revealing collection of non-fiction writing from the safe house of the african continent (cassava republic).

my top recommendation is margo jefferson’s (granta)’s fascinating, beautiful, poetic, insightful, national book award winning negroland, a memoir about growing up posh and black in chicago in the 1950s. Negroland is an insightful cultural commentary on an era of America that has often been told too simply.

garth greenwell

not sure how to describe brian blanchfield proxies: nightboat essays, a collection of idiosyncratic, heartfelt, devastating essays, except to say which is the most brilliant book I’ve read in years. Anyone who has been in awe (and rightly so) by Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (Melville House) should read this book immediately. I’ve been haunted by megan bradbury‘s debut, everyone’s watching (picador), ever since I read a copy a few months ago. Through the lives of four historic New Yorkers, it dramatizes more powerfully than any other novel I know of the interdependence of artistic creation and urban life.

the wild opera of a novel by

alexander chee, queen of the night (michael joseph), follows the life of the fictional lilliet berne from the plains of America to the great courts of europe, through through prisons and brothels along the way. is the perfect summer read: fast, smart, engaging, and beautiful.

christine gross-loh

perhaps my favorite book this year is the one by elizabeth strout, my name is lucy barton. it’s poignant and sober, we’re told little about the narrator, but we get the fullest possible picture of her life and his losses through what’s left unsaid. charles fernyhough‘s latest, the inner voices (profile), is on my list because it intriguingly challenges conventional assumptions about the self as unified and coherent, while also begging the question: how could that which we are? do you consider pathological to be shaped by the customs of our time?

tessa hadley

I loved david szalay‘s new novel all that man is (jonathan cape), a darkly comic exploration of masculinity. such powerful, wonderfully accurate and penetrating writing, and all about how we are inextricably mixed up with the rest of europe. apollo has reissued eudora welty‘s second delta wedding novel, and i’m in the middle of his exquisite tale of a misty and haunting summer in mississippi in the 1920s. to live with his exuberant cousins ​​on their cotton farm; I can’t imagine why I haven’t read it before, since I’m so passionate about welty writing.

As a counterpoint to these dark fictional explorations, I greatly enjoy the lucid, rational intelligence and vivid character sketches in English voices (simon & schuster), a ferdinand mount collection. essays on literature and history and politics, which speaks with depth and sophistication of our political moment.

sara’s room

the book that most impressed me recently was the pain is what happens with the pens of max porter. it is an extraordinary book, thin, powerful, unquantifiable and extremely friendly, especially, but not only, if the reader has recently been in mourning.

eimear mcbride‘s second novel, the lesser bohemians (faber), will be published in late summer. this is probably one of the most anticipated books of the year, after its debut, a girl is a half-formed thing, pushed through the ranks of normal, formal prose to remind readers of what the novel can do in hands of a truly talented, intrepid and visionary writer. Set in London’s dramatic circles, lit with sexual energy and the quick synaptic power of McBride’s narrative idiom, his new work seems destined to demonstrate this extraordinary talent again, and in new ways.

mohsinhamid

The most interesting recently published book I’ve read so far this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by yuval noah harari (vintage). it moves from our prehuman past to ancient human times, and continues into the present and our possible posthuman future. it’s provocative, fascinating and opinionated, and while it’s not fiction, it does what the best fiction does: it makes the familiar seem unfamiliar. it altered the way I see our species and our world.

yuval noah harari

I picked up the black flags of joby warrick: the rise of isis (corgi) with a heavy heart, fearing it was some tabloid lightweight playing on western fears and prejudices. It turned out to be an insightful, well-balanced, and thought-provoking tale, with a genuine sense of Middle Eastern realities.

my next choice is the last empire of serhii plokhy: the last days of the soviet union (oneworld). while the collapse of the communist bloc was probably inevitable in the late 1980s, the collapse of the former Russian empire was just the opposite. Written like a good thriller, The Last Empire recounts how chance events and quirky personalities led in a few months in 1991 to the disintegration of the empire built and maintained by generations of Russian tsars and Soviet bureaucrats.

a recently published book i plan to read is by frans de waal, are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? (great). De Waal’s The Politics of Chimpanzees was one of the most important and fun science books I’ve ever read, so I can’t wait to see what insights his new book on animal behavior, animal cognition, and human myopia can offer.

paula hawkins

I’ve been looking forward to the debut of the girls (chatto), emma cline. Set in a hippy commune and loosely based on the Manson Family story, it has at its heart the intense and sometimes dangerous relationships that flourish between teenage girls.

I love novels that mix fact with fiction, so jill dawson’s the crime writer(sceptre), which re-imagines patricia highsmith’s escape to the suffolk countryside in 1964 Sounds great to me.

emma heley

first my name is lucy bartonby elizabeth strout. The narrator of this luminous and surprising book is stuck in the hospital due to an undiagnosed illness when her emotionally distant but strangely reassuring mother comes to visit. what follows are snippets of writing gossip, memories, and realizations, most of which return to a central theme of mothers and their failures. nice, subtle and, sometimes, shocking.

before i read mary beard‘s spqr (profile), there were myths about rome that i half remembered and didn’t understand, there were senators and emperors that i thought were purely fictional, there were hundreds of years of republic that I hadn’t realized were significant. Brilliant for readers like me whose study of the classics was a bit stunted or now feels quite distant.

There are also two books I’m dying to finish this summer. The first is sarah perry’s essex snake. Rich and beautiful from page one with a mystery I’m desperate to explore. the second is “everyone is watching” by megan bradbury. vivid, full of deadpan humor and very, very unusual.

rachel holmes

I tried really hard to save this for the summer, but I’m just as addicted to frances wilson‘s writing as her latest subject, thomas de fifteeny, to opiates, romantic poets, and murder. . The Guilty (Bloomsbury) is an irresistible journey through the life of the original obsessive and anarchic flâneur. Borges said that fifteen years was an almost infinite literary world in a single man. wilson manages to conjure up this world in an exciting, rigorous and humorous book that is the most pleasant trip to hell you will ever take.

We now know that history is made up of multiple individual voices and not grand univocal master narratives, but svetlana alexeivich really knows how to write it that way. secondhand time is, on one of its many levels, about what the soviet union was and what its legacy still means. Alexievich is one of the few Nobel Prize winners for literature who are predominantly non-fictional, and reading this book shows why she is: She writes a new form of history unlike anything that came before. Reading his in-depth exploration of what a Russian world would be like without the myths of nationalism last weekend, I realized I had in my hands a book that transcends its geography and makes it essential reading on Brexit Britain.

andrew michael hurley

having loved after me comes the flood, i can’t wait to read sarah perry’s latest novel, the essex serpent, set in the strange swamps of essex. Falled by jenn ashworth (sceptre) is a fantastically dark and haunting story of healing and hope set in morecambe bay. finally, himself by jess kidd (canongate). This debut novel appears to be an intriguing tale of family secrets and ghosts in the far west of Ireland.

kazuo ishiguro

Hisham Mata‘s the Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (Viking) is a moving and unflinching memoir of a family torn apart by the savage realities of today’s Middle East. the crushing of the hopes raised by the Arab spring, both on a personal and national level, is transmitted with greater force because the rage to kill remains controlled, his belief in humanity has not dimmed. graham swift (writer)’s exquisitely brief maternity sunday shows love, lust and ordinary decency struggling against the bars of an unjust english caste system. coming this fall is a true marvel: sebastian barry’s faber is a violent and superbly lyrical western that offers a sweeping vision of america in the making, the most riveting line-by-line of first-person narration that I’ve come across in years and, at its core, a tender gay love story.

juliet jacques

Few authors combined the personal and the political (or Twitter) better than jenny diski. she misses her a lot, but at least it ended in gratitude (bloomsbury), her memories of her time with doris lessing.

we will have to wait until the end of summer for the suzana tratnik games with greta and other stories, the dalkey archive translation (by michael biggins) of stories by the slovenian author and lgbt activist . if the title work is any guide, expect subtle, bittersweet pieces about the struggles of transitioning from childhood to womanhood in the former Yugoslavia.

jean-philippe toussaint’s football (fitzcarraldo, translated by shaun whiteside) features my favorite contemporary author, writing about my favorite subject. As always, it’s poetic and full of self-deprecating humor, and it tackles a relationship with football in recognizable and oblique ways.

oliver jeffers

thanks to recently reading annie proulx‘s shipping news: a big, sweepingly beautiful look at a man subtly unfolding himself in a wild newfoundland winter (could also be useful reading for cool off on a hot day), bark skins (fourth state), according to the propaganda on the back, it is about the destruction of the world’s forests. there is no small issue there. that should take a few weeks.

See Also: 8 Fantastic Books Like Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles) – Books Like This One

As a lover of stories, both to be told and to be heard, and as a firm believer in the power of storytelling, we are, after all, little more than the stories we are told, the stories we tell, and the stories that are told. they tell about us: I really want to see the view from the cheap seats: selected nonfiction (headline), neil gaiman‘s foray into some of the planet-spanning stories between us, both big and small. there are so many interesting things that actually happened, it’s almost a shame to waste time reading about things that didn’t happen.

I was first a fan of bill brysonafter reading a short history of just about everything, which solidified after reading at home: a short history of private life, looking at why houses are built in the same way. as they are, and to use that as a lens to see other aspects of human history, which was rightly given to me when I was moving apartments. One Summer is about the true events that occurred on both sides of the Atlantic in the summer of 1927 (although it focuses primarily on American events of that year, it includes events in Britain and France). from the first flight across the atlantic and the epic season of babe ruth, to the beginning of the end of prohibition, the first celebrity murder case, the first “talkie” and the events that would lead the world to a world global. depression. Bryson takes all of these seemingly disparate events and weaves them together to take a brilliant pulse of the times that were. As always, Bryson has a way of writing that is both extremely humorous and vividly fluid.

olivia laing

I’ve been desperate for months to get to novelist, activist and playwright sarah schulman‘s (feminist) cosmopolitans: I’ve loved her novels since the 1980s, and this story of lonely artists in the late 1950s new york sounds right up my alley. I also look forward to the new and selected poems of eileen myles, I must live twice (ecco). Myles, a braggart heir to Frank O’Hara, is a fabulously casual language technician, brilliant at everything from love and politics to those plastic honey pots shaped like bears. Proxies is a collection of sex essays and books by her friend Brian Blanchfield. I immersed myself in “frottage” and I already want more.

lawson brand

The annual search for an original and captivating thriller to read at parties has had a triple answer this time. six fourby hideo yokoyama, translated by jonathan lloyd-davies (quercus), opens with a tokyo cop, shamefully demoted from detective to press officer, who spots an anomaly in a 14-year-old missing persons case. years before: his new investigation brutally and brilliantly illuminates Japanese politics, media, and culture. noah hawley‘s before the fall (hodder & stoughton) opens with a private jet crashing into the atlantic, leaving only two survivors: flashbacks of who and possibly what was on board make for a compelling combination. of domestic life. drama and conspiracy puzzle. in ten days (canongate), gillian slovo uses riots in a fictional London borough, sparked by a racially controversial police intervention, as the basis for a thoughtful dramatization of the increasingly tense dynamic between the powerful and those deprived of their rights. . certain high-ranking British politicians and policemen might read it with a smirk.

amy trots lips

the breakneck debut of

jenni fagan, the panopticon was my 2013 novel and its sequel, the pilgrims of sunlight (heinemann), about a community in a scottish trailer park during a weird winter, that’s what i’ll be reading during some free time in orkney, a suitable environment.

I recommend Horatio Clare‘s Prayer for a Curlew, an elegant and fascinating study of a bird so rare it may no longer exist, including some prescient observations about Europe. It’s beautifully produced by natural historians little toller, and it’s nice and short, which I appreciate.

a collection of essays by annie dillard, the abundance (canongate), including stormer “total eclipse”, has inspired and excited me more than anything else recently. dillard is wild and weird, about the natural world and writing itself.

charlotte mendelson

My Christmas reading is usually a spooky mix of self-improvement and books I feel guilty I haven’t read. no wonder he hates vacations. but this year I had high hopes: the tunnel (penguin) by ernesto sabato, the country of the pointed fir trees by sarah orne jewitt and anne enright it’s the (vintage) green road, all intriguing, all acclaimed.

Now, in post-Brexit despair, all I want is the darkest, grimmest, most tangled crime: bundles of it. i will need karin fossum, arnaldur indriðason, tana french, belinda bauer. and perhaps the nicotine of nell zink (fourth power), for laughs.

lisa mcinerney

I’m cautiously optimistic about catching up on my reading this summer, and I’m particularly looking forward to getting stuck into mike mccormack’s sun bones, an ambitious and experimental work told entirely in one sentence about “order and chaos, love and loss”. McCormack’s work never fails to be exciting, and the longer I stop starting Solar Bones, the more anxious I become. I can hide so I can properly wallow in it. something just as ambitious, but due later this summer, since it won’t be published until august, it’s michael hughes‘s (john murray) divine countenance, a story that isn’t even limited to the time nor to gender. It’s already been called “a brilliant cross between david mitchell and hilary mantel”, so consider me salivating.

also in my summer stack is red earth (head of zeus), the first novel by another compatriot, em reapy. It promises to be a visceral thriller about the Irish “lost” in Australia, and I love an appropriately awkward literary punch (and I’m not at all involved with the idea that summer reading should be lighter than the usual diet). and on that note, i just finished han kang‘s veggie (portobello), translated by deborah smith, which was both dreamy and nightmarish, a beautiful horror, and easily one of the best books i’ve ever read. I have read in years.

pankaj misra

the 19th century was when the contemporary world was decisively shaped, for better and worse, and the thick galleys of the forthcoming biography of karl marx(allen lane) and gareth stedman jones > richard evans’ (allen lane) quest for power promises to shed much light on our present. In Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance (University of Minnesota), Ajay Skaria offers a refreshing perspective on that century’s universal project of liberal individualism through the moral philosophy of its greatest critic. I also look forward to karan mahajan’s association of small bombs (viking) and tahmima anam‘s bones of grace (canongate).

david mitchell

Books on the go this summer include: kate chopin’s awakening, an exquisite novel about a woman in 1890s new orleans chafing at the restrictions of her times; the modern classic solo in berlin by hans failed, about a 1940s Berliner who embarks on a campaign of sending anonymous anti-Hitler postcards, and the Gestapo officer orders a hunt down of the dissident; fell by jenn ashworth, a fresh and lyrical novel about a sick girl, a healer, the woman the girl became, the spirits of her parents and unfinished business. in the last week i finished min jin lee’s pachinko (out 2017 from head of zeus), a deep, sweeping, and addictive story of a korean family in japan that endures and thrives through the 20th century ; and peter ho davies‘s new book, the fortunes (scepter), a poignant four-part cascading novel about being asian and western, about immigrants and natives, about belonging to a country and one’s own skin. it doesn’t come out until August, but if your bookseller owes you a favor, trade it for a proof reading. is exceptional.

andrew’s move

david szalay is all that man is has everything you hope to find in a good novel: a very distinctive tone, original structure, excellent pacing, and light-hearted wit combined with earnestness. somber: it’s a rich fulfillment of the exceptional promise in his previous three books. geoff dyer‘s new essay installment, white sands (canongate), which concentrates on notions of place and location, has much of his trademark shrug, but also (cleverly authorized by this) amazingly rarefied writing patches too; the combination makes the whole book compelling. denise riley‘s new collection says something back (picador) is a poignant reminder that she is one of the greatest poets out there.

louis o’neill

one of the best young adult books i’ve read recently is in the dark, in the woods by eliza wass (quercus). tells the story of a teenager, castley, and her five siblings who are forced to comply with the strict rules that her ultra-religious father imposes on them. is a disturbing story and not easily forgotten.

shrill by lindy west (quercus) is a collection of essays that should be read by women and men of all ages. Dealing with issues like body image, shaming, rape jokes, and internet trolling, West’s voice is hilarious and utterly honest.

Books dealing with the collapse of rural Ireland have filled bookstore shelves in recent years and now it takes a special novel to stand out. in solar bones mike mccormack takes a lot of stylistic risks and, my god, they pay off. this is a clever and beautiful book that deserves to be widely read.

sarah perry

I would recommend the divine face of michael hughes (john murray), who draws on blake, milton, jack the ripper and the y2k bug to create a bizarre, witty and dazzlingly clever fable about art , ambition and morality.

daisy johnson‘s fen (jonathan cape) is a collection of weird, half-magical short stories set in a mysterious fenland landscape – i’ve been staring at it for weeks, and i really want to get lost in your world.

maximum goalkeeper

in non-fiction i want to read jay griffiths‘s memoir on manic depression tristimania(hamish hamilton), and dan richards(faber)’s days of climbing mountains and learning about her great aunt dorothy pley. in poetry i must live twice by eileen myles, cain by luke kennard (written in the margins), and say by denise riley something back (this will be a rereading, because it’s the best thing I’ve read in a long time). I also want to start Lian Hearn’s new series, Tale of Shikanoko Book 1: Emperor of the Eight Islands (Picador). And I’ll take Murder of Halland by Pia Juul (Peirene Press 2012), because the publisher promises me it’s a great Danish literary noir with profound things to say about death. sold!

ian classification

I just finished rereading dickens Bleak House for a talk I’m giving in Aberdeen in a few weeks. It’s always a pleasure to eavesdrop on Dickens’s wide and wild cast of players. in august i’ll be interviewing some writers at the edinburgh international book festival, which means poring over the latest offerings from musician tim burgess, comedian stewart lee and the writer of suspense novels frederick forsyth. after all of which I can return to the wobbly pile of reading by my bed.

chris riddell

It’s been a busy year as a children’s laureate and I’m looking forward to a relaxing holiday in the country with some good books. As an illustrator, I believe in the power of words and images, so I have chosen three books that are outstanding examples of this. the first is anything other than this chris priestley thing (hotkey). This is an already gorgeously illustrated novel set in an atmospheric Kafkaesque European city. the 70 gray-toned gouache illustrations are beautifully atmospheric and effortlessly draw the reader into the story. alexis deacon is one of my favorite illustrators and has written and illustrated one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. the pacing of the narration is deft but the frames take my breath away. geis (nobrow), pronounced “gesh,” is a book you can go back to and find new wonders every time. The latest book on my summer picnic blanket is Jim Kay‘s sublimely illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) by JK Rowling. Jim is a wizard of illustration and this is a beautiful and captivating book.

jacqueline rose

first eimear mcbride from the lesser bohemians. There will come a time when anyone who wants to understand the profound physical and psychological impact of sexual abuse will read McBride. This is the brilliant, haunting, must-read of the summer.

walter benjamin, the leading Marxist cultural critic of the 20th century, is not best known for his literary writing, so the publishers deserve high praise for putting together a recently translated collection of his short fictions, the narrator (verse), in which he shows our wicked material world flooded and sabotaged by the sinister like no one else.

finally, seamus heaney‘s translation of book vi of the aeneid (faber). Despite the poem’s imperial moments, Heaney manages to align his voice with the wounded and homeless, and with the spirit of life, against the horrors of war. never more opportune.

taiye selasi

Across generations, the spectacular debut of yaa gyasi, homegoing (viking), now in the united states and in the united kingdom next year, considers the legacy of the transatlantic trade of slaves from both sides of the ocean. The narrative focuses on half-sisters Effia and Esi, a wealthy woman married to a British man in Ghana, the other captured and sold into slavery in America. As they consider the divergent lives of their descendants, the gyasi grapple with those thorny questions of guilt and identity that still plague the African diaspora community.

As tedious as the geopolitical classification of novelists may seem to me, I understand very well why Alejandro Zambra is described as “the new literary star of Latin America”. His latest multiple choice (granta), could be called an experimental novella, written in the form of a multiple choice test (specifically, the Chilean version of the SAT). brilliant, innovative, beautiful: david markson’s vanishing point meets junot diaz’s that’s how you lose her.

elif shafak

At the top of my summer reading choices is the return of hisham Killing. I have always admired the tender and compassionate voice of killing, but equally strong and convincing. the search for a son by his father and the sense of belonging, the tension between homeland and exile, and the mixture of the personal with the political, everything attracts me. Another book I’m looking forward to reading is The Tough Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster). Timbuktu was once a cultural center and a hub for ideas, creativity and books, both in Arabic and African languages. Hammer highlights the clash between two opposing interpretations of Islam: those who want to destroy free thought and pluralism, and those who are determined to save the libraries, the wisdom of centuries, from such fanatics.

I would also recommend everyone to read the new odyssey: the story of the refugee crisis in europe (guardian faber). patrick kingsley has given us a powerful and evocative book.

leonel shriver

for those who relish outrage (one of my favorite emotions), mark lawson‘s accusations are hilarious and provide at least the illusion of an inside clue to the non-fiction backstory . . I loved mark haddon’s pier falls, whose main story is either a perfect beach read or a perfectly terrible beach read, depending on your level of kinkiness.

debora smith

one of the best books I’ve read in recent months has also been one of the best translations. In LaDivine (Maclehose), the latest collaboration between Marie Ndiaye and translator Jordan Stump, the injection of the bizarre and mysterious makes a multi-generational, female-focused saga riveting and slightly sickening. in 2011, saudi novelist raja alem became the first woman to win the international prize for arab fiction with the duckworth necklace, a surreal and meditative take on a translated murder mystery From the Arabic by Katharine Halls and Adam Talib. Finally, I’ve been looking forward to walter benjamin’s narrator. Best known for his essays on theory and culture, this marks the first time Benjamin’s fiction (novels, fables, stories, aphorisms, parables, and riddles) has been collected for Anglophone readers.

kate summer scale

I have read two wonderful novels this summer: sarah perry is the serpent of essex, a rich and twisted history of late victorian england, and elizabeth strout ‘s simple and beautiful my name is lucy barton, in which a woman pays an unexpected visit to her daughter in the hospital. Strout writes with extraordinary tenderness and restraint. and i just started all that man is by david szalay, a series of linked stories set in different parts of europe. The book begins with a moody English teenager touring Berlin and Prague, and continues with a young unemployed Frenchman settling in alone in a dilapidated hotel in Cyprus. it’s funny, sharp, disturbing, with flashes of joy: a perfect book for traveling.

marcel theroux

a non-fiction book about the breakdown of a multi-ethnic state and the identity crisis that followed tops my list. second-hand time is a series of first-person testimonies from the former soviet union woven into a stunning choral by svetlana alexievich.

Thomas Morris We Don’t Know What We’re Doing (Faber)’s debut collection of stories is bitingly funny and painfully true. the characters are with me many months after reading them. my name is lucy barton by elizabeth strout was one of the best novels this year: a beautiful and intense book about a mother and a daughter, and the difficulty and ambivalence of family life.

colm tóibín

mike mccormack has always been among the most adventurous and ambitious Irish writers. his novel solar bones, written in a single sonorous sentence, tells the story of a family in contemporary ireland. the way to the spring: life and death in palestine by ben ehrenreich (penguin) is the result of three years going back and forth to the west bank, living in cities and towns. promises to be a good companion for a month by the sea: encounters in gaza (eland) and her between river and sea: encounters in israel and palestine (eland) by dervla murphy, in which one of the Savage Travel Writers Now Working casts his penetrating gaze on everyday life in the Middle East. I found The Return of Hisham Mata, in which he tells the story of his father’s arrest and disappearance in Libya, fascinating.

sarai walker

I just finished reading ladivine by french author marie ndiaye (maclehose). I can’t remember the last time a novel cast a spell on me like this. This story of three generations of women is a fascinating exploration of identity, blending mystery and magical realism in completely unexpected ways. the less you know in advance, the better.

See Also: 2&039s Day Read Aloud Books

The next novel I’m looking forward to reading is Larose by Louise Erdrich, in which an Ojibwe man on a reservation in North Dakota accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor’s son, and subsequently offers his own son as a replacement.

I’m not normally an avid memoir reader, but I’m looking forward to reading susan faludi‘s memoir in the darkroom (william collins), about her abusive father undergoing gender reassignment surgery late in life. I’ll read anything Faludi writes, and I can’t think of anyone better at considering contemporary debates about identity through a feminist lens.

sara waters

Three new novels have impressed me this summer. jill dawson‘s crime writer has patricia highsmith as her heroine: she’s inspired by the thriller writer’s years in suffolk in the early 1960s, and she’s fantastically moody and endearingly unhinged: a sophisticated play. literary ventriloquism that achieves a wonderful blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy. a quiet life (borough) by natasha walter is based on the figure of melinda marling, wife of cambridge spy donald maclean: it is a disturbing novel, sober, almost hypnotic in the fullness with which it inhabits the mind of its impressionable central character. the mandibles: a family, 2029-2047, by lionel shriver, is set in the near future, a post-economic-collapse us where the privileged classes have to fight to survive stunned as the Civilization is slowly crumbling. to them. a joyful nightmare, it made me gasp with laughter even when I was shaking, although I’m glad I read it before brexit. I might need a stiff drink if I sit with him now.

frances wilson

I’m saving two books that take nature writing to its surreal and shamanic extreme: ruler: how I took a vacation from being human, by thomas thwaites (princeton architecture), and being a beast: adventures across the divide of species by charles foster (profile). Having built a goat exoskeleton, a goat stomach (to enable it to digest grass), and two prosthetic goat front legs, Thwaites lived in the Swiss Alps for three days with a lone goatherd. he looks, in the photographs, like an enthusiastically attired cyclist, complete with crash helmet. charles foster goes further in his desire to inhabit alterity, living first as a badger, where he sleeps (along with his eight-year-old son) in a mound and eats worms, then as an otter, catching fish in his mouth, and finally as a fox urban, deer and swift. reading doesn’t get more escapist than this.

gregorio woods

I have been reading the beautiful novel by saleem haddad (other press), about a young gay Muslim man in an unnamed country, who works as a translator between Arabic and English, struggling to find a space in the one to live and love safely, guarded by family shame, but also by the demands of a brutal police state. I have also admired John McCullough’s second collection of poetry, Spacecraft (written in the margins), a beautifully formed cabinet of curiosities. combining details of quasi-scientific observation with a fabulist’s openness to the weirdness of unreason, somehow he is both shrewdly skeptical and wide-eyed in awe. Lesbian writing is thriving in Britain these days. This summer I’ll be rereading the doyen of them all, Maureen Duffy: not only her gendered and gender-bending fiction, but also his extensive catalog of remarkable poetry.

If you only buy one…

literary page turner

sarah perry’s essex snake (snake tail)

a story of passionate friendship and intellectual curiosity set in Victorian England where the theory of evolution is tearing down all the old certainties, from religion and the role of women to politics and poverty, love and freedom. will. endlessly absorbing and richly satisfying.

reading on the beach

the glorious heresies of lisa mcinerney (john murray)

This year’s Baileys Award winner, the intertwined stories of risk takers, gangsters, and hopeless in Cork City, is a criminal adventure, teen romance, and impossibly dark social satire all rolled into one. angry, funny and full of heart.

book in translation

mend the living por maylis de kerangal, trans jessica moore (maclehose)

The story of a heart transplant told in a single day, this is an extraordinary novel about the life, death and in-between of a French author on the rise.

crime

alex marwood’s darkest secret (sphere)

a tense, moving and cleverly crafted mystery about a missing child, toxic relationships and family secrets.

science fiction

the medusa chronicles by stephen baxter and alastair reynolds (gollancz)

best-selling british authors update arthur c clarke’s 1971 novel, an encounter with jellyfish, to take the reader on a dizzying journey through time and space, while exploring the future development of cybernetics and intelligence artificial.

book for children from 8 to 12 years old

a library of lemons by jo cotterill (piccadilly)

a deep and beautifully written story about books, pain and friendship. Perfect for 10 year olds who have devoured all the Jacqueline Wilson books and need to move on.

book for teenagers

taran matharu’s summoner series (hodder)

These books follow Fletcher’s story in a Lord of the Rings-type fantasy world complete with dwarves and orcs. the pace is so fast and so exciting that even the most unusual readers will be hooked. There are two books published so far: The Novice and The Inquisition.

history

adrian tinniswood’s long weekend (jonathan cape)

This study of the revitalization of country house life between the wars offers a perfect piece of escapism, with plenty of tales of golden taps and extravagant parties, but also intelligent, scholarly social history.

current

Chronicles: On Our Troubled Times by Thomas Piketty (Viking)

The author of the best-selling capital of the 21st century is back with this collection of short pieces, dealing with both the crisis in Europe and global capitalism, and indeed making the links between the two.

p >

science

the gene: an intimate history by siddhartha mukherjee (bodley head)

Do our genes determine our physical and mental identity? mukherjee addresses the question not only with stories from her own family, but also with tales of a dangerous past and an exciting but unsettling biotech future.

memories

in thanks for jenny diski (bloomsbury)

the latest book from a superb, original and unsentimental writer is not only a diary about her lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, but also about how doris lessing took her in as a teenager and recalls her years as “a moody and angry.” girl who kicked against everything, especially against herself”.

See Also: The Best Comics of 2016 | Den of Geek