... something challenging

Vaim by Jon Fosse

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Vaim

One sentence books scares me. Vaim by Jon Fosse, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2024, is one of those, although to be fair, it is more like a three-sentence book, one sentence for each of its three parts. How wrong I was. In stream-of-consciousness prose Fosse hypnotises his reader with the story of invisible, middle-aged Jatgeir, his beloved wooden boat and the enigmatic Eline amongst the deep fjords of Norway’s west coast. It has an almost otherworldly feel to it this novel and a timeless, disorientating quality which is part of its magic. Ideally, this short novel should be read in one sitting. I was reading it while juggling Christmas dinners and dishwasher emptying, not the ideal context. Find yourself a quiet corner on a rainy Sunday, immerse yourself and be enthralled.

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Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin

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Good and Evil and Other Stories

A punch in the stomach

Wow! What an incredible collection of short stories. I gobbled them up in one sitting, moved, shocked and spellbound. Parental love, grief, guilt and rejection echoes through the tales of Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin, each with a surprising, original twist. Highly recommended.

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Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov

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Death and the Gardener

A father’s legacy

A tender and contemplative work of autofiction, Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov charts the final days of an eminent writer’s beloved father. Seated by the dying man’s bedside, the writer bears witness to both his life and death, recalling his father’s marvellous storytelling, his old-school Bulgarian fathering style, and most of all, the garden he began cultivating after a long-ago cancer diagnosis. A glorious riot of fruit, vegetables and flowers, he’s given it the final years of his life and now the gardener is set to become the garden. In Gospodinov’s first offering since his International Booker Prize winning novel, Time Shelter, we find a poetic and philosophical gift.

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Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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Farenheit 451

Scarily prescient sci-fi

Enormous TV screens airing game shows all day, a robot with a mind of its own, persecuted academics, banned books, school shootings, communication through earpieces – sound familiar?  Written in 1953 during the dark days of McCarthyism, American classic Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a scarily prescient sci-fi novel that will leave you gobsmacked.

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The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke

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The Story of a Heart

The ultimate gift

A testament to love, altruism, and modern medicine, The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke is one of sixteen titles unveiled on the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist. In this compelling account of one child’s gift of life to another, Clarke introduces us to Max, a nine-year-old with a failing heart, and Keira, a girl whose heart will sustain him after her death in a car crash. With unfailing warmth and sensitivity, Clarke relays the story of two families during the bleakest moments of their lives, and the aftermath of their decisions. Alongside this, we learn the medical and cultural history of the heart transplant and the philosophical significance of ‘the chief mansion of the soul’.

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Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof

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Money to Burn

The cost of capitalism

Garlanded with glorious reviews and European literary awards, Danish publishing sensation, Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof, is a strikingly unique proposition. The first in a planned septology, this ambitious and courageous novel is essentially a denunciation of late capitalism, told through the prism of a real-life tragedy (The 1990 arson attack on the Scandinavian Star ferry, which killed 159 people but was never satisfactorily explained). In this inspired tale, Nordenhof imagines the lives and loves of a middle-aged Danish couple, interlaced with a journalistic dissection of the disaster. How the two may be connected makes for galvanising reading.

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Though the Bodies Fall by Noel O'Regan

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Though the Bodies Fall

The salvation of lost souls

Flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on the Kerry Head peninsula, Micheál lives in his childhood home, a picture-postcard bungalow which is the final dwelling before the rugged rocks of the headlands. With his sisters flown the nest and his parents dead, Micheál’s solitary life is dedicated to continuing his parents’ work, saving the ‘lost souls’ who attempt to commit suicide by leaping from the clifftops. In Though the Bodies Fall by Noel O’Regan, Micheál’s story of trauma and duty, and his attempt at reconciliation with the past, is told in an atmospheric and strikingly unique Irish debut.

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A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

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A Sunny Place for Shady People

A dozen disquieting tales

Designed to provoke shock, discomfort, and debate, A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez is a new collection of short stories from the Argentinian queen of Latin American Gothic. Enriquez’s macabre tales centre around the very notion of haunting, be it literal, or a manifestation of psychic or societal trauma. From one woman’s infatuation with her surgically removed fibroid to a community of birds who were once unruly women, Enriquez interweaves mythology, history, and the darkest imaginings, in her exploration of horror and humanity.

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Death in Spring by MercDeath in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda

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Death in Spring

Cryptic Catalan tale of tyranny and submission

In an isolated village in the Catalan mountains, an adolescent boy goes for a dip in the local river, swimming downstream to the nearby forest. Here, in the leafy half-light, amidst an ominous clustering of butterflies and bees, he witnesses his father carve open a tree and fold himself into it, in anticipation of certain death. A highlight of the marvellous Penguin European Writers collection, Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda is a bildungsroman unlike any other, a surreal tale of oppression, ritual and exile, with a nod to the darkest folklore.

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Broken Threads by Mishal Husain

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Broken Threads

An illuminating and compulsive read

I confess to being a complete ignoramus on the history of the partition of India. Luckily, the brilliant Broken Threads by Mishal Husain has come along to change that. Husain – fiercely intelligent BBC Radio 4 news presenter, feared by British politicians for her razor-sharp interviews – has written the memoirs of her grandparents and parents. In Broken Threads, she weaves together the political and the personal to create an insightful and moving account of their lives as well as India and Pakistan’s fraught shared history.

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