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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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Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

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Heart Lamp

A vital and insightful International Booker Prize winner

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 and the first ever short story collection to scoop the award, Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq consists of twelve quietly powerful tales centred around the everyday lives of Muslim women and girls in southern India.  As a writer, lawyer, and activist, Mushtaq has had extraordinary insight into a world often typified by struggle and oppression. Here she garners the voices of those who shared their experiences and spins them into stories that, even when painful to read, glow with the love, hope and sacrifices of her female (often maternal) characters.

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Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

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Vanishing World

Love, sex, and wombs for all

In the vein of her previous gloriously odd books, Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata is one for accidental contrarians, those who don’t set out to defy convention but find themselves unable to flourish within the parameters of societal norms. Here, we meet Amane, a young Japanese woman in an era where marital sex is practically taboo, and children are conceived via artificial insemination for reasons of convenience and hygiene. Amane’s conflict arises from the shameful fact that she, herself, was conceived by the positively barbaric method of sexual intercourse. Navigating her way in this sterile world, Amane has questions to ask and experiments to conduct.

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The Evin Prison Bakers' Club by Sepideh Gholian

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The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club

Baking for the sisterhood

A unique and intriguing concept, The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club by Sepideh Gholian is both a prison memoir and recipe collection; a celebration of baking, as resistance, therapy, and heartfelt tribute to fellow detainees. Gholian, a human rights activist, is to date, still incarcerated in one of Iran’s infamously brutal prisons. Beaten and tortured, she remains unbowed, having smuggled out the contents of this book in order to tell the world about Iranian repression and to raise a beacon of hope.

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Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

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Perfection

The Way We Live Now

It’s 2010, millennial couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin. From their home office – an apartment in the coolest part of the city furnished with Danish design armchairs and exotic plants – they create tasteful websites and clever brand strategies for hip hotels and microbreweries. They hang out with interesting, likeminded people from all over the world. Life seems perfect, but are they happy? Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is a spot on portrayal of a generation for whom everything is possible, and nothing is permanent. One of my best reads this year.

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Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán

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Clean

Death and drudgery

A slow-burning Chilean tale of power and class, Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán is an exceptional novel and one of our stand-out reads of the year to date. It tells the story of Estela, a housemaid implicated in the death of her employers’ young daughter. From inside a locked room or perhaps cell, Estela addresses us, her potential jailers, before we can interrogate her. She is, apparently, attempting to set the record straight, recounting her years of drudgery and isolation in the frigid bosom of a wealthy family in Santiago, and how a series of interconnecting events have led to the death of her charge, seven-year-old Julia.  An unsettling and atmospheric mystery unfolds.

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan

A doting Nonna, a bewitchingly beautiful girl on the balcony across the street and the ‘pit of the dead’ below the courtyard. This is the world of Mimi, our 9-year-old hero in The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone. First love, death, class and Neapolitan passion mix up beautifully in this coming-of-age story set in 1950s Italy.

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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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The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist

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The Visit of the Royal Physician

The madness of King Christian VII

There’s something special about novels based on real events, particularly when the story is crazy as that of the The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist. It’s the late 1700s and the time of absolute rulers. In Denmark, a German doctor is hired to take care of the 16-year-old mentally disturbed King Christian VII. Within months, Struensee becomes the Queen’s lover and de-facto sovereign while living alongside King Christian. How was this possible? And was this Struensee’s intention all along? A wild journey into the madness of 18th century court life, revolutionary ideas and an absolute treat of a novel. Read full Review

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

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Eurotrash

Filthy lucre and edelweiss

Originally published in German in 2021, it’s taken years for Eurotrash by Christian Kracht to make it into English translation, and mere weeks to bag a place on The Times Best Books of 2024 list. Witty, reflective, and frequently disturbing, Kracht’s semi-autobiographical tragicomedy stars the man himself, as a middle-aged Swiss writer embarking on a road trip around Switzerland with his elderly mother. Recently released from a mental institution, and potentially on her last legs, it could be both their final holiday together, and Kracht’s only chance to get her to confront the implications of their family’s Nazi past.

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