8 New Books To Add To Your Reading List
The Vegetarian
By Han Kang
Winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature and winner of the International Booker Prize, Han Kang’s powerful book The Vegetarian has now been translated into English by Deborah Smith. Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people, a dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as she spirals further into her fantasies. Disturbing and beautiful, this is a revelatory novel about modern-day South Korea and what it means to understand others.
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The City & Its Uncertain Walls
By Haruki Murakami
At once a love story, quest and an ode to books and the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is one of Haruki Murakami’s greatest recent tales. When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own. When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of beasts and willow trees, he finds his lover working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.
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Small Things Like These
By Claire Keegan
In honour of the new Cillian Murphy-starring film, there’s a lovely new edition of Claire Keegan's multi-award-winning novel Small Things Like These. It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong – a coal and timber merchant – faces his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church. An international bestseller, this is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism and empathy from one of Ireland’s most critically acclaimed writers.
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Fire
By John Boyne
From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, the author behind the excellent The Heart’s Invisible Furies, comes this challenging and visceral narrative that asks the question: can one disastrous moment turn someone into a monster? On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development and a nice car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness. Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with a cruel streak or did something force it into being? In Fire, Boyne takes the reader on a chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?
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The Position Of Spoons
By Deborah Levy
From twice Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy comes this moving and revelatory collection that explores the muses that have shaped her life and work as a writer. From Marguerite Duras, Colette and Ballard to Lee Miller, Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, The Position of Spoons explores the richness of their work and, in turn the richness of the author’s own. Each page draws upon Levy’s life as she seamlessly shifts between questions of mortality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism and the poetics of everyday living. From being a child born in South Africa and her teenage years in Britain to her travels across the world as a young woman, each page delivers questions to ponder over.
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The Party
By Tessa Hadley
Tessa Hadley’s latest is an irresistible novella about two sisters and a night that changes everything. On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party in a dockside pub. There they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn’s misgivings. As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.
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The Proof Of My Innocence
By Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe is always a good choice for an engaging, thoughtful read and his latest book focuses on graduate Phyl. Time is passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. And budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere. Until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s in the midst of uncovering a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new prime minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn, and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost 40 years old?
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Cher: The Memoir
By Cher
For the first time, Cher tells her story in her own voice. The singer’s childhood was anything but normal. As her mother Georgia – blessed with movie-star looks and a knockout voice – moved them around the country over and over again in the hope of finding fame, her school life wasn’t easy. But she always knew she was going to be somebody when she grew up. Cher’s powerful instinct to keep moving eventually landed her in the arms of Sonny Bono. The duo became famous beyond their wildest dreams, from humble beginnings singing back-up in Phil Spector’s studio through to pop stardom as Sonny & Cher, and then on to the television show that made them household names. But as time passed, fame changed the dynamic of their relationship and Cher evolved from a wide-eyed teenager into a woman. She started fighting for herself, breaking away from Sonny’s control – and realising things were not as they seemed. Cher: The Memoir, Part One brings us to the brink of her next chapter, as she begins to chart her own path, finally claiming her rightful place in the world and becoming the icon she is today.
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