This preview highlights titles to be published in February 2024
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Julius Taranto How I Won a Nobel Prize Picador, 15th, £16.99, hb, 9781035006830
Début In this American début, a young
physicist finds herself exiled to an island research institute that gives safe harbour to “cancelled” artists and academics, throwing her into crises of work, marriage and conscience. Incisive and refreshingly irreverent, says Picador.
liberated from Southern plantations who found an impenetrable magical town called Ours, where they have the freedom to live ordinary lives. An inti- mate, elemental story for fans of Colson Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward, says Granta.
Toh EnJoe, David Boyd (trans) Harlequin Butterfly Pushkin Press, 29th, £8.99, pbo, 9781782279778 Winner of Japan’s Akutagawa Prize, this “mind-bending” liter- ary mystery about an enigmatic writer who seems able to publish in every language is part of Pushkin’s second series of Japanese Novellas.
Joelle Taylor
The Night Alphabet riverrun, 15th, £18.99, hb, 9781529430936
Début Taylor’s most recent poetry
collection, C+nto & Othered Poems, won the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Polari Prize. Set across geographies and timespans, her début novel comprises intercon- necting tales told by a woman getting a tattoo, who recounts the stories attached to her other tattoos, summoning her past, future and parallel lives.
Phillip B Williams Ours Granta Books, 22nd, £18.99, hb, 9781803510774
Début From an award- winning
American poet, this epic novel of rebellion and redemption imagines a Black community of slaves
Crime & thriller
Matthew Blake Anna O HarperFiction, 2nd, £16.99, hb, 9780008607791
Rebecca Gisler, Jordan Stump (trans) About Uncle Peirene Press, 20th, £12.99, pbo, 9781908670939
Début In a French coastal town
lives Uncle, a disabled veteran prone to drinking, hoarding and gorging. As the world begins to shut down, Uncle and his niece are forced closer, and she finds herself relying on him, her only companion. Exploring disability and the inescapable bonds of family, this novel won the 2022 Swiss Literature Prize.
Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel (trans) The Physics of Sorrow W&N, 15th, £9.99, pbo, 9781399623131 Gospodinov became the first Bulgarian winner of the International Booker Prize this year with Time Shelter. The Physics of
Sorrow, a kaleidoscopic “novel of beginnings”, offers a portrait of a man who can wander uninvited into other people’s memories, and is part family history, part coming-of-age story and part meditation on life in Communist Europe. It was the winner of the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in 2016 and a finalist for the 2015 PEN Literary Award for Translation. BookScan
young girl and together they set out across the tank-strewn desert on his camel to find safety.
Huzama Habayeb, Kay Heikkinen (trans) Before the Queen Falls Asleep MacLehose Press, 15th, £10, pbo, 9781529415650 From an award-winning Palestinian author and journalist, a “richly observed and affectionate” portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their homeland, exploring the love and betrayal that pursues a family from Kuwait to Jordan to Dubai.
Agustin Fernandez Mello, Thomas Bunstead (trans) The Book of All Loves Fitzcarraldo Editions, 14th, £12.99, pbo, 9781804270790 A pair of lovers anat- omise their love in this “expansive” work set in a post-apocalyptic future, blending fiction, essay, poetry and philosophy.
Elisa Shua Dusapin, Aneesa Abbas Higgins (trans) Vladivostok Circus Daunt Books Originals, 8th, £9.99, pbo, 9781914198311 A Geneva student arrives in Vladivostok, Russia, to design the costumes for a trio of circus artists, in this “intimate and beguiling” account of four people learning to trust one another. Dusapin is the author of the excellent Winter in Sokcho, winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature, and The Pachinko Parlour.
Manya Wilkinson Lublin And Other Stories, 6th, £14.99, pbo, 9781913505943 The second novel from the author of Ocean Avenue is pitched as “Stand by Me” in Tsarist Russia. In 1917, three Jewish lads set off for Lublin, market town of dreams, to seek their future in a climate of building antisemitism and historical crisis.
Bruce Omar Yates The Muslim Cowboy Dead Ink, 8th, £9.99, pbo, 9781915368386
Début In the aftermath of the Iraq War, a
denim-clad Iraqi man entranced by Americana roams a lawless land- scape in search of his own Western story. He meets a
One to Watch
Sold into more than 30 territories in a flurry of auctions, HarperFiction’s “event title” considers culpability for sleep- related crimes. It tells the story of Anna Ogilvy, a young writer who stabs her two best friends to death in her sleep
and never wakes up. Her condition is known as “resignation syndrome”, a rare functional psycho- somatic disorder. Four years later, sleep expert Dr Benedict Prince receives a secret mission from the Ministry of Justice: awaken “Sleeping Beauty” so she can stand trial. With echoes of Euripides’ “Medea”, this is an intricate psychological thriller for fans of S J Watson.
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Jennie Godfrey The List of Suspicious Things Hutchinson Heinemann, 15th, £14.99, hb, 9781529153293
Samar Yazbek, Leri Price (trans) Where the Wind Calls Home World Editions, 6th, £17.99, pbo, 9781642861358 In this new novel by the Syrian author of National Book Award finalist Planet of Clay, a wounded 19-year-old soldier in the Syrian Army remembers his former life lived in the traditional Alawite way. BookScan
Literary short stories
Soldier Spy for the screen with her husband Peter Straughan and died in 2010. Violence is sudden and often inevitable in these stories, says Picador, but in among the bleakness is a wicked sense of humour.
Vauhini Vara This is Salvaged Grove Press UK, 1st, £12.99, tpb, 9781804710623 A collection exploring relationships and intimacy from the author of The Immortal King Rao, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of several other awards. “Hilarious, tender and deeply moving”, says Lauren Groff.
Laird Hunt Float Up, Sing Down riverrun, 6th, £18.99, hb, 9781529434507 From the author of Zorrie, a National Book Award finalist in 2021, comes a collection of interwoven stories capturing one summer’s day in Reagan- era Indiana, in the tradition of Willa Cather and Elizabeth Strout, says riverrun.
Bridget O’Connor After a Dance Picador, 15th, £16.99, hb, 9781035024896 A new collection of short stories by the BAFTA- winning author, play- wright and screenwriter, who adapted Tinker Tailor
Bora Chung, Anton Hur (trans) Your Utopia Honford Star, 13th, £14.99, pbo, 9781915829016 Collected tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality, from the Korean author of Cursed Bunny, which was short- listed for the International Booker Prize 2022. BookScan
Diane Oliver Neighbors and Other Stories Faber & Faber, 1st, £9.99, pbo, 9780571386086 Introduced by Tayari Jones, these stories are steeped in the uncanny
One to Watch
Début This début by a Waterstones bookseller is inspired by her childhood in 1970s West Yorkshire. Born to a
mill-working family after the closure of the mills, Godfrey grew up in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, and her father worked alongside
Peter Sutcliffe. She explores the era’s heightened tensions through the story of 11-year-old Miv, who resolves to catch the Ripper with her friend Sharon. Together, they unearth all manner of secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families and between each other. An evocative, and far from rose- tinted, portrait of a bygone England, and a mystery that celebrates friendship and compassion.
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© Pete Bartlett
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