Robert Seethaler’s gem of a novella mixes the dying composer’s reflections with real-life history and imaginative flourishes
From British declinism to Antony Beevor on Rasputin and a Chinese factory memoir. Plus fiction by Elizabeth Strout — and Boyd Tonkin on Marilyn Monroe and the power of reading
A lonely teenager lodges with his father’s cousin in this story of substitute love and male friendship
Reading for both pleasure and betterment endures — even if unquestioning faith in literary canons and critical authority is gone
A new tale about the power of secrets by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘Olive Kitteridge’
In a beautifully balanced novel, a man tries to bond with his partner’s young sons while grappling with his own inherited history
A romance scam takes an unexpected turn in Martina Hefter’s German Book Prize-winning novel, her first translated into English
A hunt for meaning unites the eight tales from one of the best practitioners of the short form
Doctors, dairy farmers, failed novelists — how authors’ fictional selves take on an identity all their own, distinct from their creators
The story of a young girl in 1960s Calcutta who claims to have lived before shows the difficulties of grappling with climate politics in literary fiction
Witty, observant and wildly original stories explore the difficulties of modern dating, dark goings-on in 1950s Chelsea — and a dog’s-eye view of the world
Plotto
The novelist explores the realm between reality and imagination in a dreamlike tale journeying from Mexico to England
A nameless narrator finds connections with the American pioneer of modernism in a confounding, compelling fiction-biography hybrid
To finish her semi-autobiographical ‘The Country of Others’ trilogy the French-Moroccan writer drew on deeply personal experiences of exile, prejudice and her father’s wrongful imprisonment
In a hybrid of fiction and essay, Jean-Noël Orengo explores how Albert Speer charmed Hitler and then laundered his own postwar reputation
Four of the best new sci-fi novels chart a darker journey across America, including a Marvel reboot, a crime caper that fuses magic and linguistics, plus a philosophical view of a looming apocalypse
Why Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light gets better with distance.
Rene Karabash’s tale of a ‘sworn virgin’ in a remote corner of Albania is a worthy shortlistee for the International Booker Prize
The prizewinning author deploys language to devastating effect as she revisits her theme of women plagued by brittle relationships
The translator’s debut novel is a funny, moving and skilfully crafted story of obsession, performance and the fantasies that drive people to action
The danger is not that it will replace human-authored books — but that we stop caring about good writing at all
One of France’s most significant literary voices on pursuing a ‘higher purpose’ — and how the country’s judicial system crushes the weakest
The US novelist probes the porous border between the real and the unreal in this thrilling hall of mirrors
Nelio Biedermann’s ambitious debut is a fast-paced story of decline and fall across three generations in Austria-Hungary
