Soon after her husband leaves her, Pru goes to a friend's funeral - but it's the wrong one. She has such fun that she buys a black dress and starts attending strangers' funerals quite delibe... read more
Petterson has not been kind to his protagonist, removing from him by traumatic means his wife, three daughters, parents and brothers. It is no surprise that he is pole-axed by grief; will Pe... read more
A young French woman leaves Paris after the liberation in 1944 and joins her husband on a farm in Morocco, where she finds herself lonely, alienated, mistrusted and increasingly restless. Th... read more
A witty historical novel that conjures Dryden, Swift, Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and their ilk, by the cunning means of an imagined memoir, written by William Congreve's servant and com... read more
A new edition of this magnificent, subtle novel of unlikely courage, frailty, love and betrayal in Lisbon, under Salazar's dictatorship. As Diana Athill wrote, reading it is an experience by... read more
Off-kilter, strange and funny short stories by the wonderful Russian writer and playwright. Her other works published in English (and here we raise our chapka to Pushkin Press) have been one... read more
Friends are hard to find for Jon Swift, an aging journalist whose career is on the ropes. A chance encounter with an old friend from Tiananmen Square days leads to power games in China, with... read more
Parini really did travel around Scotland with Borges in an old Morris Minor, his ears flapping, heart opening and mind sharpening all the way. The result is a wonderful work of autofiction -... read more
A new translation of this fabulous C16th Chinese work - a wild epic, an outrageous satire, and surely one of the most exuberant works of literature the world has ever known. Based on the mon... read more
A dizzying and quietly surreal novel of South London life narrated through an interlinked series of episodic character studies. Ridgway's neo-Beckettian prose is never less than needle sharp... read more
This year's slim winner of the International Booker Prize is stunningly brilliant. Set during the Great War and narrated by a Senegalese soldier fighting for France on the Western Front, it ... read more
A brilliant historical novel whose subtitle 'A Romance' is deliciously deceptive. Sontag follows Sir William Hamilton (rechristened as 'The Cavalier' for the entire book), whose expat exploi... read more
Two cadres in China's Cultural Revolution, drunk on politics and their own affair, are discovered. By the author of 'Three Brothers: Memories of My Family', 'Lenin's Kisses', 'The Day the Su... read more
The friendship of four girls in San Francisco in the 1980s comes adrift. A beguiling story of innocence and its loss, the power and ruthlessness of collective responses, the dawning of the ... read more
An ageing surfing legend kills time in Hawaii - and then kills a man while driving drunk. He attempts to redress his culpability and achieve something resembling personal redemption by unrav... read more
A lyrical new novel from the author of 'The Year of the Runaways' explores family history, cultural estrangement, sequestration and freedom, passion and its consequences.
Funny and intricate debut novel by the acclaimed poet gives London's literary scene an exhilarating spin in a barrel - plagiarism, stolen poems, falls from grace and attempts to right wrongs... read more
Human fragility and the consequences that ripple outwards when an Antarctic expedition goes wrong. A spare, acutely imagined novel by the author of 'Reservoir 13'.
A dazzling Gothic tale set in the Salpetriere asylum in 1885 and its annual ball, under the controlling and sinister hand of Dr Charcot. A startling insight into the treatment of women in th... read more
A Khartoum jazz band is invited to the US but it has long since broken up. Reformed by the son of one of the original musicians who snatches at the opportunity, the new Kamanga Kings set off... read more
The story of a young girl sold by her father to a circus owner; her growing fame may transform her life for the better but, of course, it's complicated. Victorian grime, glitter and self-det... read more
Set in 1943, and first published in German in 1968, this is the story of a young boy torn between loyalties for his father, a police officer, and his friend Max Ludwig Nansen, an Expressioni... read more
Fascinating debut novel in which competing interests in a plot of rough land behind a Bangkok slum reveal much about contemporary Thailand. The author has reported extensively on Burma for m... read more
A woman moves through her lonely days in an Italian city: Lahiri's move to Rome a few years ago must inform this sensitive and observant novel. Written in Italian, the text is translated int... read more
The choices made by five women, all of whom experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall in their teens, and now grapple with different kinds of freedom. This has been a huge success in Germany.