Title : Universality Author: Natasha Brown Publisher: Random House ISBN: 978-0593977309 Genre: Literary Fiction Pages: 176 Source: Publisher Rating: 4/5 Natasha Brown’s second novel, Universality, is a sharp, satirical ride through modern media, privilege, and power. It opens with what seems like a feature from a glossy magazine: a COVID-era rave at a Yorkshire farmhouse […]

Title: Rhine JourneyAuthor: Ann SchleePublisher: McNally EditionsISBN: 978-1961341098Genre: Literary FictionPages: 208 Source: PublisherRating: 4 stars  Ann Schlee’s slim novel first published in 1980 and shortlisted for the 1981 Booker works like a pressure chamber: outwardly decorous, inwardly volatile. On a genteel Rhine cruise in 1851, Charlotte Morrison’s fleeting glimpse of a man she once loved becomes […]

Title: Keeru Author: Fauzia Rafique Translated from the Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz Publisher: Hachette India ISBN: 978-9357319348 Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQIA+, Novella Pages: 168 Source: Publisher Rating: 4/5 Reading Keeru by Fauzia Rafique, in Haider Shahbaz’s English translation, felt less like opening a novella and more like confronting fragments of my own past through someone […]

Title: The SouthAuthor: Tash AwPublisher: 4th Estate Books ISBN: 9780008637613Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQIA+ FictionPages: 282Source: PublisherRating: 4/5  There’s a quiet, simmering power in The South by Tash Aw. From its opening lines, it doesn’t just tell a story; it whispers secrets, the kind you’ve carried since perhaps forever, the kind that stitch themselves into the very […]

Title: Hurda Author: Atharva Pandit Publisher: Bloomsbury India ISBN: 9789356402287 Genre: Literary Fiction, Crime Pages: 326 Source: Publisher Rating: 4/5 Books based on true crime unsettle me, as they should. The purpose is that after all. To make you look at society close enough, to not shy away from the evil we harbour, to perhaps […]

Title: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Author: Kiran Desai Publisher: Hogarth Books ISBN: 978-0307700155 Genre: Literary Fiction Pages: 688 Source: Publisher Rating: 5/5 As I was reading this one, my constant thought was that of my father whom I lost at a young age. I do not know why or how or for what […]

Title: Background for Love Author: Helen Wolff Translated from the German by Tristram Wolff Publisher: Pushkin Press ISBN: 9781805330721 Genre: Literary Fiction Pages: 256 Source: Publisher Rating: 5 stars Helen Wolff’s Background for Love reads like a sun-drenched sigh, light on the surface, yet shadowed with the quiet weight of impending loss. Set against the […]

Title: Red Dog Farm Author: Nathaniel Ian Miller Publisher: Little, Brown and Company ISBN: 9780316575140 Genre: Literary Fiction Pages: 272 Source: Publisher Rating: 4/5 Some books don’t need noise to leave an imprint, they just quietly take root in you, like seeds sown in familiar soil. Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller is one […]

Title: Playworld Author: Adam Ross Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 978-0385351294 Genre: Literary Fiction Pages: 528 Source: Publisher Rating: 5/5 Adam Ross’s Playworld is a haunting exploration of innocence fractured by the adult world’s unyielding grasp, a story that lingers long after the final page, like a faint echo of something unresolved. Set in the chaotic swirl […]

Title: Reservoir Bitches Author: Dahlia de la Cerda Translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches Publisher: Scribe Books ISBN: 9781915590435 Genre: Short Stories Pages: 192 Source: Publisher Rating: 4/5 Dahlia de la Cerda’s Reservoir Bitches is a visceral collection of thirteen stories that plunge readers into the gritty realities of Mexican women […]