Fill your suitcase with the best reads of the year so far
FICTION
All that Man Is
David Szalay, Vintage, €19.50 Szalay’s audacious new novel tells nine stories about nine men of six different ages in 13 countries. A superb meditation on ageing.
The Cauliflower
Nicola Barker, William Heinemann, €19.50 In this fictional biography of the 19th-century Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna, Barker again shows her talent for invention.
What Belongs to You
Garth Greenwell, Picador, €19 An astonishing portrait of compromised lust, set in ex-Soviet Sofia, this debut novel holds its own against classics like Lolita.
My Name Is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout, Viking, €16.99 A mother and daughter rebuild their relationship over five days in a New York hospital room — deft, tender and true.
Thus Bad Begins
Javier Marias, Hamish Hamilton, €16.99 Plots and eavesdroppers abound in this dark tale of marital strife and secret crimes in Spain.
The Gustav Sonata
Rose Tremain, Chatto & Windus, €19 Switzerland is on the eve of the Second World War. Faced with growing anti-semitism, a policeman makes a choice.
The Lost Time Accidents
John Wray, Canongate, €21.90 “This morning, at 08.47 EST, I woke up to find myself excused from time” — a Kafkaesque mix of sci-fi and historical fiction.
Paradise Lodge
Nina Stibbe, Penguin, €19 This laugh-out-loud funny follow-up to Man at the Helm sees Stibbe’s 15-year-old heroine, Lizzie, battling her mother, while working at a nursing home.
The Sport of Kings
CE Morgan, Fourth Estate, €19 A high literary epic of America that tells the story of a selfobsessed southern dynasty, devoted to racism and racehorses.
The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry, Serpent’s Tail, €19.50 An irresistible gothic novel about a village in 19th-century Essex haunted by a prehistoric flying serpent. Exquisite Victoriana.
Mothering Sunday
Graham Swift, Scribner, €16.99 In 1924, a housemaid spends the morning in bed with her aristocratic lover from the big house — and her life changes forever. Hauntingly told.
At the Edge of the Orchard
Tracy Chevalier, Borough, €22.50 A young man heads west from his family’s Ohio farm in the 1830s. Is he drawn by the lure of gold in California or by something altogether more sinister?
The Noise of Time
Julian Barnes, Jonathan Cape, €19.50 Shostakovich is the subject of Julian Barnes’s first novel since winning the 2011 Booker Prize. A fascinating tale of art and political compromise.
Golden Hill
Francis Spufford, Faber, €22.50 New York, 1746: a mysterious man arrives with a $1,000 bill. Spufford’s novel is a riot of action in the vein of Sterne and Fielding.
The Allegations
Mark Lawson, Picador, €22.50 A professor is accused of bullying; his friend is arrested for “historic” sexual abuse. A howl of outrage.
The Mandibles
Lionel Shriver, Borough, €17.99 Gripping family saga set in a future bankrupt America where middle-class comforts are replaced by struggle for survival.
The Girls
Emma Cline, Chatto & Windus, €16.99 An intense evocation of adolescence, this debut novel about a girl sucked into a Manson-esque cult is the breakout book of the summer. SCIENCE, NATURE AND TRAVEL
The Gene
Siddhartha Mukherjee, Vintage, €23.70 An accessible and beautifully written overview of the complex field of genetics by the Indian-born doctor. It’s personal and provocative, too.
The Outrun
Amy Liptrot, Canongate, €19.50 The damage done by alcohol is unforgettably evoked in this memoir. It is a brave book, which goes to the heart of addiction.
15 Million Degrees
Lucie Green, Viking, €18.25 Green, a physicist and TV presenter, tells the story of the solar system from birth to projected demise in eight billion years. Her touch is light; her sense of wonder infectious.
The Genius of Birds
Jennifer Ackerman, Corsair, €19.50 Birdbrain, featherhead, loony, turkey, dodo: our vocabulary betrays the dim view we take of birds’ intelligence. But this is quite unfair, argues Ackerman. Her study is enthralling.
The Way We Die Now
Seamus O’Mahony, Head of Zeus, €19.99 Dr O’Mahony believes we need to take a good, hard look at where we are going wrong in the way we treat terminal illness and death. A provocative essay.
White Sands
Geoff Dyer, Canongate, €22.50 Dyer is up to his old tricks in this collection of travel writing — covering everything from Gauguin’s syphilis to land art — in which the distinction between fiction and fact is “irrelevant”.
Rethink
Steven Poole, Random House, €19.50 Rickshaws are in, vinyl is cool and doctors use leeches again. In this entertaining and important book, Poole offers a modern take on that ancient wisdom: “There is no new thing under the sun.”
HISTORY The Romanovs
Simon Sebag Montefiore, W&N, €25.99 “It was hard to be a tsar,” Montefiore writes in this joyful romp through 300 years of the dynasty’s epic follies.
West of Eden
Jean Stein, Jonathan Cape, €26.50 A selective, sly history of studioera Hollywood by a film mogul’s daughter. One of the best books ever written about the movies.
Second-Hand Time
Svetlana Alexievich, Fitzcarraldo, €19.50 In this strange, polyphonic book, the Nobel laureate asks Soviets how the USSR’s collapse made them feel.
Final Solution
David Cesarani, Macmillan, €39.50 The late historian’s definitive account of the Nazis’ slaughter of the Jews begins in 1933, and emphasises the hurried disorganisation of it all.
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives
Sunil Khilnani, Allen Lane, €39.50 The story of India told in potted biographies, from the Buddha to 21st-century billionaires. It’s hard to imagine this feat being done any better.
At the Existentialist Cafe
Sarah Bakewell, Chatto & Windus, €22.50 A journey to Paris in the 40s and 50s, when philosophy was sexy, and Sartre and de Beauvoir held court in Montparnasse.
The Cultural Revolution
Frank Dikotter, Bloomsbury, €32.50 In this evocative final volume of his People’s Trilogy on revolutionary China, Dikotter asks what it was like to live through Mao’s last gamble: the systematic destruction of China’s past.
Into the Breach
Hugh Sebag Montefiore, Viking, £25 Published to coincide with the Battle of the Somme’s centenary, this magisterial history is the fruit of eight years’ work. Draws on fresh sources to reconstruct the battle in forensic detail. POLITICS
Trump and Me
Mark Singer, Allen Lane, €12.99 Consists of the superb profile Singer wrote of Donald Trump for The New Yorker 20 years ago, topped and tailed with new material on the tycoon’s presidential campaign.
Burning Country
Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila al-Shami, Pluto, €19.50 The most succinct and convincing insider’s narrative of the Syrian uprising yet written.
The End of Alchemy
Mervyn King, Little Brown, €19.50 Belying the former Governor of the Bank of England’s mild manners, this is a fearlessly honest analysis of the 2007-08 collapse. It will enrage some, and will be read for decades to come.
Broken and Betrayed
Jayne Senior, Pan, €10.50 From 1999, Senior worked with girls at risk of sexual abuse. This is her furious account of how the justice system let down — she estimates — 1,700 girls.