Literary fiction
Nutshell Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape €19.99
A novel narrated by a foetus? In one of the wackiest books of the year, a precocious narrator eavesdrops as his mother and her lover – who also happens to be the unborn babe’s uncle – scheme to do away with his poet dad. It’s a bewitching ode to humanity’s beauty, longing and selfishness.
The Dark Flood Rises Margaret Drabble Canongate €19.99
How to age well? That question drives this masterful novel, whose heroine Fran Stubbs may be in her 70s but still dyes her hair, likes a tipple and speeds as she zips up and down the country advising on care homes for the elderly. Uplifting and poignant in equal measure.
The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead Fleet €18.99
History’s metaphorical underground railroad ferried runaway slaves to safety in antebellum America. This bravura novel reimagines that same network as a real subterranean railway, upon which a girl named Cora flees the slave-catcher Ridgeway. Throughout, horrific experiences are rendered in lapidary prose, but it’s Cora’s daring that provides the story’s redemptive oomph.
Who Killed Piet Barol? Richard Mason Weidenfeld & Nicolson €20.99
A seemingly playful lie spirals into an explosion of greed, lust and ruthless ambition against the backdrop of ancient forests. This riveting tale is set in South Africa in 1914 as a world war looms, and is told from the perspective of both colonial whites and tribal blacks
The Wonder Emma Donoghue Picador €14.99
Ireland in the 1850s, and Anna, a pious 11-year-old, claims to have eaten nothing for the past four months. Based on historical accounts of ‘Fasting Girls’, this creepy tale from the best-selling author of Room deftly evokes an air of menace and claustrophobia as it builds to an almost unbearably tense conclusion.
The Sellout Paul Beatty Oneworld €19
This year’s Man Booker Prize winner is a provocative, razor-sharp satire that lampoons race relations in contemporary America. Its narrator is a black farmer in the ‘agrarian ghetto’ of Dickens, on the outskirts of LA. After suffering one too many knocks, he hatches a plan: to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school.