THE BEST NEW FICTION

The Twilight World

Werner Herzog Bodley Head £14.99

For 30 years after the end of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda hid out on a small island in the Philippines, believing that his comrades were still fighting and would eventually come back for him. German cinema legend Herzog, who befriended him after his return home, has written an imaginative reconstruction of his experiences, steeped in the atmosphere of the jungle. It’s an enthralling novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery.

Anthony Gardner

Girls They Write Songs About Carlene Bauer

Oneworld £16.99

Bauer’s glittering novel is both a paean to fiery female friendship and an elegy to that same bond as it turns to ashes. Aspiring writers Charlotte and Rose are lovers of music and books, changelings in their conventional families and hoping to be the coolest girls in New York. Snagging enviable bylines, they blaze through basement bars and bad affairs until the ennui of adulthood sets in. Painted with panache, it’s a wonderful portrait of two women and their ultimately fragile camaraderie.

Eithne Farry

After Darke Rick Gekoski Constable £18.99

The final instalment of Gekoski’s Darke trilogy finds his irascible, curmudgeonly hero emerging into a world of Covid lockdowns after a spell in prison for his role in the assisted death of his wife. Unbroken, unbowed and raging against the wokeness of the modern world, he spends his time avoiding his family, writing unspeakable pamphlets and plotting a literary hoax. Witty and literate, this is an entertaining and sometimes moving reflection on the indignities of ageing and the inexorable march of time.

Simon Humphreys

Confidence Denise Mina

Harvill Secker, £14.99

The excellent Denise Mina’s latest is an irresistible thriller that hurtles from the Scottish coast to Paris via Rome and an abandoned chateau deep in the French countryside. After Conviction, this is the second of Mina’s pacy novels about podcasters Anna and Fin and finds the pair on the trail of a missing silver casket that may date back to the time of Jesus, accompanied by a South African conman and his fed-up 12-year-old son. A considerably sassier and much funnier alternative to The Da Vinci Code and its kind.