Contemporary fiction Books 1240 results

Naguib Mahfouz / Najib Ma?Fu?

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR. 'A masterpiece' - The Times 'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore Sugar Street, the climactic final book in the classic Cairo Trilogy, is the captivating story of a family struggling to change with the rise of modern Egypt. As Cairo shrugs off the final vestiges of colonialism, Ahmad Al Jawad has ...

Kurt Vonnegut

'Black satire of the highest polish' Guardian Whilst awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison, Howard W. Campbell Jr sets down his memoirs on an old German typewriter. He has used such a typewriter before, when he worked as a Nazi propagandist under Goebbels. Though that was before he agreed to become a spy for US military. Is Howard guilty? Can a black or white verd...

James Meek

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police. He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a m...

Emily Usher

'A glittering exploration of love's many faces - Wild Ground aches with hard-won hope and bruised tenderness' Colin Walsh, author of Kala'An intoxicating debut from a compelling new voice' Adelle Stripe, author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant SmileWhen Neef was twelve, her mother moved them out of Leeds and into her boyfriend's flat miles away. Resentful and unwelcome in their s...

Cristina Rivera Garza

Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers 'A labyrinthine masterpiece' New York Times'A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story' TIME 'Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory' Layla Martinez A city is always a cemetery. When a professor named Cristina stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the bod...

Eric Puchner

"Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws' beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future. When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, Cece can't imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn't believe in love, much less marriage. But as...

Ben Lerner

Included in the BEST OF GRANTA launch list for 2023: this story of a young American abroad and adrift is a hilarious, intelligent cult classic, from one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists. ...

Han Kang

Included in the BEST OF GRANTA launch list for 2023 and WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2016: an exhilarating, unsettling modern classic about patriarchy and rebellion, eroticism and the body, and one woman's desire for another mode of existence. ...

Marie Darrieussecq

Plagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines the next day. In Sleepless, she recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly writers - 'as if writing were not sleeping' - Ovid, Marcel Proust, Vi...

Shelby Van Pelt

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**OVER HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDEBBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICKOVER 29,000 5 STAR REVIEWSGOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOKS OF 2022GLAMOUR BEST BOOKS OF 2022'Full of heart and humour . . . I loved it.' Ruth Hogan'Will stay with you for a long time.' Anstey Harris'I defy you to put it down once you've started' Cynthia D'Aprix SweeneyAfter T...

Kazuo Ishiguro

*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick* 'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times 'The Sun always has ways to reach us.' From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qu...

Satoshi Yagisawa

It is the pride and joy of her uncle Ojisan, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoki left him five years earlier. When Takano's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop.[Bokinfo]. ...

Han Kang

Book of the Year 2023 according to New Yorker, TIME magazine, Kirkus A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The Vegetarian. 'Breathtaking . . . She is simply my favourite living writer to read, and think with, and see the world with' Max Porter In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teac...

Bret Easton Ellis

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'A full-spectrum triumph' - Guardian A sensational new novel from the bestselling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. His first novel in 13 years, The Shards is Bret Easton Ellis at his inimitable best. LA, 1981. Buckley College...

Jenny Erpenbeck

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, pun...

Elena Ferrante

"Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman's headlong descent into what she calls an ""absence of sense"" after being abandoned by her husband." ...

Alice Winn

WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES NOVEL OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2023 'If you haven't read it, you're missing out' Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY 'One of the best debuts I've read in recent years . . . please rush out and buy it' ELIZABETH DAY ______________________ In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and an...

Dolly Alderton

Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is... Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about ...

Irene Solá

A ferociously imaginative, polyphonic debut: amid the rugged beauty of the Pyrenees, the mountains' inhabitants - both human and non-human - bear witness to the tragedies that befall one family ...

James Mcbride

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by...

Kaveh Akbar

'I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life' JOHN GREEN, author of The Fault in Our StarsA BOOK OF THE YEAR IN: The New York Times Time Observer USA Today Vanity Fair NPR The Atlantic Electric Lit Vox The New Yorker 'Smart, dazzling, different . . . This book is thrilling.' Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake 'Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, ...

Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Mohsin Hamid's thrillingly provocative international bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007 Now a major film directed by Mira Nair and starring Kate Hudson and Kiefer Sutherland 'Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by ...

Percival Everett

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha HaJames by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Boo...

Samantha Harvey

**FROM THE AUTHOR OF 2024 BOOKER PRIZE WINNING ORBITAL** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2019** 15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many...

Nussaibah Younis

A laugh-out-loud, unforgettable novel about ISIS brides, by debut author Nussaibah Younis[Bokinfo]. ...

Rosanna Pike

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: TUDOR ENGLAND AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE, WITH A HEROINE YOU'LL NEVER FORGET 'Crisp, transportive, uplifting. The fresh, irreverent voice of Tibb Ingleby is sheer brilliance. I loved it!' BONNIE GARMUS, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY --- Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that ...

Emily Slapper

'I hope the lights are on when we finally have sex so he can see how young I am compared to his wife.' Readers are loving Everyone I Know is Dying: 'An important, electric portrayal of mental health' ????? 'Brutally relatable' ????? 'One of the most powerful books I've ever read' ????? 'Brilliantly written by an outstanding new literary talent' ????? 'Words struggle to expres...

Doris Lessing

The Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing's first novel is a taut and tragic portrayal of a crumbling marriage, set in South Africa during the years of Arpartheid. Set in Rhodesia, 'The Grass is Singing' tells the story of Dick Turner, a failed white farmer and his wife, Mary, a town girl who hates the bush and viciously abuses the black South Africans who work on their farm. But ...

Sayaka Murata

From the author of the international bestseller Convenience Store Woman, a convention-defying and taboo-busting novel, and a radically reimagined vision of sex, family and society. ...

Madeleine Gray

A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN STYLIST, DAILY MAIL, THE i PAPER, IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND RED SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 BRITISH BOOK AWARDS DEBUT FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 'ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL READ ALL YEAR' ELIZABETH DAY 'BRILLIANT. WHAT A WRITER' NIGELLA LAWSON 'INCREDIBLY FUNNY' CAITLIN MORAN 'WONDERFUL' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'THIS YEAR'S SORROW AND BLISS' DAILY MAIL Hera...