Books
Titles rise when more people stand behind them.
1997 · Literary fiction, Historical fictionRuins of the Day
أطلال النهارReflecting on the disillusionment that followed the transformative hopes of the 1973 October War, this poignant rural realist novel charts the erosion of traditional agrarian solidarity in a changing Nile Delta village. Through the daily struggles of marginalized villagers confronting economic dislocation, consumerism, and state neglect, the story mourns the fading promise of national renewal.
2015 · Nonfiction, History, ReportagePoland 1945: War and Peace
1945. Wojna i pokójChronicle-like in its intimate focus on ordinary citizens, this historical reportage captures Poland during the tumultuous, chaotic months of 1945 between the collapse of Nazi occupation and the onset of Stalinist order. Through letters, diaries, and survivor accounts across devastated towns and newly ceded western territories, the book exposes the desperate struggles for food, shelter, and basic survival in the fragile shadow of peace.
2009 · PoetryTwo Fiats
Dwa fiatyBlending dark humor, colloquial intimacy, and surrealist domestic imagery, this award-winning poetry collection navigates grief, motherhood, and the quiet persistence of mortality. Meditating on loss and acceptance—evoking both the Italian car and the Latin biblical submission 'let it be done'—the poems transform traumatic ruptures into stark, tender reflections on everyday life.
2010 · Fiction, Literary fictionA Visit from the Goon Squad
Spanning decades through thirteen interconnected narratives, this inventive novel charts the shifting fortunes of an aging punk-rock record executive, his kleptomaniac assistant, and the colorful constellation of artists and opportunists around them. Employing unconventional literary forms—including a chapter famously rendered as a PowerPoint slide deck—the book examines the relentless, ruthless passage of time in human lives.
2014 · Historical fiction, Literary fictionKruso
Set during the twilight months of East Germany in 1989, this lyrical novel follows a grieving student who flees to the windswept Baltic island of Hiddensee to work as a dishwasher. There he falls under the spell of Kruso, a charismatic seasonal worker who maintains a clandestine sanctuary for societal dropouts and refugees dreaming of an alternative spiritual freedom.
2002 · PoetryTransfer Fat
Forsla fettOpening an acclaimed poetic trilogy on maternal biology, this visceral Swedish collection examines pregnancy, mammalian flesh, gravity, and vulnerability through radical, biomechanical lyricism.
2007 · Comic Fantasy, SatireMaking Money
Bored with managing the revitalized Ankh-Morpork post office, reformed swindler Moist von Lipwig is coerced into taking charge of the city's corrupt Royal Bank, where he schemes to revolutionize the economy by issuing paper currency backed by confidence rather than gold.
2017 · Coming-of-Age, Literary FictionA Girl Returned
L'ArminutaIn 1970s central Italy, a thirteen-year-old girl is suddenly handed back by her comfortable adoptive parents to the impoverished biological family she never knew, forcing her to endure bewildering abandonment and rebuild her sense of belonging alongside a fierce younger sister.
2016 · Psychological Thriller, Horror, Literary FictionThe Hole
홀Paralyzed, disfigured, and unable to speak following a devastating car accident that claimed his wife, a university professor is left entirely at the mercy of his grieving mother-in-law, who systematically cuts him off from the outside world while obsessively digging a deep hole in the garden.
2002 · Literary Fiction, Political FictionWaiting for an Angel
In 1990s Lagos under the oppressive military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, an aspiring young journalist is detained as a political prisoner, reflecting on the fragile dreams, neighborhood struggles, and state violence that shaped his life.
2014 · Romance, Contemporary FictionUgly Love
After moving into her brother's San Francisco apartment, graduate nursing student Tate Collins enters into a strict no-commitments arrangement with airline pilot Miles Archer, struggling to maintain their emotional boundaries as their mutual attraction deepens.
2016 · Historical Fiction, DramaHomeland
PatriaAfter ETA declares a ceasefire in the Basque Country, a grieving widow returns to her hometown to seek answers about her husband's assassination, reigniting bitter estrangement with her former best friend whose son joined the separatist militants.
2019 · Fiction, Literary FictionPar les routes
Settling into a quiet town in southern France, a writer reconnects with an old friend known as the hitchhiker, who periodically abandons his domestic life for the open highway, drawing the narrator into the complex emotional world of his friend's partner and young son.
2007 · Memoir, AutobiographyThis Too Is a Story
एक कहानी यह भीIn this candid and introspective literary memoir, celebrated Hindi author Mannu Bhandari examines her formative upbringing in Ajmer, her student activism during India's freedom movement, and her creative emergence as a leading voice in the Nayi Kahani movement. Writing with remarkable intimacy and vulnerability, she reflects on the triumphs and struggles of womanhood, her teaching career, and the complicated creative and domestic partnership she shared with fellow writer Rajendra Yadav.
1997 · Short Stories, Literary FictionSmall Change
In this collection of twenty interconnected stories set across Canada and Mexico, Elizabeth Hay examines the fragile boundaries of friendship, charting the quiet betrayals, lingering grievances, and sudden moments of intimacy that bind people together.
2019 · Fiction, Historical FictionThe Beekeeper of Aleppo
Forced to abandon their war-ravaged city, an Aleppo beekeeper and his newly blinded artist wife endure a harrowing journey across Turkey and Greece toward asylum in Britain while coping with unspeakable grief.
1996 · Fiction, Literary FictionThe Tent
الخباءSet in an Egyptian Bedouin settlement, this intimate debut novel follows a young girl named Fatma, largely confined to her family's encampment. Through her sharp, poetic observations, the narrative reveals the cloistered daily rituals, desert folklore, and severe tribal codes that govern the women's quarters under the unbending rule of an absent patriarch and a fierce matriarch.
2012 · Memoir, Biography, HistoryA Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz
Ett kort uppehåll på vägen från AuschwitzBlending investigative journalism with tender family memoir, Göran Rosenberg retraces his father's survival through Nazi concentration camps and his fraught postwar resettlement in small-town Sweden.
2023 · Fantasy, Speculative FictionThe Saint of Bright Doors
Raised by his mother to murder his estranged father, the messianic leader of an imperial faith, Fetter abandons his mission and escapes to the sprawling city of Luriat. Striving to carve out an unburdened life, he finds himself drawn to the city's enigmatic bright doors—sealed, unopenable portals that hum with ancient power. As revolutionary whispers grow and old dogmas reassert their grip, Fetter gets caught in the machinery of politics and myth, forced to reckon with the bloody destiny he sought to outrun.
1997 · Fiction, Literary FictionThe Old Capital
古都Wandering through a rapidly modernizing Taipei, the narrator grapples with cultural dislocation, political transitions, and the erosion of collective memory across post-martial-law Taiwan.
2018 · Fiction, Literary FictionAsymmetry
Two seemingly disparate narratives—a young editorial assistant's affair with an acclaimed elder author in New York, and an Iraqi-American economist's detention by immigration officials at Heathrow—weave together into a subtle exploration of power, perspective, and the nature of empathy.
2013 · Espionage thrillerI Am Pilgrim
A former chief of a clandestine US intelligence division known only as Pilgrim has walked away from his covert life to live in anonymity. But when an untraceable murder in a seedy Manhattan hotel matches the investigative methods detailed in Pilgrim's own forensic textbook, he is pulled back into service. Soon, a routine homicide inquiry expands into a high-stakes global manhunt against a brilliant, elusive operative engineering a devastating biological strike against the United States.
2018 · Fiction, Philosophical Fiction, Literary FictionLas noches todas
Seeking peace and distance from society, retired university professor Esteban settles into a rustic country home in rural Colombia to cultivate an ambitious, meticulously planned garden. As eccentric neighbors, an unexpected female visitor, and the relentless encroaching wilderness complicate his solitary pursuit, he is forced to reckon with the fragile beauty of life, the stubbornness of human desire, and the certainty of mortality.
2001 · Fiction, Political Fiction, DramaBitter Fruit
In post-apartheid South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission liaison Silas Ali unexpectedly crosses paths with François du Boise, the former police lieutenant who brutally assaulted his wife Lydia twenty years earlier. The encounter unleashes long-buried trauma that ripples through their home, testing the couple's fragile marriage while their teenage son Mikey grapples with the devastating secrets of his parentage and identity against the backdrop of a nation struggling to reckon with its painful history.
2009 · Nonfiction, Political Science, SociologyThe Temptation of Absolute Power
إغراء السلطة المطلقةDrawing on sociological and institutional history, Egyptian psychiatrist and researcher Basma Abdel Aziz traces the structural roots of state violence, dissecting how unchecked police power and legal impunity dismantle civil trust and normalize systemic oppression.
2008 · Historical fictionEl espejo africano
An ebony-framed pocket mirror carved in Africa travels across generations and continents, connecting the lives of an enslaved African woman, a South American independence fighter, and a struggling European orphan in their shared quest for freedom.
1999 · Psychological thrillerDie Hirnkönigin
While researching a provocative series on female murderers in Berlin, an ambitious cultural journalist investigates the gruesome beheading of her editor and a string of surgically mutilated men.
2019 · True crimeOne Day in Bethlehem
This investigative narrative chronicles the wrongful conviction of Fusi Mofokeng, an ordinary South African man who served nineteen years behind bars for an armed ambush he did not commit.
2013 · FantasyMortal Fire
While traveling through a secluded valley, a sixteen-year-old girl with an innate mathematical intuition uncovers hidden magic and a young man imprisoned by an ancient family curse.
2003 · Science fictionThe City of Ember
In an aging subterranean city illuminated only by failing electric streetlamps and facing imminent resource collapse, two resourceful teenagers decipher a fragmented ancient parchment that may hold the secret to escaping to the world above.
1998 · Young adult fictionDeadly, Unna?
In a racially divided South Australian coastal town, fourteen-year-old Gary 'Blacky' Black strikes up a close friendship with Dumby Red, a star Indigenous player on his local football team. When racial tensions and violence tear the community apart following the grand final, Blacky is forced to confront prejudice and decide where his loyalties lie.
2001 · Historical fictionRequiem for a Soldier
Карагандинские девятины, или Повесть последних днейAt an isolated military garrison in the Kazakh steppe during the final years of the Soviet Union, a funeral detail prepares to transport the body of a dead soldier across the country. As the squad navigates military bureaucracy and the vast wasteland, their journey becomes a grim struggle for human dignity amid the collapse of the imperial order.
2018 · Black comedy thrillerMy Sister, the Serial Killer
In Lagos, a practical hospital nurse dutifully cleans up crime scenes to protect her glamorous sister who habitually murders her boyfriends, but loyalty is tested when the sister sets her sights on the doctor she secretly loves.
2022 · Literary FictionBenba
本巴Inspired by the heroic Kalmyk-Mongolian epic Jangar, this novel reimagines a mythical grassland realm called Benba where people never age beyond twenty-five, exploring the boundaries of play, time, and collective memory.
2008 · FantasyGraceling
In the Seven Kingdoms, where rare individuals are born with superhuman abilities known as Graces, Katsa is feared for her lethal Grace of killing and used as an enforcer by her royal uncle. When she encounters an equally gifted foreign prince investigating an abduction, the two join forces and uncover a corrupt king's perilous conspiracy.
2011 · Literary fictionThe Great Passage
舟を編むA reclusive Tokyo salesman with an extraordinary gift for words is recruited to a dictionary editorial department, embarking on a meticulous fifteen-year journey to create a definitive modern lexicon.
2000 · Historical fictionThe Blind Assassin
An elderly Canadian woman recounts the rise and tragic unraveling of her prominent family, intertwining her memoirs with an illicit pulp sci-fi novella attributed to her late sister.
2009 · Young adult fictionJarvis 24
Sixteen-year-old Melbourne high schooler Marc Jarvis takes a two-week work experience placement at an eccentric suburban car dealership, navigating quirky coworkers, unexpected adult responsibilities, and a budding romance with a gifted sprinter named Electra.
2000 · FantasyHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Fourteen-year-old Harry Potter is unexpectedly chosen as a fourth competitor in the grueling Triwizard Tournament, navigating deadly magical trials as dark forces conspire toward Lord Voldemort's resurrection.
2008 · Literary fictionLes Mains gamines
A lyrical, searing French novel exploring suppressed childhood trauma, following a woman who confronts memories of assault by her former classmates while four women in her circle gradually discover her secret.
2012 · Fiction, DramaEm and the Big Hoom
Narrated from a cramped one-bedroom Bombay flat, a young son charts his Goan Catholic family's life around his mother's volatile bipolar disorder, sustained by the steadfast patience of his father.
1996 · Coming-of-Age, Sports, FictionBattery
バッテリーAfter moving to a quiet mountain town, an exceptionally gifted but haughty middle-school baseball pitcher forms an intense battery with an affable local catcher, learning vulnerability and trust through their shared game.
1997 · Horror, Historical Fiction, MysteryLaughing Iemon
嗤う伊右衛門Revisiting the classic Edo ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan, this psychological period novel deconstructs the legendary spectral tragedy through an unconventional, poignant bond between a stoic ronin and a disfigured noblewoman.
1998 · Crime, MysteryPrickel
Introducing the irreverent Ruhr Valley private investigator Kristof Kryszinski, this hardboiled mystery plunges into a bizarre missing persons inquiry involving eccentric locals and dangerous criminal entanglements.
2015 · Fantasy, Science FictionThe Fifth Season
On a seismically volatile continent plagued by cyclical cataclysms, an ostracized woman capable of manipulating geological energy searches for her abducted daughter as an extinction-level catastrophe begins.
2014 · Fiction, Historical FictionThe Farm
La ocultaThree adult siblings recount their family's multi-generational history as they struggle to defend La Oculta, their ancestral coffee estate, against the encroaching violence and land grabs of Colombia's armed conflict.
2021 · Fiction, DramaBright Night
밝은 밤Following a painful divorce, a young woman relocates to a quiet coastal town where she reconnects with her estranged grandmother, unraveling a century of resilience, friendship, and unspoken sorrow across four generations of Korean women.
2017 · PoetryEmpty Nights
Puste noceIn this award-winning poetry collection drawing on Polish funerary vigil traditions, Jerzy Jarniewicz meditates with intimate candor on grief, mortality, cultural memory, and romantic loss.
2012 · PoetryGraft
Helen Heath's acclaimed debut poetry collection investigates the physical body, medical technology, grief, and familial ties, bridging intimate domestic relationships with analytical scientific inquiry.
2016 · Historical Fiction, Young AdultDreaming the Enemy
Haunted by severe psychological trauma and memories of combat upon returning from the Vietnam War, a young Australian veteran struggles to reintegrate into civilian life and rediscover a path toward healing.