Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Widely considered the safest bet among this year’s Booker pack.
“‘Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.’
Miss Helen smiled. ‘You really are sweet. You don’t say as much, but I can tell what you’re thinking. A mother’s love for her son. Such a noble thing, to override the dread of loneliness. And you might not be wrong. But let me tell you, there are all kinds of other very good reasons why, in a life like mine, one might prefer loneliness.’”
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. When We Cease to Understand the World is a novel based on historic figures and true events – Einstein, Schrödinger, Grothendieck, Turing, and their mathematical discoveries.
The Guardian says, “Labatut has written a dystopian nonfiction novel set not in the future but in the present. Has modern science and its engine, mathematics, in its drive towards ‘the heart of the heart’, already assured our destruction?”
Nerdy and spooky? Colour us intrigued.
He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty Settlements and the Future of Aotearoa New Zealand by Christopher Finlayson and James Christmas
For nine years, Christopher Finlayson was Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, and did a darn good job – in 2012 alone, Parliament passed more settlement legislation than it had in the previous 20 years. He Kupu Taurangi is about the elements of a successful settlement, and the effect of settlements on the relations between Māori and the government. We have a review underway.
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
Think humans are dastardly, but kind of want your mind changed? Read this book. (Except, caveat.)
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Longlisted for this year’s Ockhams; a Spinoff favorite. The Guardian: “Martha is 40 and finally married to Patrick, a man who’s been secretly in love with her ever since teenager hood. She now loves him back, but seems unable to be happy or even, on occasion, very nice to him. Ever since a ‘little bomb’ exploded in her brain at the age of 17, she’s been on and off antidepressants, generally to little avail.”
If that sounds pretty somber, don’t worry – the same Guardian reviewer then goes on to use the words “sharply entertaining”, “grippingly conveyed” and even “humorous and appalling”.
Bug Week & Other Stories by Airini Beautrais
Winner of 2021’s “best new fiction in all of Aotearoa” prize, aka the Acorn. Beautrais wrote an excellent essay about the writing of Bug Week, which you can read.
Still Life by Sarah Winman
From the starry-eyed reviews of other authors, Still Life sounds like a bowl of chicken noodle soup in novel form:
“The kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul” – Donal Ryan
“Four-course nourishment for all Winman fans” – Patrick Gale
“A bear-hug of a book” – Rachel Joyce
Anyone getting hungry?
Circe by Madeline Miller
A novel and love story set in the Greek Heroic Age, by the author of The Song of Achilles.
To give you the gist, the publisher’s blurb includes this line, which sounds like something that could be shout-whispered over the trailer for a Game of Thrones rip-off:
“Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.”
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
Another International Booker number, but this time – the winner!
From New African Magazine: “Diop takes us on a remorseless journey of unravelling, where the horrors of war induce one man’s madness. Alfa tells of a life in the trenches, where men compete with one another in recklessness and tribal rivalry, goaded by their captain, where life is cheap and where living is crueler than death.”
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Sunday Times says “If the antidote to a year of solitude and trauma is art, then this novel is the answer. It is superb.”
