A novel about the bluffs and blunders of youth and the pleasures and inadequacies of language, The Idiot is a sharply observed and very funny portrait of growing up. Following a Turkish-American student, Selin, as she swims through the academic circles of Harvard, moving from frustrated learning to campus romance, Batuman creates a compelling portrait of a young life in flux . As the Evening Standard affirms it’s, ‘a novel about being young and stupid that’s both wise and clever — and it’s a treat.’

Hailed as this year’s Essex Serpent, Imogen Hermes Gowar’s vibrant debut has already earned a wealth of critical acclaim, with the Daily Express calling it 'a dazzlingly original novel, full of heady pleasures’. Plunging readers headlong into a melee of 18th century London, the discovery of a rare mermaid curio draws together a wayward cast of merchants, courtesans and collectors in pursuit of mystery, fame and fortune. A riotous delight of a novel, irreverent, compelling and tinged with magic.

Echoing the philosophical musings of W.G. Sebald, this is a meditative, composite novel that traverses one woman’s experience of pregnancy and motherhood taking in reflections on grief, psychoanalysis and the invention of the x-ray. Described by the Guardian as a ‘fiercely intelligent and assured first novel’, Sight is strikingly original in its consideration of the limitations of human insight and the extent to which we can ever really know ourselves and others.

By turns lyrically poetic, unflinching and thrillingly paced, Meena Kandasamy’s second novel lifts the lid on cultural constrictions and traditional family values in contemporary India. Trapped in a marriage to a violent psychopath, a young woman attempts to forge a daring rebellion that will either lead to freedom or death. Inspired by the author’s own experiences, this is a gripping novel the Financial Times praises as a timely presentation of ‘a universally recognised quest for freedom and meaning in a world where women are still shockingly undervalued’.

Divided into five sections, each told from a different character’s point of view, Home Fire is a passionate story of desire, family and divided loyalty inspired by the myth of Antigone. Described as ‘brave and brilliant’ by the Times, it’s a novel set against the backdrop of contemporary Islamophobia that subtly and devastatingly questions where we belong, to whom we owe our allegiance and what we dare risk for love.

A blistering new take on the Great American Novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, is both an intimate story of one family’s haunted journey and a confrontation of the reality of life for America’s poor and disenfranchised.  The winner of the USA’s prestigious National Book Award for 2017 and selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2017, this is a work of startling empathy and lyricism from one of America’s most talented contemporary novelists.