FICTION
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (March)
To say that a new Ishiguro book is eagerly awaited is an understatement. The multi-award-winning author of The Remains of the Day hasn’t published a novel for 10 years. The short-fiction collection Nocturnes was all we have had since Never Let Me Go in 2005.
As in that million-selling novel, Ishiguro remains in a dystopian world withThe Buried Giant, but this time it is Arthurian Britain after the Romans have departed. With a fantasy, fable-like feel, there’s a quest for an estranged son and encounters with knights and dragons – not usual Ishiguro territory, but intriguing nonetheless.
Incidentally, it took 10 years to complete because his wife made him rewrite it. Thankfully, she likes this version.
Purity by Jonathan Franzen (September)
Like Ishiguro, it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century. And similarly, Franzen’s new novel – released five years on from 2010’s Freedom – is something of a stylistic departure for the author of the influential The Corrections.
His publisher told The New York Times that Purity – which follows the titular young woman as she searches for her father in contemporary America, South America and East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall – has a “fabulist quality … it’s not strict realism. There’s a mythic undertone to the story.”
Nevertheless, it promises all the Franzen tropes we’ve come to know and love – family histories and secrets, and achingly sharp insights into the modern world.
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (May)
This is the final part of Ghosh’s bestselling Ibis trilogy, which began with Sea of Poppies in 2008 and was followed three years later in River of Smoke.
It continues his stories of South Asian seafaring hopefuls caught up in the opium trade of the mid-19th century – this time it’s 1839 and The Hind sets sail from Bengal for China, to take part in the First Opium War.
Bringing together his usual cast of fascinating characters, the seafarers include a poor sailor searching for his lost love, a company of Indian sepoys and a widow desperate to reclaim her husband’s wealth and reputation.
Meticulous in its historical detail yet committed to satisfying storytelling, this should be a fitting end to a remarkable series.
Chaos of the Senses by Ahlem Mosteghanemi, translated by Nancy Roberts (January)
You don’t have to wait long for one of the biggest books by an Arab writer to surface this year. The follow-up to the Algerian author Mosteghanemi’s international bestseller The Bridges of Constantine is out in English in just two weeks and, once again, it provides a vivid portrait of Algeria in the midst of civil war.
Chaos of the Senses has all of the hallmarks that have made Mosteghanemi the most successful female writer in the Arab world – forbidden love, political strife, strong female characters and plenty of commentary on the nature of freedom.
When we spoke to her last, she had three million Facebook followers. She’s doubled that in only 13 months. Influential.
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (February)
Jonathan Franzen might steal the literary headlines this year, but it’s actually the increasingly large pool of fantastic American women writers that is really noteworthy.
From a much-anticipated debut novel by director Miranda July to new work from the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Toni Morrison, Jane Smiley and Anne Tyler, there’s plenty to look forward to, and Tyler certainly heads the class.
A Spool of Blue Thread is classic Tyler. Forty years on from her first novel, she’s still unpicking American life, this time working through three generations of an ordinary Baltimore family who “like most families … imagined they were special.”
No one depicts domestic life quite like Tyler, and it will be sad indeed if she goes through with her threat to make this her final novel.
The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan (February)
Highly regarded work from Kevin Powers, Ben Fountain and Michael Pitre suggests there is something of a genre developing in distraught servicemen returning to the West from overseas wars. So it will be fascinating to see how the Booker-nominated Scotsman approaches the story of a captain who comes back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan to visit his grandmother, Anne, who was a pioneer of documentary photography.
It turns out she has a secret story that begins to emerge, which opens up a tale of love and regret, pain and sacrifice.
O’Hagan’s previous book – written from the perspective of Marilyn Monroe’s dog – divided opinion, but early talk suggests The Illuminations has him right back on form.
She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha (February)
It can sometimes feel a little like any Indian author writing in English is automatically categorised as peddling “state of India today” narratives. But when the celebrated author Pankaj Mishra calls She Will Build Him a City“the best novel from and about India that I have read in a long time”, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice.
Kamal Jha ambitiously draws a fractured picture of life in Delhi, with his interwoven characters tangled up in secret love and murderous intentions set against the exceedingly rich and the crushingly poor. You’d expect the chief editor of The Indian Express to know his patch, of course, but Kamal Jha shows that he understands the importance of compelling storytelling, too.
The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Al Sanousi, translated by Jonathan Wright (April)
The latest winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction to be translated, Al Sanousi’s book is the most relevant novel for English-speaking readers based in the Middle East in some time.
A timely look at foreign workers in the Arabian Gulf, a Filipino maid falls in love with a Kuwaiti man and they have a child. The embarrassment leads to mother and son leaving for the Philippines. When the child finally returns to Kuwait and begins to fit in, his history is revealed, causing further shame for the father’s family.
The Bamboo Stalk is a novel about identity and a search for home and Al Sanousi was widely praised for making the original Arabic version so accessible – and, at times, amusing. If Jonathan Wright can translate that tone to the English version, it could well be one of the biggest-selling translations from the region of the year.
NON FICTION
Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer by Ann Morgan (February)
It was a wonderfully simple idea. When London hosted the Olympics in 2012, Morgan set herself the challenge of reading a book from every one of the world’s 196 independent countries. A Year of Reading the World began as a blog, on which she asked people to recommend a list of books – classics or contemporary – from which she would choose one to read from each country. That’s not as easy as it might sound when some countries barely have anything that has been translated into English. Reading the World is the product of her journey and it explores big questions about the nature and power of storytelling, as well as celebrating literature from around the world. Sounds fascinating and we won’t spoil it by revealing the choice from the UAE.
Visitants by Dave Eggers (March)
One of the most satisfying developments in Dave Eggers’ career is how far he’s spread his wings from the Californian microcosm of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
What Is the What was largely based in Sudan, Zeitoun was about a Syrian-American caught up in Hurricane Katrina and A Hologram for the King was all the better for Eggers’ proper insight into the Arabian Peninsula.
So it’s great to see this first collection of travel writing begin with him speeding across the desert of Saudi Arabia at 140 kph with a maniacal hired driver.
He also takes in Syria, South Sudan, Cuba, Thailand and Croatia on this endearing and humane jaunt across the world – but it’s the characters he meets along the way who become the stars rather than Eggers himself.
