All information sourced from publishers.
We Do Not Part, Han Kang, translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalised following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.
Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her.
There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive documenting a terrible massacre on the island seventy years before.
The Café with No Name, Robert Seethaler, translated from the Austrian by Katy Derbyshire
It is 1966, and Robert Simon has just fulfilled his dream by taking over a café on the corner of a bustling Vienna market. He recruits a barmaid, Mila, and soon the customers flock in. Factory workers, market traders, elderly ladies, a wrestler, a painter, an unemployed seamstress in search of a job, each bring their stories and their plans for the future. As Robert listens and Mila refills their glasses, romances bloom, friendships are made and fortunes change. And change is coming to the city around them, to the little café, and to Robert's dream.
Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s twenty-four-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalisingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, and grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp.
Punished, Ann-Helén Laestadius, translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles
In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families. As children of Sámi reindeer herders, the Swedish state has mandated they attend a “nomad school” where they are forbidden to speak their native language. As the children visit home only sporadically, their parents know little about the abuse they face, much of it at the hands of the housemother, Rita. Those who dare to speak up are silenced.
Thirty years later, the five children have chosen different paths to cope with the past. Else-Maj holds strong in her Sámi identity but has turned to religion for comfort, while Anne-Risten now goes by Anne to hide her heritage from friends. Nilsa herds reindeer like his father but harbours a lot of anger, and Jon-Ante struggles with traumatic memories from the school. Then there’s Marge, who is about to adopt a daughter from Colombia but can’t help questioning if it’s right to take a child from her homeland.
Then suddenly, housemother Rita reappears. Now an old, frail woman claiming to have God on her side, she acts like nothing ever happened. But the five former students have neither forgotten nor forgiven her. As the narrative shifts between each of their perspectives, the novel asks: If you had the chance to punish the person who hurt you as a child, would you?
Before We Hit the Ground, Selali Fiamanya
Elom can’t make sense of love. It’s like a language he can’t speak, though he’s heard the words before.
He wants to feel understood – by his well-meaning yet misapprehending family, his self-assured partner Ben, and his boisterous friends – but he never knows the right thing to say.
How can you know yourself, in a world that’s constantly changing?
Set across Ghana and Scotland, this is an intimate portrait of one man’s search for belonging, a family’s attempt to love, and the choices that make a life.
The Wardrobe Department, Elaine Garvey
Mairéad works all hours in a run-down West End theatre’s wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show’s producer.
But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairéad remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there. In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new – why, then, does she feel so stuck? Between the bustling side streets of Soho, and the wet grass of Leitrim and Donegal, Mairéad is caught, running from the girl she was but unable to reveal the woman she’d hoped to become.
