time of the old gods Sebastian Barry (Faber)
When retired police officer Tom Kettle, who lives in a remote outbuilding overlooking the Irish Sea, receives a knock on his door, his tragic past is pulled back into the present. Barry’s dreamlike narrative captures the human predisposition towards beauty and depravity, and it slowly picks up the pace as the book reaches its redemptive conclusion.
unfinished business Michael Bracewell (White Rabbit)
Martin is a middle-aged, middle-class Londoner who hates his job and spends his nights drunkenly searching for the embers of his wasted life. Am I selling hard enough? Its ambition is slim and seemingly modest, unfinished business is one of the most influential and accomplished novels of 2023.
burnanwood Eleanor Caton (Granta/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
In 2013, Catton became the youngest-ever Booker Prize winner Hall of FameShe returns with a sci-fi novel about a group of guerrilla gardeners trying to defend a conservation area in New Zealand’s South Island from the designs of billionaire prospectors. A “heart-pounding thriller that keeps us guessing until the end”, according to the FT review.
guest Emma Klein (Chatto & Windus/Random House)
A searing portrayal of the outcast? Or a flashy summer thriller? The answer is: both. When Alex is evicted from the Long Island resort where she has been living with an older man, she seeks more extreme ways to cling. The wealthy group depicted in Crane’s disturbing second novel is by turns gruff and menacing — but you can’t take your eyes off it.
fragments Bret Easton Ellis (Swift Press/Knopf)
Ellis fans’ patience has been tested in recent years, but fragments — a semi-autobiographical tale of murder and debauchery in the San Fernando Valley, and the author’s first novel in over a decade — “Takes us back to where we found his daring world”, FT review Said the member.
Alice House Diana Evans (Chatto & Windus/Knopf Doubleday)
Evans never flinches from social and political realities, both in her novels and in her latest novel, an impressive 2018 sequel ordinary people – Begins with the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire. Rescuing from that disaster is the poignant story of Alice, an elderly Londoner longing to return to Nigeria, and the family network that surrounds her.
Summer 2023 Books
Throughout the week, FT contributors and critics have shared their favourites. Some highlights are:
on Monday: Environment at Pilita Clark
Tuesday: The Economics of Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Translation of the novel Ángel Gurría-Quintana
Thursday: critic’s choice
Friday: The Political Science of Gideon Rachman
Saturday: Tony Barber History
soldier sailor Claire Kilroy (Faber)
Nothing too terrible happens in Kilroy’s brilliant, fictional account of a first-time mother, but the book manages to elevate the everyday into an epic so tense you’ll read it through your fingers some fragments of . It’s also politically charged and cleverly funny.
X’s biography Catherine Lacey (Granta/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
This is a well-researched biography of an artist who worked with David Bowie, worked with Andy Warhol, and took New York by storm. It’s also fake — or at least fictional. Lacey’s novel, set in an alternate America, is a dizzying achievement of prose and imagery.
august blue Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
With its powerful heroine and magical effects, august blue – Featuring a pianist named Elsa M Anderson and her doppelgänger – all the hallmarks of a Levy novel. And, once again, the author delivers: a meditation on sensuality, mystery, and strangely addictive artistic creativity.
victory city Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
Appropriately, Rushdie’s first novel (albeit completed before) since his attack last summer is more than a gleaming fantasy epic about a 14th-century Pampa Campana The fate of the bard, who set out to build an empire—and also an impassioned call to pluralism and a testament to the stamina of words.
tell us what you think
Which of the books on this list are your favorites? What books did we miss?Tell us in the comments below
door house By Tan Twan Eng (Canongate/Bloomsbury)
In 1921, author William Somerset Maugham took the first of two tours to British Malaya, collecting ideas for short stories as he went. Tan’s third novel adds another layer of fiction to one of those stories, deftly combining details of real court cases with rich memories of the author’s colonial society: sepia-toned but full of injustice.
late american Brandon Taylor (Jonathan Cape/Riverhead Books)
Fresh off the debut of the 2020 Man Booker Prize shortlist real life, Taylor is back with another beautiful novel about sexuality, race, and artistic identity. The book’s Whartonian title suggests some reference to 19th-century novels, but its depiction of a loose association of Midwestern college students is thoroughly modern.
lara fight Deputy Book Editor at the Financial Times
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