May 2021 Highlights

NOVELS

1. Insignificance (Galley Beggar Press, 2021) / James Clammer

2. Second Place (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Rachel Cusk

3. Infinite Country (Scribner UK, 2021) / Patricia Engel

4. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Richard Flanagan
5. Crossroads (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Jonathan Franzen

6. I Couldn’t Love You More (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Esther Freud

7. Unsettled Ground (Tin House Books, 2021) / Claire Fuller

8. The Promise (Chatto & Windus, 2021) / Damon Galgut

9. Monkey Boy (Grove Press, 2021) / Francisco Goldman

10. My Good Son (University of New Orleans Press, 2021) / Yang Huang

11. The Answer to Everything (4th Estate, 2021) / Luke Kennard

12. Painting Time (trans. from the French by Jessica Moore) (MacLehose Press, 2021) / Maylis de Kerangal

13. Roundabout of Death (trans. from the Arabic by Max Weiss) (New Vessel Press, 2021) / Faysal Khartash

14. The Plot (Celadon Books, 2021) / Jean Hanff Korelitz

15. Circus of Wonders (Picador, 2021) / Elizabeth Macneal

16. Last Days in Cleaver Square (Hutchinson, 2021) / Patrick McGrath

17. The Rules of Revelation (John Murray, 2021) / Lisa McInerney

18. The Fortune Men (Viking, 2021) / Nadifa Mohamed

19. Mayflies (McClelland & Stewart, 2021) / Andrew O’Hagan

20. The Kingdoms (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Natasha Pulley

21. China (Doubleday/Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) / Edward Rutherfurd
22. China Room (Harvill Secker, 2021) / Sunjeev Sahota

23. A Theater for Dreamers (Algonquin, 2021) / Polly Samson

24. Great Circle (Doubleday/Penguin Random House USA, 2021) / Maggie Shipstead

25. Secrets of Happiness (Counterpoint, 2021) / Joan Silber

26. Love and Fury (Flatiron, 2021) / Samantha Silva

27. The Mysteries (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Marisa Silver
28. Sorrowland (Merky Books, 2021) / Rivers Solomon

29. Light Perpetual (Scribner, 2021) / Francis Spufford

30. We Run the Tides (Atlantic Books, 2021) / Vendela Vida

31. Project Hail Mary (Ballantine Books, 2021) / Andy Weir

32. The Secret Talker (trans. from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang) (HarperVia, 2021) / Geling Yan

FIRST NOVELS

1. Hot Maroc (trans. from the Arabic by Alexander E. Elinson) (Syracuse University Press, 2021) / Yassin Adnan

2. Peterdown (Corsair, 2021) / David Annand

3. Careless (Orion, 2021) / Kirsty Capes

4. The Outsiders (Lightning Books, 2021) / James Corbett 

5. The Parted Earth (Hub City Press, 2021) / Anjali Enjeti

6. Diamond Hill (Dialogue Books, 2021) / Kit Fan

7. Swimming Back to Trout River (Simon & Schuster, 2021) / Linda Rui Feng

8. Girl in the Walls (Ecco, 2021) / A.J. Gnuse

9. Nights When Nothing Happened (Corsair, 2021) / Simon Han

10. Fault Lines (Phoenix, 2021) / Emily Itami

11. Comrade Aeon’s Field Guide to Bangkok (Granta Publications, 2021) / Emma Larkin

12. Heaven (trans. from the Japanese by Sam Bett & David Boyd) (Europa Editions, 2021) / Mieko Kawakami

13. Snowflake (Manilla Press, 2021) / Louise Nealon

14. Things We Lost to the Water (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Eric Nguyen

15. The Anthill (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Julianne Pachico

16. A Mirror Made of Rain (4th Estate India/HarperCollins India, 2021) / Naheed Phiroze Patel

17. The Garden (New Island Books, 2021) / Paul Perry

18. A Lonely Man (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Chris Power
19. How to Kidnap the Rich (Little, Brown, 2021) / Rahul Raina

20. Dead Souls (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021) / Sam Riviere

21. Olympus, Texas (Doubleday, 2021) / Stacey Swann

22. Revival Season (Simon & Schuster, 2021) / Monica West

STORIES

1. Medusa’s Ankles: Selected Stories (Chatto & Windus, 2021) / A.S. Byatt

2. Intimacies: Eleven More Stories (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Lucy Caldwell
3. A Vision of the World (Vintage Classics, 2021) / John Cheever

4. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (Penguin Press, 2021) / John Freeman (ed.)

5. Things Remembered and Things Forgotten (trans. from the Japanese by Ian McCullough MacDonald & Ginny Tapley Takemori) (Sort Of Books, 2021) / Kyoko Nakajima

6. Trouble (The Stinging Fly, 2021) / Philip Ó Ceallaigh

7. In the Event of Contact (Dzanc Books, 2021) / Ethel Rohan

8. Are You Enjoying? (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Mira Sethi
9. I Want to Know That I Will Be Okay (Banshee Press, 2021) / Deirdre Sullivan

POETRY

1. Hotel Raphael (Picador, 2021) / Rachael Boast

2. Pandemonium (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Andrew McMillan
3. Slug and Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate (Fleet, 2021) / Hollie McNish
4. Rotten Days in Late Summer (Penguin, 2021) / Ralf Webb

NONFICTION

1. Notes on Grief (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2. The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast (White Rabbit, 2021) / Jennifer Lucy Allan

3. A Vertical Art: Oxford Lectures (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Simon Armitage

4. Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History (Profile Books, 2021) / Anna Aslanyan

5. Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir (Mariner Books, 2021) / Brian Broome

6. Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s (Saqi Books, 2021) / Raphael Cormack

7. Small World: Ireland, 1798–2018 (Cambridge University Press, 2021) / Seamus Deane

8. The Archeology of a Good Ragù: Discovering Naples, My Father and Myself (Guernica World Editions, 2021) / John Domini

9. See/Saw: Looking at Photographs (Graywolf Press, 2021) / Geoff Dyer

10. Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 2021) / Niall Ferguson

11. Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism (Short Books, 2021) / Jo Glanville (ed.)

12. On Juneteenth (Liveright, 2021) / Annette Gordon-Reed

13. Dancing on Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt (trans. from the Swedish by Alice Menzies) (Puskin Press, 2021) / Ann Heberlein

14. Freedom (4th Estate/Simon & Schuster, 2021) / Sebastian Junger

15. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (Picador, 2021) / Patrick Radden Keefe

16. Market Maoists: The Communist Origins of China’s Capitalist Ascent (Harvard University Press, 2021) / Jason M. Kelly

17. Everybody: A Book About Freedom (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Olivia Laing

18. Real Estate (Hamish Hamilton, 2021) / Deborah Levy

19. The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (Allen Lane, 2021) / Michael Lewis

20. The Day the World Stops Shopping (Ecco, 2021) / J.B. MacKinnon

21. Bettering Humanomics: And New, and Old, Approach to Economic Science (University of Chicago Press, 2021) / Deirdre McCloskey

22. The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Ann McCutchan

23. Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever (Avery, 2021) / John McWhorter

24. Things I Have Withheld: Essays (Canongate, 2021) / Kei Miller

25. Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World (John Murray, 2021) / Giles Milton

26. The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England (Hutchinson, 2021) / Marc Morris

27. The Artful Dickens: The Tricks and Ploys of the Great Novelist (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / John Mullan

28. Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack (John Murray, 2021) / Richard Ovenden

29. Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery (Canongate, 2021) / Alex Renton

30. The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit (St Martin’s Press, 2021) / Aja Raden

31. Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Edmund Richardson

32. Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials (Simon & Schuster UK, 2021) / Alice Roberts

33. Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020 (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Salman Rushdie

34. Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night (WH Allen, 2021) / Julian Sancton

35. Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest (Allen Lane, 2021) / Suzanne Simard

36. The Scent of Empires: Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow (trans. from the German by Jessica Spengler) (Polity, 2021) / Karl Schlögel

37. Napoleon A Life in Gardens and Shadows (Chatto & Windus, 2021) / Ruth Scurr

38. Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2021) / Sujit Sivasundaram

39. Lost in Summerland: Essays (Counterpoint, 2021) / Barrett Swanson

40. American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Alan Taylor

41. Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India (Melville House, 2021) / Suchitra Vijayan

42. Burning Man: The Ascent of D.H. Lawrence (Bloomsbury Circus, 2021) / Frances Wilson