September 2021 Highlights

NOVELS

1. Children of Dust (Regal House Publishing, 2021) / Marlin Barton

2. A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Viking/Little, Brown, 2021) / Joshua Ferris

3. Civilisations (trans. from the French by Sam Taylor) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Laurent Binet

4. Talk to Me (Ecco, 2021) / T.C. Boyle

5. Late City (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021) / Robert Olen Butler

6. When Ghosts Come Home (William Morrow, 2021) / Wiley Cash

7. Insignificance (Coach House Books, 2021) / James Clammer

8. Crossing the Mangrove (trans. from the French by Richard Philcox) (Penguin Classics, 2021) / Maryse Condé

9. The Lighthouse Witches (HarperCollins, 2021) / C.J. Cooke

10. Magpie (4th Estate, 2021) / Elizabeth Day

11. The Inseparables (trans. from the French by Lauren Elkin) (Vintage Classics, 2021) / Simone de Beauvoir

12. Inseparable (trans. from the French by Sandra Smith) (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2021) / Simone de Beauvoir

13. Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner/4th Estate, 2021) / Anthony Doerr

14. Bodies of Light (Text Publishing, 2021) / Jennifer Down

15. The Trees (Graywolf Press, 2021) / Percival Everett

16. Snow Country (Hutchinson, 2021) / Sebastian Faulks

17. A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Viking, 2021) / Joshua Ferris

18. Freight Dogs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021) / Giles Foden

19. Matrix (Riverhead Books/William Heinemann, 2021) / Lauren Groff

20. The Water Statues (trans. from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff) (New Directions, 2021) / Fleur Jaeggy

21. Palmares (Beacon Press/Virago, 2021) / Gayl Jones

22. The Morning Star (trans. from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken) (Penguin Press/Harvill Secker, 2021) / Karl One Knausgaard

23. The War for Gloria (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Atticus Lish

24. Tenderness (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Alison MacLeod

25. The Sisters Mao (Scribe UK, 2021) / Gavin McCrea

26. The Dark Remains (Canongate, 2021) / William McIlvanney/Ian Rankin

27. Apples Never Fall (Henry Holt/Michael Joseph, 2021) / Liane Moriarty

28. The Man Who Died Twice (Viking, 2021) / Richard Osman

29. The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking/Canongate, 2021) / Ruth Ozeki

30. Crazy Sorrow (Simon & Schuster, 2023) / Vince Passaro

31. Bewilderment (W.W. Norton/William Heinemann, 2021) / Richard Powers

32. Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Sally Rooney

33. The Earthspinner (Mountain Leopard Press, 2021) / Anuradha Roy

34. Oh, William! (Viking, 2021) / Elizabeth Strout

35. The Magician (Viking/Scribner, 2021) / Colm Tóibín

36. Harlem Shuffle (Fleet, 2021) / Colson Whitehead

37. Harrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Joy Williams

38. Planet of Clay (trans. from the Arabic by Leri Price) (World Editions, 2021) / Samar Yazbek

FIRST NOVELS
1. Keeping the House (And Other Stories, 2021) / Tice Cin

2. Dinner Party: A Tragedy (One, 2021) / Sarah Gilmartin

3. Fault Lines (Custom House, 2021) / Emily Itami

4. Snowflake (Harper, 2021) / Louise Nealon
5. The Whistleblower (Zaffre, 2021) / Robert Peston
6. House of Glass Hearts (Yali, 2021) / Leila Siddiqui
7. The Archer (Algonquin Books, 2021) / Shruti Swamy

8. Winter Counts (Simon & Schuster UK, 2021) / David Heska Wanbli Weiden

STORIES

1. English Magic (Galley Beggar Press, 2021) / Uschi Gatward
2. Greek Myths: A New Retelling (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Charlotte Higgins

3. The Dog of Tithwal (trans. from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan & Muhammad Umar Memon) (Archipelago, 2021) / Saadat Hasan Manto
4. When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds (Wayne State University Press, 2021) / Peter Markus
5. Hao (Catapult, 2021) / Ye Chun

POETRY

1. All The Names Given (Picador, 2021) / Raymond Antrobus
2. Bioluminescent Baby (Guillemot Press, 2021) / Fiona Benson

3. Men Who Feed Pigeons (Bloodaxe, 2021) / Selima Hill

4. Far District (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Ishion Hutchinson

5. My Darling from the Lions (Tin House Books, 2021) / Rachel Long

6. The Kids (Bloodaxe, 2021) / Hannah Lowe

7. The Poems (1961-2020) (The Gallery Press, 2021) / Derek Mahon

8. The Sun Is Open (Penned in the Margins, 2021) / Gail McConnell

NONFICTION

1. Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Princeton University Press, 2021) / Mary Beard

2. Souvenir: London, 1979-1986 (White Rabbit, 2021) / Michael Bracewell

3. The Conquistadores: The Untold History of Spanish Discovery and Empire (Viking, 2021) / Fernando Cervantes

4. The Turning Point: A Year That Changed Dickens and the World (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

5. Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure (Allen Lane, 2021) / Dennis Duncan

6. Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling (House of Anansi Press, 2021) / Esi Edugyan

7. The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) / Joseph J. Ellis

8. Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021) / Ada Ferrer

9. Wonderworks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories (Swift Press, 2021) / Angus Fletcher

10. Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse (Harper, 2021) / Dave Goulson

11. Poet Warrior: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Joy Harjo

12. People Who Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Dara Horn

13. Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 (Allen Lane, 2021) / Clare Jackson

14. Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture (Pantheon, 2021) / Randall Kennedy

15. On the Cusp: Days of ’62 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / David Kynaston

16. Beyond the Silk Roads: Trade, Mobility and Geopolitics Across Eurasia (Cambridge University Press, 2021) / Magnus Marsden

17. Making Darkness Light: The Lives and Times of John Milton (Basic Books, 2021) / Joe Moshenska

18. On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Graywolf Press/Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Maggie Nelson

19. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 (Head of Zeus, 2021) / Fintan O’Toole

20. Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy (Viking, 2021) / Nathaniel Philbrick

21. False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma (Juggernaut, 2021) / Manu S. Pillai

22. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Allen Lane/Viking, 2021) / Steven Pinker

23. Europe’s Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp’s Golden Age (Pegasus, 2021) / Michael Pye

24. Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (Milkweed, 2021) / Margaret Renkl

25. Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World – and Us (Basic Books, 2021) / Patrick Roberts

26. Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Dan Saladino

27. The Gold Machine: In the Tracks of the Mule Dancers (Oneworld Publications, 2021) / Iain Sinclair

28. Merchants: The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire, 1550-1650 (Yale University Press, 2021) / Edmond Smith

29. The Heroine With 1001 Faces (Liveright, 2021) / Maria Tatar

30. The Struggle for India’s Soul: Nationalism and the Fate of Democracy (Hurst, 2021) / Shashi Tharoor

31. The Amur River: Between Russia and China (Chatto & Windus/Harper, 2021) / Colin Thubron

32. Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy (Allen Lane, 2021) / Adam Tooze

33. Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia (Little, Brown UK, 2021) / Jeevan Vasagar

34. Beautiful Country: A Memoir (Doubleday, 2021) / Qian Julie Wang

35. The Luminous Solution: Creativity, Resilience and the Inner Life (Allen & Unwin, 2021) / Charlotte Wood

August 2021 Highlights

NOVELS

1. The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Press, 2021) / Rabih Alameddine

2. All’s Well (Simon & Schuster, 2021) / Mona Awad

3. The Women of Troy (Hamish Hamilton/Doubleday, 2021) / Pat Barker
4. The Echo Chamber (Doubleday, 2021) / John Boyne

5. Loved and Missed (Virago, 2021) / Susie Boyt

6. What Happens at Night (Europa Editions, 2021) / Peter Cameron

7. Waiting for the Waters to Rise (trans. from the French by Richard Philcox) (World Editions, 2021) / Maryse Condé

8. Moon and the Mars (Seven Stories, 2021) / Kia Corthron

9. The President and the Frog (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Carolina De Robertis

10. Rose Nicolson (Riverrun, 2021) / Andrew Greig

11. More Than I Love My Life (trans. from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen) (Jonathan Cape/Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / David Grossman

12. A Narrow Door (Orion, 2021) / Joanne Harris

13. A Slow Fire Burning (Doubleday/Riverhead, 2021) / Paula Hawkins

14. The Guide (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Peter Heller

15. The Wingmaker (Text Publishing, 2021) / Mette Jakobsen

16. Monument Maker (White Rabbit, 2021) / David Keenan

17. Billy Summers (Scribner, 2021) / Stephen King

18. Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth/4th Estate, 2021) / Alexandra Kleeman

19. The Plot (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Jean Hanff Korelitz

20. Lightning Strike (Atria, 2021) / William Kent Kruger

21. Once There Were Wolves (Flatiron, 2021) / Charlotte McConaghy

22. 1979 (Little, Brown, 2021) / Val McDermid

23. The Human Zoo (Grove Press/Black Cat, 2021) / Sabina Murray

24. Breathe (Ecco/4th Estate, 2021) / Joyce Carol Oates

25. Men in My Situation (trans. from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey) (Harvill Secker, 2021) / Per Petterson

26. News of the Dead (Hamish Hamilton, 2021) / James Robertson

27. The Perfume Thief (Doubleday, 2021) / Timothy Schaffert

28. The Island of Missing Trees (Viking, 2021) / Elif Shafak

29. Tomb of Sand (trans. from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell) (Tilted Axis Press, 2022) / Geetanjali Shree

30. The Country of Others/In the Country of Others (trans. from the French by Sam Taylor) (Faber & Faber/Penguin Books, 2021) / Leïla Slimani

31. Savage Tongues (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) /Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

32. The Angels of L19 (Weatherglass, 2021) / Jonathan Walker

FIRST NOVELS

1. Radiant Fugitives (Counterpoint, 2021) / Nawaaz Ahmed

2. Checkout 19 (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Claire-Louise Bennett

3. Edge Case (Ecco, 2021) / YZ Chin

4. Damnation Spring (Scribner, 2021) / Ash Davidson

5. Mrs March (Liveright, 2021) / Virginia Feito

6. Three Rooms (Mariner Books, 2021) / Jo Hamya

7. Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / David Hoon Kim

8. Paul (Granta, 2021) / Daisy Lafarge

9. Gold Diggers (Simon & Schuster UK, 2021) / Sanjena Sathian

10. Unbelonging (Mango & Marigold Press, 2021) / Gayatri Sethi

11. The Infernal Riddle of Thomas Peach (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) / Jas Treadwell

STORIES

1. Dark as Last Night (University of Queensland Press, 2021) / Tony Birch

2. Shoko’s Smile (trans. from the Korean by Sung Ryu) (John Murray, 2021) / Choi Eunyoung

3. Skinship (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021) / Yoon Choi

4. People From My Neighbourhood (trans. from the Japanese by Ted Goossen) (Granta, 2021) / Hiromi Kawakami

5. Blank Pages and Other Stories (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Bernard MacLaverty

6. American Estrangement (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

7. Afterparties (Ecco, 2021) / Anthony Veasna So

8. Songs for the Flames (trans. from the Spanish by Anne McLean) (Riverhead, 2021) / Juan Gabriel Vásquez

9. We Two Alone (HarperVia, 2021) / Jack Wang

10. Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) Hilma Wolitzer

POETRY

1. Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf Press, 2021) / Kaveh Akbar

2. Learning to Sleep (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / John Burnside

3. Playlist for the Apocalypse (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Rita Dove

4. Poems 1962-2020 (Penguin Classics, 2021) / Louise Glück

5. Cheryl’s Destinies (Penguin, 2021) / Stephen Sexton

6. A Year in the New Life (Faber & Faber, 2021) / Jack Underwood

7. Grass Chapels: New & Selected Poems (Mercer University Press, 2021) / William Wright

NONFICTION

1. Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald (Bloomsbury Circus, 2021) / Carole Angier
2. Festival Days (Little, Brown US, 2021) / Jo Ann Beard

3. Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It/Time Management for Mortals (The Bodley Head/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Oliver Burkeman

4. Prisoners of Time: Prussians, Germans and Other Humans (Allen Lane, 2021) / Christopher Clark

5. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little, Brown/Canongate Books, 2021) / Rebecca Donner

6. The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Art and Hitler’s First Mass-Murder Programme (William Collins, 2021) / Charlie English

7. Being a Human: Adventures in 40,000 Years of Consciousness (Profile Books, 2021) / Charles Foster

8. Family Business: An Intimate History of John Lewis and the Partnership (William Collins, 2021) / Victoria Glendinning

9. Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse (Jonathan Cape, 2021) / Dave Goulson

10. Farming in Modern Irish Literature (Oxford University Press, 2021) / Nicholas Grene

11. I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir (trans. from the Norwegian by B.L. Crook) (FSG Originals/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Jan Grue

12. The Prisoner (trans. from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell & Anton Hur) (Verso Books, 2021) / Hwang Sok-yong

13. The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris (Oxford University Press, 2021) / Colin Jones

14. Aftershocks: Pandeimc Politics and the End of the Old International Order (St Martin’s Press, 2021) / Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright

15. Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960 (Columbia University Press, 2021) / Elizabeth LaCouture

16. Real Estate: A Living Autobiography (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) / Deborah Levy

17. The Contemporary American Essay (Anchor, 2021) / Phillip Lopate (ed.)

18. What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Alice McDermott

19. The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Mae Ngai

20. Borges and Me: An Encounter (Canongate, 2021) / Jay Parini

21. Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Eyal Press

22. Secret Selves: A History of Our Inner Space (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021) / Stephen Prickett

23. Antwerp: The Glory Years (Allen Lane, 2021) / Michael Pye

24. Made in China: A Memoir of Love and Labor (Catapult, 2021) / Anna Qu

25. Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (W.W. Norton, 2021) / Fiona Sampson

26. The Truth About Lies: A Taxonomy of Deceit, Hoaxes and Cons (Atlantic Books, 2021) / Aja Raden

27. Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City (Melville House, 2021) / Samira Shackle

28. Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia (Little, Brown Australia, 2021) / Jeevan Vasagar

29. Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021) / Michael Vatikiotis

30. Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) / Frances Wilson

31. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir (Picador, 2021) / Michelle Zaune1