Saturday, December 22, 2012

100 Literary Favourites of 2012

NOVELS
1. The Liars’ Gospel (Viking, 2012) / Naomi Alderman
2. Carry the One (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Carol Anshaw
3. Ancient Light (Viking/Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / John Banville
4. Beautiful Lies (Harvill Secker, 2012) / Clare Clark
5. The Missing Shade of Blue (Abacus, 2012) / Jennie Erdal
6. The Round House (Harper, 2012) / Louise Erdrich
7. A Possible Life (Hutchinson/Henry Holt, 2012) / Sebastian Faulks
8. Broken Harbor (Viking, 2012) / Tana French
9. A Perfectly Good Man (Fourth Estate, 2012) / Patrick Gale
10. The Lighthouse Road (Unbridled Books, 2012) / Peter Geye

11. Arcadia (Voice/Hyperion, 2012) / Lauren Groff
12. Alone in the Classroom (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Elizabeth Hay
13. Scenes from Early Life (Fourth Estate, 2012) / Philip Hensher
14. In the Orchard, the Swallows (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Peter Hobbs
15. The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House, 2012) / Adam Johnson
16. The Uninvited Guests (Harper/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Sadie Jones
17. Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Gollancz/Doubleday, 2012) / Graham Joyce
18. The Daughters of Mars (Sceptre, 2012) / Thomas Keneally
19. Flight Behavior (Harper/HarperCollins/Faber & Faber, 2012) / Barbara Kingsolver
20. Gone to the Forest (Free Press, 2012) / Katie Kitamura

21. Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber/Bloomsbury USA, 2012) / Deborah Levy
22. The Cutting Season (Harper/Serpent’s Tail, 2012) / Attica Locke
23. Under the Same Stars (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Tim Lott
24. The Guardians (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Granta Books, 2012) / Sarah Manguso
25. Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate/Henry Holt, 2012) / Hilary Mantel
26. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (published as Trapeze in the US) (Other Press/Little, Brown, 2012) / Simon Mawer
27. The Heart Broke In (Canongate, 2012) / James Meek
28. The Life of Objects (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Susanna Moore
29. John Saturnall’s Feast (Bloomsbury, 2012) / Lawrence Norfolk
30. The Healing (Nan A. Talese/Knopf Doubleday, 2012) / Jonathan Odell

31. The Light of Amsterdam (Bloomsbury, 2012) / David Park
32. The Cove (Canongate Books/Ecco, 2012) / Ron Rash
33. Hawthorn & Child (Granta Books, 2012) / Keith Ridgway
34. Prosperous Friends (Grove Press/Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012) / Christine Schutt
35. The Forgetting Tree (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) / Tatjana Soli
36. At Last (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 212) / Edward St. Aubyn
37. Secondhand Daylight (Corsair, 2012) / D.J. Taylor
38. The Cleaner of Chartres (Viking, 2012) / Salley Vickers
39. Beautiful Ruins (Harper/HarperCollins, 2012) / Jess Walter

TRANSLATED FICTION
1. Léon & Louise (trans. from the German by John Brownjohn) (Haus Publishing, 2012) / Alex Capus
2. Where I Left My Soul (trans. from the French by Geoffrey Strachan) (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Jérôme Ferrari
3. The Fall of the Stone City (trans. from the French by John Hodgson) (Canongate Books, 2012) / Ismail Kadare
4. The Hunger Angel (trans. from the German by Philip Boehm) (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt/Portobello Books, 2012) / Herta Müller
5. Three Strong Women (trans. from the French, Trois femmes puissantes, by John Fletcher) (MacLehose Press, 2012) / Marie NDiaye
6. Traveler of the Century (trans. from the Spanish, El Viajero Del Siglo, by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Pushkin Press, 2012) / Andrés Neuman
7. Silent House (trans. from the Turkish by Robert Finn) (Alfred A. Knopf/Faber & Faber, 2012) / Orhan Pamuk
8. Raised from the Ground (trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / José Saramago
9. We’re Flying: Stories (trans. from the German by Michael Hofmann) (Other Press, 2012) / Peter Stamm
10. The Bathing Women (trans. from the Chinese by Hongling Zhang & Jason Sommer) (Blue Door, 2013) / Tie Ning

11. Dublinesque (trans. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean) (Harvill Secker, 2012) / Enrique Vila-Matas

FIRST NOVELS
1. What Happened to Sophie Wilder (Tin House Press, 2012) / Christopher R. Beha
2. A Land More Kind Than Home (Doubleday/William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2012) / Wiley Cash
3. You Came Back (Grand Central Publishing, 2012) / Christopher Coake
4. The Orchardist (Harper/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) / Amanda Coplin
5. Summer (Abacus, 2012) / Tom Darling
6. The Starboard Sea (St. Martin’s Press, 2012) / Amber Dermont
7. If This Is Home (Picador, 2012) / Stuart Evers
8. Absolution (Atlantic Books, 2012) / Patrick Flanery
9. Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (Soho Press, 2012) / Juliann Garey
10. The Whipping Club (T.S. Poetry Press, 2012) / Deborah Henry

11. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday/Random House, 2012) / Rachel Joyce
12. An Unexpected Guest (Little, Brown, 2012) / Anne Korkeakivi
13. The Headmaster’s Wager (Fourth Estate/Hogarth, 2012) / Vincent Lam
14. The Land of Decoration (Henry Holt/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Grace McCleen
15. The Lighthouse (Salt Publishing, 2012) / Alison Moore
16. The Spider King’s Daughter (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Chibundu Onuzo
17. In the Shadow of the Banyan (Simon & Schuster, 2012) / Vaddey Ratner
18. Seating Arrangements (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Maggie Shipstead
19. The Light Between Oceans (Doubleday/Scribner, 2012) / M.L. Stedman
20. Narcopolis (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Jeet Thayil

STORIES
1. Stay Awake (Ballantine Books, 2012) / Dan Chaon
2. Tea at the Midland and Other Stories (Comma Press, 2012) / David Constantine
3. This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead Books, 2012) / Junot Diaz
4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (Alfred A. Knopf/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) / Nathan Englander
5. Married Love and Other Stories (Jonathan Cape/Harper Perennial, 2012) / Tessa Hadley
6. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (trans. from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlensinger & Nathan Englander) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) / Etgar Keret
7. Birds of a Lesser Paradise (Scribner, 2012) / Megan Mayhew Bergman
8. Dear Life (Chatto & Windus/Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Alice Munro
9. Shout Her Lovely Name (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Natalie Serber
10. Battleborn (Riverhead, 2012) / Claire Vaye Watkins

POETRY
1. Bewilderment: New Poems & Translations (University of Chicago Press, 2012) / David Ferry
2. Place: New Poems (Ecco Press/Carcanet Press, 2012) / Jorie Graham
3. The Overhaul (Picador, 2012) / Kathleen Jamie
4. Sky Thick With Fireflies (Salmon Publishing, 2012) / Ethna McKiernan
5. Songs and Sonnets (Enitharmon Press, 2012) / Paul Muldoon
6. Stag’s Leap (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Sharon Olds
7. A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012) / Mary Oliver
8. Nonsense (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Christopher Reid
9. Night of the Republic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Alan Shapiro
10. Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / Natasha Trethewey

NONFICTION
1. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-56 (Doubleday/Allen Lane, 2012) / Anne Applebaum
2. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House/Portobello Books, 2012) / Katherine Boo
3. Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (John Murray, 2012) / Artemis Cooper
4. Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin, 2012) / Paul French
5. Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2012) / Michael Gorra
6. What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World (Ecco, 2012) / Robert Haas
7. Titian: His Life (Harper, 2012) / Sheila Hale
8. In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (Little, Brown, 2012) / Tom Holland
9. The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia (Granta Books, 2012) / Michael Jacobs
10. The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot (Hamish Hamilton/Viking Adult, 2012) / Robert Macfarlane

11. Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales (Granta Books, 2012) / Sara Maitland
12. Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Books, 2012) / Daniel Mendelsohn
13. Country Girl (Faber & Faber, 2012) / Edna O’Brien
14. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Stephen R. Platt
15. Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Jane Ridley
16. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Crown, 2012) / Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
17. Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River (Bloomsbury USA/Chatto & Windus, 2012) / Jeremy Seal
18. The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the ’50s, New York in the ’60s: A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) / Richard Seaver
19. A Free Man: A True Life Story of Life and Death in Delhi (Jonathan Cape/W.W. Norton, 2012) / Aman Sethi
20. Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire (Portobello Books, 2012) / Andrea Stuart
21. Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (The Belnap Press/Harvard University Press, 2012) / Marina Warner

Saturday, December 15, 2012

2013 Literary Highlights

Novels
1. Harvard Square (W.W. Norton, 2013) / André Aciman
2. Americanah (Fourth Estate, 2013) / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
3. The Blind Man’s Garden (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / Nadeem Aslam
4. Life After Life (Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown, 2013) / Kate Atkinson
5. Orphan Train (William Morrow, 2013) / Christina Baker Kline
6. Tapestry of Fortunes (Random House, 2013) / Elizabeth Berg
7. This House is Haunted (Doubleday, 2013) / John Boyne
8. The House of Special Purpose (Other Press, 2013) / John Boyne
9. Palisades Park (St. Martin’s Press, 2013) / Alan Brennert
10. Six Years (Orion, 2013) / Harlan Coben

11. The Childhood of Jesus (Harvill Secker, 2013) / J.M. Coetzee
12. Paris Was the Place (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / Susan Conley
13. The Sea of Innocence (Simon & Schuster, 2013) / Kishwar Desai
14. The Story of a Name (trans. from the Italian by Ann Goldstein) (Europa Editions, 2013) / Elena Ferrante
14. Last Friends (Europa Editions, 2013) / Jane Gardam
15. The Mothers (Scribner, 2013) / Jennifer Gilmore
16. Benediction (Picador, 2013) / Kent Haruf
17. Where You Can Find Me (Thomas Dunne Books/St Martin’s Press, 2013) / Sheri Joseph
18. Fever (Simon & Schuster, 2013) / Mary Beth Keane
19. Five Days (Atria Books, 2013) / Douglas Kennedy
20. A Man in Love: My Struggle: Book 2 (trans. from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett) (Harvill Secker, 2013) / Karl Ove Knausgaard

21. Seibo There Below (trans. from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) (New Directions, 2013) / László Krasznahorkai
22. The Flamethrowers (Scribner, 2013) / Rachel Kushner
23. The View from Penthouse B (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) / Elinor Lipman
24. Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf Press, 2013) / Fiona Maazel
25. The Dark Road (trans. from the Chinese by Flora Drew) (Chatto & Windus, 2013) / Ma Jian
26. The Lost (Headline, 2013) / Claire McGowan
27. Infidelity (Macmillan Australia, 2013) / Hugh Mackay
28. Constance (Bloomsbury USA, 2013) / Patrick McGrath
29. The Woman Upstairs (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / Claire Messud
30. A Meal in Winter (trans. from the French by Sam Taylor) (Portobello Books, 2013) / Hubert Mingarelli

31. Motherland (Simon & Schuster, 2013) / William Nicholson
32. The Storyteller (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster/Hodder & Stoughton, 2013) / Jodi Picoult
33. Odds Against Tomorrow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) / Nathaniel Rich
34. The Shelter Cycle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) / Peter Rock
35. Belomor (Text Publishing, 2013) / Nicolas Rothwell
36. Paris (Doubleday, 2013) / Edward Rutherfurd
37. Orkney (Counterpoint, 2013) / Amy Sackville
38. All That Is (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / James Salter
39. The Edge of the Earth (Atria Books, 2013) / Christina Schwarz
40. The Hungry Ghosts (Doubleday Canada, 2013) / Shyam Selvadurai

41. Love Water Memory (Gallery Books, 2013) / Jennie Shortridge
42. The Wall (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013) / William Sutcliffe
43. The Accidental Apprentice (Simon & Schuster, 2013) / Vikas Swarup
44. My Beautiful Enemy (Text Publishing, 2013) / Cory Taylor
45. Fear in the Sunlight (Harper, 2013) / Nicola Upson
46. Long Live the King (Head of Zeus, 2013) / Fay Weldon
47. The Interestings (Riverhead, 2013) / Meg Wolitzer
48. Sister Sister (Kwela Books, 2013) / Rachel Zadok

First Novels
1. Every Promise (trans. from the Italian by Alastair McEwen) (MacLehose Press, 2013) / Andrea Bajani
2. The Movement of Stars (Riverhead, 2013) / Amy Brill
3. Idiopathy (Fourth Estate, 2013) / Sam Byers
4. Clapham Lights (Silvertail Books, 2013) / Tom Canty
5. Three Souls (HarperCollins Canada, 2013) / Janie Chang
6. The Gamal (Bloomsbury Circus, 2013) / Ciarán Collins
7. The Shock of the Fall (HarperCollins, 2013) / Nathan Filer
8. Ghost Moth (Bellevue Literary Press, 2013) / Michèle Forbes
9. Queen’s Gambit (Michael Joseph/Simon & Schuster, 2013) / Elizabeth Fremantle
10. The Cuckoo’s Calling (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown, 2013) / Robert Galbraith

11. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Sandstone Press, 2013) / Eve Harris
12. The Last King of Lydia (Atlantic Books, 2013) / Tim Leach
13. Red Sky in Morning (Quercus, 2013) / Paul Lynch
14. The River of No Return (Dutton, 2013) / Bee Ridgway
15. The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope (Ecco, 2013) / Rhonda Riley
16. In Times of Fading Light (trans. from the German by Anthea Bell) (Graywolf Press/Faber & Faber, 2013) / Eugen Ruge
17. Ghana Must Go (Viking, 2013) / Taiye Selasi
18. The Hope Factory (Tinder Press, 2013) / Lavanya Sankaran
19. The Rosie Project (Michael Joseph/Penguin USA, 2013) / Graeme Simsion
20. Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) / Jessica Soffer

21. The View on the Way Down (Picador, 2013) / Rebecca Wait
22. The Golem and the Jinni (Harper, 2013) / Helen Wecker
23. The Third Son (Algonquin Books, 2013) / Julie Wu

Stories
1. A History of the Present Illness (Bloomsbury USA, 2013) / Louise Aronson
2. Nothing Cold Can Stay (Canongate Books, 2013) / Ron Rash
3. We’re Flying (trans. from the German by Michael Hofmann) (Granta, 2013) / Peter Stamm
4. Spectacle (Graywolf Press, 2013) / Susan Steinberg
5. Search Party: Stories of Rescue (Counterpoint Press, 2013) / Valerie Trueblood
6. The House at Belle Fontaine (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013) / Lily Tuck

Poetry
1. Speak, Old Parrot (Hutchinson, 2013) / Dannie Abse
2. The Inside of An Apple (Wave Books, 2013) / Joshua Beckman
3. Border (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) / Peter Bennet
4. Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) / Frank Bidart
5. Collected Poems (ed. Frederick Glaysher) (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2013) / Robert Hayden
6. Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon Press, 2013) / Bob Hicok
7. Pluto (Picador, 2013) / Glyn Maxwell
8. The Mining Road (Bloodaxe, 2013) / Leanne O’Sullivan
9. Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2013) / Ron Padgett
10. Silverchest (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) / Carl Phillips

11. Drysalter (Jonathan Cape, 2013) / Michael Symmons Roberts
12. The Living Option: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) / Karen Solie
13. Accurate Measurements (Doire Press, 2013) / Adam White

Nonfiction
1. Lawrence in Arabia: Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Doubleday, 2013) / Scott Anderson
2. Levels of Life (Jonathan Cape, 2013) / Julian Barnes
3. Maggie & Me (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013) / Damian Barr
4. Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir (Bloomsbury USA/Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013) / Greg Bellow
5. She Left Me the Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me (Faber & Faber, 2013) / Emma Brockes
6. The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / David Cannadine
7. The Return of a King: Shah Shuja and the First Battle for Afghanistan (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) / William Dalrymple
8. Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt (Yale University Press, 2013) / Saul Friedländer
9. Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) / Philip F. Gura
10. Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (Harper Perennial, 2013) / Peter Hessler

11. Pirates and Farmers (Ridinghouse, 2013) / Dave Hickey
12. Prospero’s Son: Life, Books, Love, and Theater (University of Chicago Press, 2013) / Seth Lerer
13. I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) / Elinor Lipman
14. Silence: A Christian History (Allen Lane, 2013) / Diarmaid MacCulloch
15. Distant Reading (Verso, 2013) / Franco Moretti
16. Country Girl: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 2013) / Edna O’Brien
17. A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) / Qais Akbar Omar
18. The Still Point of the Turning World (Two Roads, 2013) / Emily Rapp
19. Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing (Verso Books, 2014) / Lynne Segal
20. The View from Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret (Oxford University Press, 2013) / R. Jay Wallace

Saturday, December 01, 2012

December 2012 Highlights

Novels
1. Safe House (Minotaur Books, 2012) / Chris Evans
2. A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Parts (Henry Holt, 2012) / Sebastian Faulks
3. Shadows on the Nile (Sphere, 2012) / Kate Furnivall
4. Big Ray (Bloomsbury Circus, 2012) / Michael Kimball
5. The Colour of Milk (Ecco, 2012) / Nell Leyshon
6. Pow! (trans. from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt) (Seagull Books, 2012) / Mo Yan
7. The Other Side of the World (Two Dollar Radio, 2012) / Jay Neugeboren
8. Raised from the Ground (trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) / José Saramago
9. The Child’s Child (Scribner, 2012) / Barbara Vine

First Novels
1. The Orchardist (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012) / Amanda Coplin
2. Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (Soho Press, 2012) / Juliann Garey
3. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Ayana Mathis

Stories
1. Best European Fiction 2013 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012) / Aleksandar Hemon (ed.)

Nonfiction
1. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (Viking Adult/Allen Lane, 2012) / Jared Diamond
2. Charles Dickens in Love (Pegasus, 2012) / Robert Garnett
3. Derrida: A Biography (Polity Press, 2012) / Benoît Peeters
4. Open Heart (trans. from the French by Marion Weisel) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) / Elie Weisel