Returns and Redemptions

WE DO NOT PART by Han Kang (Hamish Hamilton)

A haunting journey through the history of a South Korean family by the 2024 Nobel prize winner for literature.

THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)

A love story about two young Indians in the US torn between family, tra­dition and their own de­sires, this is Desai’s first nov­el since her bestseller The Inheritance of Loss, which won the 2006 Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.

THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS by Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape)

A big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

DREAM COUNT by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4th Estate)

The Nigerian author of the beloved Americanah, returns after 11 years with a novel about four connected wom­en and their deepest desires.

THEFT by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Bloomsbury)

This new novel from the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is

set in the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very differ­ent young people – Karim, Fauzia and Badar– are com­ing of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation.

MELANIN by Jeet Thayil (HarperCollins)

A ‘documentary’ novel which traverses continents and times, and straddles the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, memoir and novel, prose and poetry

MY NAME IS EMILIA DEL VALLE by Isabel Allende (Bloomsbury)

A tale of love and war, dis­covery and redemption, told by a valiant young woman who confronts monumen­tal challenges, survives, and reinvents herself along the way.

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE by Sudha Murty (Penguin)

Five students first crossed each other’s paths at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1998. A story of hardships, perseverance, success and disappoint­ment, the book examines the lives of five friends as they reminisce on how life turned out.

ALICE SEES GHOSTS by Daisy Rockwell (Bloomsbury)

Daisy Rockwell’s transla­tion of Geetanjali Shree’s Ret Samadhi as Tomb of Sand won them the International Booker Prize in 2022. She is now out with a new novel set in Boston, Mussoorie and Kolkata.

THE TIGER’S SHARE by Keshava Guha (Hachette)

In India where old elites and norms are under threat, the pursuit of private aspiration plays out against a dystopian daily background of ecologi­cal collapse and political unrest. This is a state-of-the-nation novel that is also personal.

GREAT EASTERN HOTEL by Ruchir Joshi (4th Estate)

The world is at war. The novel maps a crucial junc­ture in history, and offers new contexts to the upheavals of our present, raising vital questions about political commit­ment, nationalism, love and art.

UNKNOWN CITY by Amitabha Bagchi (HarperCollins)

Arindam Chatterjee— whom we first met in Amitabha Bagchi’s bestselling novel Above Average—is now a near­ly 50-year-old novelist and professor. He revisits the relationships he had in his twenties during his years in America and after graduating from IIT.

USES OF VIOLENCE by Anuk Arudpragasam (PRHI)

An exploration of inter­personal violence and in­tergenerational trauma in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, it is the third in­stalment of a trilogy that deals with the country’s 30-year civil war.

REBEL ENGLISH ACADEMY by Mohammed Hanif (Hamish Hamilton)

Taking off from the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the novel follows a captain haunted by a botched mission, a dis­trict champion runner, a former revolutionary and a progressive imam. Hanif sets the stage for a critique of authoritarian­ism and a tale of loss and redemption.

THE SECOND BOOK OF PROPHETS by Benyamin, translated by Ministhy S (Simon & Schuster)

A secular retelling of the life of Christ, this book is about a man seething at the injustices of his time.

THE COMEBACK by Annie Zaidi (Aleph)

A novel about the price of betrayal, friendship and forgiveness, second chanc­es, and the transformative power of art.

MYTHOLOGY

KURMA PURANA by Bibek Debroy (Penguin Classics)

To save the world from cosmic annihilation, Lord Vishnu takes on his second avatar, that of the Kurma, or the tortoise. The seventh book in the Purana series, this translation brings to read­ers, the rich and layered history of our myths and classics.

CRIME FICTION

NEVER FLINCH by Stephen King (Hachette)

Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer and an unforget­table villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling Stephen Kingesque conclusion.

THE REVENGE OF ODESSA by Frederick Forsyth and Tony Kent (PRHI)

The long-awaited sequel to the genre-defining clas­sic, The Odessa File. The Nazis were never defeat­ed; they were just biding their time…

INVISIBLE HELIX by Keigo Higashino (Hachette)

Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino’s loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a case where hidden history, and impossible crime, are linked by nearly in­visible threads in surpris­ing ways.

CIRCLE OF DAYS by Ken Follett (Hachette)

An exploration of one of the greatest mysteries of our age: Stonehenge.

THE FIRST GENTLEMAN by Bill Clinton and James Patterson (Century)

The President of the United States is up for re-election. Her husband is on trial for murder. Is the First Gentleman a killer? A pair of brilliant investi­gative journalists set out to answer that burning question about the foot­ball star-turned-political spouse.

Abdulrazak GurnahAmitabha BagchibooksfictionForecast 2025Han KangKiran DesaiOcean Vuong