Autumn reads: best new books to read this season
'Tis the season for literary blockbusters. Replenish your to-be-read pile with our guide to the best new books autumn 2023 has to offer
The Fraud, Zadie Smith
Best-selling author of White Teeth, Zadie Smith, turns her talents to historical fiction. Taking readers on a romp through Victorian Britain and Jamaica, The Fraud revolves around a sensationalist real-life court case. The heir to the Tichborne baronetcy was lost at sea at 25, but when a mysterious man shows up claiming his rightful inheritance, the jury must decide between miraculous survival story or a case of underhand, money-grabbing imposture. Writing with vim and vividness, Smith brings potent themes of politics, class and social justice into a wholly human story.
Wednesday's Child, Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li, prize-winning author of The Book of Goose, plunges readers into the depth and breadth of grief in this collection of 11 short stories. From a grieving mother itemising everybody she has lost to a child, to the entwined lives of a woman and her carer, each story exposes a tender nub of humanity, captured with quietly devastating force in Li's artful prose. This is a collection to savour, contemplate and return to.
Prophent Song, Paul Lynch
An intense dystopian vision of Ireland, Prophet Song is fiction of the most momentous, which has earned a place on the 2023 Booker Prize long list. With secret police interrogations and mysterious disappearances, it is an exhilarating read -- with prescient parallels to the world around us. Lynch writes with an urgency that has prompted parallels to George Orwell and Cormac McCarthy, but his latest novel is also wholly original.
The Seventh Son, Sebastian Faulks
Delving into the ethics of medical science, Sebastian Faulks turns unsettling sci-fi into lived reality with the story of a bravura tech billionaire who pushes the boundaries of fertility treatment to create an extraordinary child – and troubling repercussions. With all the flair for story-telling you'd expect from the best-selling author of Birdsong, The Seventh Son is an accomplished page-turner with a thought-provoking message.
The Wren, The Wren, Anne Enright
The Wren, The Wren is a story of female resilience and the love and pain passed on by women through generations. Booker-winner Anne Enright writes with characteristic mastery about intricate web of trauma and love that bond a mother and daughter. The result is a rich and compassionate family saga that immerses readers in the characters' lives
North Woods, Daniel Mason
This epic, playful, polyphonic novel unravels for centuries of human life, love and loss as they have played out New England house. Pulitzer-nominated writer Daniel Mason's formal innovation and narrative depth combine to transcendent effect, illustrating the wondrous ways in which we are rooted in our surroundings and history.
Rouge, Mona Awad
Dubbed the new Margaret Atwood (by Atwood herself), Mona Awad negotiates horror, humour and gothic fairytale with aplomb. Rouge is at once a barbed satire on the beauty industry and a heart-wrenching study of grief – all wrapped up in a sinister quest. Left to deal with her dead mother's debts, Belle finds herself entranced by a strange spa, where family secrets and strange demons bubble beneath the glossy façade.
The Wolves of Eternity, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Continuing the epic tale of his Morning Star novel, Karl Ove Knausgaard. Encompassing the political and cultural turmoil from the 1980s to the present day, The Wolves of Eternity follows a young Norweigan investigating his father's links to the Soviet Union and a disenchanted Russian biologist, who are connected by a family secret.
The Future, Naomi Alderman
Winner of the Women Prize for Fiction, Naomi Alderman (The Power) returns with the story of a group of misfits who plan a heist to regain control of a near-future world ruled by social media and tech billionaires. Within the punchy, action-packed plot are moral dilemmas reflecting on our own world.
Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing author Jesmyn Ward reimagines the slave trade in this majestic story that roots the black American experience into the foundations of the land. With enslaved Annis as a guide, readers descend into the hellish, but ultimately hopeful world of rice fields, plantations and resurrections.
So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan
At just 64 pages, Claire Keegan's new story is small but perfectly formed. There is not a word wasted in this exquisite miniature about an Irish man taking the bus home from work and ruminating on a failed romance.
Julia, Sandra Newman
George Orwell's 1984 is the latest literary classic to get a feminist re-telling. Sandra Newman (The Heavens) explores the Big Brother dystopia from the perspective of mechanic Julia Worthing. At once honouring and provoking Orwell's original, Julia shows us what it takes to survive the system.