From an Indian immigrant’s experiences in America to a rowdy crime drama set in Jamaica, 2015 delivered plenty of literary pleasures. We browse 10 international titles that flew off the shelves.
The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi
Saud Alsanousi's The Bamboo Stalk was an encouraging winner of the International Prize For Arabic Fiction in 2013. It delved deeply into the experiences of Filipino maids who come to the Arabian Gulf for work. The magnificent translation into English by Jonathan Wright was published this year and introduced to a wider audience in the region and beyond. Required reading, it is as much a coming-of-age story about personal identity as a spotlight on an ignored group of people.
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Anne Enright can be relied upon for a certain kind of thoughtful, sometimes whimsical, but always relevant Irish family saga – she won the Booker Prize in 2007 for one of them – The Gathering. The Green Road may have appeared as if it would come from that same fertile ground – a matriarch brings her children back to Ireland to discuss selling the family home – but this was actually a majestic contemporary character study of four children across decades and continents. Exquisitely written and hugely enjoyable.
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
It has taken Ghosh over a decade to finish his massive Ibis trilogy. In that time, the 58-year-old Indian author's fictional retelling of the lead-up to the Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars, has taken us from the Bay of Bengal to Hong Kong. But Ghosh's main achievement in the final book was to focus on character and narrative rather than mere history, and in Flood of Fire, his four protagonists made for a rollickingly good story focusing on the personal rather than political dramas.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant was Ishiguro's first novel since 2005's Never Let Me Go, and in a similar way to that book, resonates long after the final pages. While the previous novel was a science fiction-esque parable about mortality, this elegantly fantastical tale featuring knights, ogres and fairy-tale castles, is a profound exploration of memory, guilt and trauma, seen through the eyes of a Saxon couple who set out to find their son.
A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James
A Booker Prize-winning novel is always worthy of investigation, but this sweeping history of gang violence and political corruption in Jamaica was intriguing. It was brutally violent – one commentator called it "a Quentin Tarantino film wrestled down on paper" – but the way in which the narrative was framed around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley gave A Brief History Of Seven Killings a purpose and wider relevance. Confrontational and uncompromising.
Man on Fire by Stephen Kelman
Kelman’s fictionalised life story of Bibhuti Bushan Nayak, the Indian journalist, martial artist and extreme world record holder, was one of the treats of the year. In real life, they struck up a friendship over email: Kelman wondered if he could find more universal truths about the human condition if, with his permission, Nayak could exist in a partly fictional setting. He did so, and brilliantly. This is a funny, poignant, yet deeply dignified book.
The Year of The Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
Sunjeev Sahota is turning into one of the most important issue- based novelists of our times. His debut, Ours Are The Streets, looked at a would-be British-Pakistani suicide bomber. The follow-up this year was a beautiful tale of migrant workers in the English city of Sheffield who have fled from India. In a year in which immigration became a major worldwide talking point, Sahota slowly found grace and humanity in the desperate search for a new life. Well worthy of its Booker Prize shortlisting.
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
Not one of the easiest reads of the year, but it certainly felt like one of the most-important. The Indian novelist lifted the lid on the hypocrisies of her country against a backdrop of abuse, brutality and painful memories as a 25-year-old film-maker’s assistant returned to the temple town of Jarmuli to confront the demons of her past. Only a courageous and talented novelist is able to coalesce such weighty, unsettling and yet topical issues into a compulsively readable book.
Don’t Let Him Know by Sandip Roy
Sandip Roy isn't the first debut novelist to explore the excitements and disappointments of the Indian immigrant experience in America – and he won't be the last. But Don't Let Him Know was a wonderfully authentic portrait of two generations of a family living in both Kolkata and the United States, which gradually built up its secrets and dramas through self-contained, non-linear vignettes. In passionate and wise prose, Roy writes about the nuances of family life which many of his peers disregard in favour of crowd-pleasing drama.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
There were plenty of famous literary blockbusters this year, but it was the 700-page chronicle of four male friends in New York by a relatively unknown 40-year-old Hawaiian woman that really turned heads. A Little Life was emotionally overwhelming in places, a modern tale of love and long-term friendship that didn't shy away from being bleak and, at times, harrowing. But the protagonist Jude – for all his failings, was surely the character of the year, as moving as he was incredibly annoying – and as a result, deeply human.
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