Reviews

  Danny, a young Sri Lankan man is determined to escape the brutality of his homeland’s security forces and a manipulative father. He pays a lot of money to start a dubious course at an Australian college but when he drops out, disillusioned that it is just a way to exploit migrant workers, he makes the desperate choice to stay as an ‘illegal’ and take his chances making a living as a cleaner and hoping he can avoid detection. Smart, … Read more

  Set in a fictionalised West Africa, sixteen-year-old Deka lives in an intensely patriarchal empire (think Afghanistan under the Taliban) where women’s choices are utterly proscribed by religion and society. She’s about to undergo the ritual of purity, which is as sinister as it sounds, when her village is attacked by monsters whose terrifying shriek can kill anyone who hears it. But when Deka cries out desperately for them to go away, the monsters seem to listen to her. It’s … Read more

  Set over the long summer holidays before Nala’s final year at High School, Love is a Revolution is a coming-of-age story with depth and resonance. Nala’s friends are inspiring community activists, who quote civil rights heroes and believe they can be the change they want to see in the world. All their clothes have slogans across the chest, and they never, ever buy single-use water bottles. Although Nala doesn’t disagree with their politics and message, she finds the group … Read more

  It is very cold and dark in northern Iceland but Inspector Ari Thor is looking forward to a rare visit over the Easter weekend from his partner and young son who now live in Sweden. In the early hours he is shocked to be told the body of a young woman has been found in the street, and suddenly his plans are in jeopardy. Was the victim murdered or did she commit suicide? Her mother claims she was a … Read more

Nikesh Shukla is the editor of The Good Immigrant, several novels, screenplays and commentary on social issues. In these eleven chapters, Nikesh Shukla invites the reader into an intimate world of self-reflections written to his daughter on race, family and home. Penned in the style of a manual: How to talk to you about skin colour, How to talk to you about my mum; Shukla gently (and sometimes not so gently) reaches into those uncomfortable places that make up the … Read more

  Francis Spufford’s entertaining romp of a first novel Golden Hill rightfully won him an armful of awards, and everyone was eager to see what would come next. Light Perpetual begins with the premise of a world altered, a ‘what if’ scenario where a V2 rocket would not hit a London Woolworths and instead the lives of five children within continue through history. We connect with these characters in fifteen year time jumps, catching up with them as they age … Read more

  By now, Jane Harper has built quite a following with her previous novels such as her debut novel The Dry, which won all the awards going in 2017. Her ‘Outback Noir’ thrillers have firmly captured the imagination of UK readers and her latest is perhaps her best. In The Survivors, set in a coastal town in Tasmania, follows a young man returning to his home town. The accident that prompted his departure has still left scars in the community, and Kieran … Read more