\u2018Flashlight\u2019 by Susan Choi<\/p>\n
Choi followed up Trust Exercise, from 2019, with another novel that asks readers to grapple with duelling narratives of contested events, this time spanning generations and continents. \u201cThat may suggest a sprawling global drama, but in Flashlight, geopolitics are sharpened to a diamond point that crushes one little family,\u201d The Washington Post\u2019s Ron Charles wrote. He described the new novel as \u201cseverely allergic to summary\u201d and \u201ccatholic in its genre, shifting deftly from domestic drama to international thriller, from academic satire to bildungsroman\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Audition\u2019 by Katie Kitamura<\/p>\n
Kitamura\u2019s latest novel is narrated by an unnamed actor, who has mysteriously fraught encounters with her husband, Tomas, and a young man named Xavier, who may or may not be her son. Which is it? \u201cAny definitive \u2018truth\u2019 would only diminish the deeper and more mysterious truths of Kitamura\u2019s resolute irresolution. The pleasure and the power inhere in the parallax view,\u201d Justin Taylor wrote in his review for The Post.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny\u2019 by Kiran Desai<\/p>\n
Nearly 20 years ago, Desai won the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, and at the time became the youngest woman ever to do so. (She also happens to be the daughter of a three-time Booker nominee, Anita Desai.) Her follow-up, nearly 700 pages long \u2013 whittled down from 5000 pages of notes she had amassed by 2013 \u2013 has been 20 years in the making. It\u2019s a family epic that follows two Indian writers, Sonia and Sunny, who move to the United States as students. \u201cI feel relieved, as if I have averted some nebulous disaster, and very lucky,\u201d Desai told the Guardian, about being longlisted for the award. And her next project won\u2019t have the same scope, she added: \u201cThis feels like the big book of my life in that way. I don\u2019t have time to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Land in Winter\u2019 by Andrew Miller<\/p>\n
Set in the early 1960s during an infamously cold winter in the English countryside, The Land in Winter follows the entanglement between neighbouring couples. \u201cI want to write fiction that has no obvious message, that cannot be made smaller, that resists the single interpretation,\u201d Miller recently wrote on his website, in a post tentatively titled \u201cManifesto?\u201d \u201cThat views morality as one force among many. That does not overly privilege love or treat it as a form of magic. That has to be swallowed whole. That neither offers nor resists consolation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018The Rest of Our Lives\u2019 by Ben Markovits<\/p>\n
Markovits\u2019 novel begins with a middle-aged, middle-class couple dropping their youngest daughter off at college. The husband promised himself a dozen years ago, after his wife\u2019s infidelity, that he would leave as soon as their children all left the nest; now he has to decide whether to fulfil his vow to himself. Described by the Guardian as a \u201cmale counterpart to Miranda July\u2019s All Fours”, it will be available to American readers from Simon and Schuster in January.<\/p>\n
\u2018Flesh\u2019 by David Szalay<\/p>\n
Crisscrossing from Hungary to Iraq to London, Szalay\u2019s sixth book follows the life of Istvan, a teen growing up in a housing estate whose affair with an older woman changes his life. In a review of Szalay\u2019s previous book, Turbulence, which started as a series on BBC\u2019s Radio 4, Jake Cline described Szalay as \u201cmasterful at quickly establishing a mood and a character\u201d and at creating \u201chumid, uncomfortable tales, their air thick with worry and the threat of tragedy\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Flashlight\u2019 by Susan Choi Choi followed up Trust Exercise, from 2019, with another novel that asks readers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[696,2346,36337,489,156,2082,305,78,36338,111,139,14620,69,10512,8808,19639,4739,223,165,3010,102],"class_list":["post-40059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-announced","tag-award","tag-booker","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-for","tag-have","tag-in","tag-judges","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-novels","tag-nz","tag-prize","tag-running","tag-shortlist","tag-six","tag-the","tag-their","tag-top","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}