For this monthly issue, The Sunday Times selects 10 books from around the world that have just hit the shelves
Top of the pile
1. Crying in H Mart
By Michelle Zauner
Nonfiction / Picador / Paperback / 241 pages / $ 34.24 / Available here
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Death is the central theme of Zauner’s memoir Crying In H Mart, but the book is bursting with life. Zauner, better known as the head of indie rock band Japanese Breakfast, focuses her literary debut on her Korean mother’s death from cancer, but easily looks at it through the lens of food and its preparation. Crying In H Mart was developed from a viral article of the same name that first appeared in New York magazine in 2018. It begins and ends with the production of Korean food, with the title’s H Mart being a Korean supermarket popular in western countries where Zauner often buys ingredients. READ MORE HERE
2. 12 bytes
By Jeanette Winterson
Nonfiction / Jonathan Cape / Paperback / 275 pages / $ 29.95 / Available here
British author Winterson is best known for her debut novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985), but here she delves into hard science with 12 essays on artificial intelligence (AI). She then continues her research into AI in her Booker Prize longlist novel Frankissstein (2019). She debates transhumanism and highlights the often overlooked women in the history of science, such as the 19th-century mathematician and computer pioneer.
3. The sex life of African women
PHOTO: DIALOGUE BOOKS
By Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
Nonfiction / Dialogue / Paperback / 292 pages / $ 34.82 / Available here
The Ghanaian activist Sekyiamah collects reports from six years of interviews in her blog Adventures From The Bedrooms Of African Women.
More than 30 contributors share their sex life: a Kenyan woman who shares her husband with several sisters, a 60-year-old polyamorous woman in Senegal, a single Somali mother who suffered female genital mutilation as a child, and more.
4. Once upon a time in Hollywood
PHOTO: HARPER PERENNIAL
By Quentin Tarantino
Fiction / Harper Perennial / Paperback / 406 pages / $ 18.32 / Available here
Award-winning filmmaker Tarantino makes his feature film debut with this pulpy novella from his 2019 film of the same name, which dates back to 1969 in Hollywood.
The characters are the same – Rick Dalton, an action star whose career is in the doldrums; his friend, stuntman Cliff Booth; and Dalton’s neighbors, director Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate, who in Tarantino’s universe will never know how close they were to the disaster the night Charles Manson’s cult knocked on the door.
But Tarantino makes several changes. The highlight of the showdown is only mentioned in the middle. He also gives new insights into the inner thoughts and background stories of characters like Booth and the precocious child star Trudi Frazer.
5. The startup woman
PHOTO: CANONGATE
From Tahmima Anam
Fiction / Canongate / Paperback / 296 pages / $ 29.95 / Available here
Computer scientist Asha is developing the algorithm for a social networking app that adapts rituals for non-religious people that could revolutionize the lives of millions. But it’s her charismatic husband, Cyrus, who’s in the spotlight – and the recognition.
The British writer Anam, born in Bangladesh, is herself a “start-up woman” – married to the American inventor Roland Lamb – and mischievously satirizes the tech culture and sexism of the industry.
6. Crazy Women’s Ball
PHOTO: DOUBLE DAY
By Victoria Mas, translated by Frank Wynne
Fiction / Doubleday / Paperback / 215 pages / $ 28.89 / Available here
This French bestseller, now translated into English and due to be made into a film next month, is set in the 19th century in La Salpetriere, a Parisian asylum full of women and girls whose male relatives have accused them of hysteria.
The hospital holds a costume ball every year, at which the bourgeoisie can indulge their fascination for the inmates.
The novel follows the points of view of three women: Louise, who dreams of becoming a patient of the hypnotic Dr. Charcot to become famous; Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a wealthy family who claims to have seen the dead; and Genevieve, a senior nurse whose trust in her employers is being tested.
7. Dirty animals
PHOTO: RIVERHEAD BOOKS
By Brandon Taylor
Fiction / Riverhead Books / Paperback / 277 pages / $ 21.40 / Available here
Taylor’s campus novel, Real Life, was one of the landmark literary debuts of last year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
He returns with this series of linked stories about young people in the American Midwest, from a man having sexual encounters with two dancers in an open relationship to a woman couple pondering which wife of King Henry VIII of England was married to they identify the most.
8. Night b *** h
PHOTO: HARVILL SECKER
Posted by Rachel Yoder
Fiction / Harvill Secker / Paperback / 236 pages / $ 29.95 / Available here
In Yoder’s debut on the wild feminine, a middle-class mother who stays home finds a piece of coarse hair on the back of her neck in an American city. Your teeth will become sharper.
“I think I’m going to be a dog,” she says to her husband. He laughs. She doesn’t.
Soon the nameless narrator has turned into Nightb *** h, who sneaks around outside after dark and commits primitive acts of violence.
9. Fall
PHOTO: SIMON & SCHUSTER
By TJ Newman
Thriller / Simon & Schuster / Paperback / 290 pages / $ 29.95 / Available here
“When the shoe fell on her lap, the foot was still in.” This is how this exhilarating high-octane trip aboard an airplane to New York begins. His pilot has been ordered by terrorists to crash him or his family will be killed.
Newman, a former flight attendant, gets the adrenaline pumping in her exciting debut.
10. Billy Summers
PHOTO: HODDER & STOUGHTON
By Stephen King
Thriller / Hodder & Stoughton / Hardcover / 439 pages / $ 44.95 / Available here
Horror maestro King tries his hand at the “One Last Job” novel. Its protagonist of the same name is an Iraq war veteran who has become a sniper and wants to leave the life of the assassin, but offers one final hit that is too lucrative to refuse.
In the town of Red Bluff, in an office facing the steps of the courthouse where his goal will one day run, Billy constructs a disguise as a writer.
In fact, he starts telling his story in his memoirs, even as the days count down to the hit and he starts to think that something is wrong with his job.