SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE
AN AMAZON TOP 10 BOOK OF DECEMBER 2023
A Book of the Year for 2023 according to the Guardian, FT, Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Sunday Independent, Economist, Big Issue, Daily Telegraph, Irish Times and Waterstones
'A CRUCIAL BOOK FOR OUR CURRENT TIMES... BRILLIANTLY HAUNTING.' OBSERVER
The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, Larry, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. Soon, she must decide just how far she is willing to go to keep her family safe.
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Paul Lynch's Booker Prize-winning novel is a devastating vision of a country falling apart and a moving portrait of the resilience of the human spirit when faced with the darkest of times.
'A compassionate, propulsive and timely novel that forces the reader to imagine - what if this was me?' FT
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in New Zealand's South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn't figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?
A propulsive literary thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. It is a brilliantly constructed tale of intentions, actions and consequences, and an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
**AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW** THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER TWICE WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR ''A masterpiece'' Sunday Times ''Stunning'' LIZ NUGENT ''Extraordinary'' Irish Times Tom Kettle, a retired policeman, and widower, is settling into the quiet of his new home in Dalkey, overlooking the sea.
His solitude is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never quite came to terms with. And his peace is further disturbed when his new neighbour, a mysterious young mother, asks for his help.
A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God''s Time is an unforgettable exploration of family, loss and love.
''To borrow a word that recurs in its pages, it is stupendous, in the sense that it shocks and astonishes.'' Irish Times Rare indeed are those novels worth cherishing and keeping close. Old God''s Time is one of them.'' Daily Telegraph ''So captivating. . . it will live long in the minds of its readers.'' Independent WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:
***** ''A beautiful family love story. It will haunt you and break your heart.'' ***** ''Deeply felt and so moving. I will be reading this again.'' ***** ''A tragic tale beautifully told. Sebastian Barry is one of the great contemporary writers.'' ***** ''Absolute perfection in novel form.'' ***** ''Deeply tragic. Deeply humorous. Utterly beautiful. I''m in awe.'' ***** ''A writer in possession of something divine . just exceptional.'' ***** ''Magically transporting . the balance of extreme grief and joy are perfectly expressed.''
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how - no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope - we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.
Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, The Hole is by turns reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, David Lynch, and My Neighbor Totoro, but is singularly unsettling
Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.
One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole-a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
What happens when a woman dares to take up space? An enigmatic young woman drastically transforms her body, working to become bigger, stronger, and stiller in the wake of a trauma. We see her through the eyes of three people, each differently mesmerized by her, as they reckon with the consequences of her bizarre metamorphosis. Each of them leaves us with a puzzle piece of who she was before she became someone else.
Elliot, a recluse who notices her at the gym, witnesses her physical evolution and becomes her first acolyte. Bella, her mother, worries about the intense effect her daughter's new way of life is beginning to have on others, and she reflects on their relationship, a close cocoon from which her daughter has broken free. Susie, her ex-colleague and best friend, offers her sanctuary and support as she makes the transition to self-created online phenomenon, posting viral meditation videos that encourage her followers to join her in achieving self-sufficiency by isolating themselves from everyone else in their lives.
Uncanny, alluring, and intimate, Chrysalis raises vital questions about selfhood and solitude. This daring novel asks if it is possible for a woman to have agency over her body while remaining part of society, and then offers its own explosive answer.
"This season''s most-anticipated first outing." (Vogue) "A Lynchian reinterpretation of The Virgin Suicides." (Observer) "An astonishing debut that will burrow under your skin." (Sunday Times) In Falls Landing, Florida - a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers - something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher''s daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the ''we'' of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.
Sister Perpetu is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon.
Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.
Following Tarare as he travels from the South of France to Paris and beyond, through the heart of the Revolution, The Glutton is an electric, heart-stopping journey into a world of tumult, upheaval and depravity, wherein the hunger of one peasant is matched only by the insatiable demands of the people of France...
'The exhausting and exhilarating life of a high-end restaurant is beautifully recreated in this masterful novel... A writer correctly confident in her recipe' Irish Independent
'A hugely gripping literary page-turner. Sharp, visceral and shocking' Claire Powell
When Hannah learns that star chef Daniel Costello is facing accusations of sexual assault, she's thrown back to her summer waitressing at his high-end Dublin restaurant. A glamorous world of talent and testosterone, where attention from Daniel morphed into something darker...
Now the restaurant is shuttered and Daniel is faced with the reality of the courtroom. His wife Julie is hiding from paparazzi lenses behind the bedroom curtains. Surrounded by the wreckage of the past, their three voices reveal a story of power, complicity and the courage that it takes to face the truth.
Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant-a novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.
It's as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boy band, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic-in which you, the audience, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.
Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. She stumbles into total disorientation. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys in search of the object of her love. In Korea, an escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications land her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.
From a conspicuous new talent comes Y/N, a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one's singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Crackling with the intellectual sensitivity of Elif Batuman and the sinewy absurdism of Thomas Pynchon, Esther Yi's prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about «identity» and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.
A story of love tested to its limits by moral dilemmas, and the beauty and fragility of childhood friendships.
1964 - Karachi, Pakistan. Rozeena will lose her home, her parents' safe haven since fleeing India and the terrors of Partition, if her medical career doesn't take off soon. But success may come with a price. Meanwhile, the interwoven lives of her childhood best friends - Haaris, Aalya, and Zohair - seem to be unraveling with each passing day. The once small and inconsequential differences between their families' social standing now threaten to divide them. Then one fateful night someone ends up dead and the life they took for granted shatters.
Rozeena receives a call from a voice she never thought she'd hear again. What begins as an request to look after a friend's teenaged granddaughter grows into an unconventional friendship - one that unearths buried secrets and just might ruin everything Rozeena has worked so hard to protect.
Captivating and atmospheric, Under the Tamarind Tree shows us the high-stakes ripple effects of generational trauma, and the lengths people will go to safeguard the ones they love.
