Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami ( hardback Jan 2025)
£14.99
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings - but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.
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A Little Luck, Claudia Pineiro ( paperback July 2023)
£9.99
From the author of Elena Knows , finalist for the 2022 International Booker Prize20 years after a shocking accident, Mary Lohan returns to the Buenos Aires suburb she escaped in a fugue of guilt and isolation. She is not the same—not her name or voice, not even the color of her eyes. The neighborhood looks different too, but she’s still the same woman and it’s still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide. A Little Luck is the story about the debilitating weight of lies, the messy line between bravery and cowardice, and the tragedies, big and small, that can ripple out from a single decisive event.In a place she had determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her, and us, that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps it’s nothing more than a little luck.
Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden, paperback ( July 2025)
£14.99
I’m fizzing. I love not being his son. Yes.
I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill – as if an adventure has begun. As if I’m the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.
Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet.
Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or thieves, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave. Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men.
Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years. ‘Pure joyous storytelling on every page … A little treasure of a book’ Fredrick Backman'A delight from start to finish' Jennie Godfrey'Flawless ... So sharp, so beguiling, so acutely observed' Guardian
Boulder, Eva Baltasar ( paperback, 2022)
£11.99
Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname 'Boulder'. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can't bear to let the opportunity pass her by.
Boulder is less enthused, but doesn't know how to say no - and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien. With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love. Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world - and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.
Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize
Clean by Alia Trabucco Zeran ( paperback April 2025)
£9.99
A book of intense power’ PHILIPPE SANDS 'A compelling book, with a tightly coiled power' PANDORA SYKES The shockingly compulsive new literary thriller from the ( Translated from Swedish.... International Booker-shortlisted author of The Remainder. Clean begins with an inescapable fact: a girl has died. Told by Estela, a maid to a wealthy, middle class family who speaks to us from a locked room, we hear of her plight and the circumstances that led to this moment.
As we enter into her account of her daily existence, we see how her apparently simple life begins to sour, but would that drive her to the unthinkable? Disturbing and profound, Clean explores domestic work, class and violence, against the backdrop of Chile’s changing political landscape.
This is one of the most daring and compelling thrillers in international literature. 'Uncomfortable and provocative … a chilling account' FINANCIAL TIMES 'I hardly paused for breath' ALICE SLATER, author of Death of a Bookseller '
