Jesus Christ Kinski (2025) Benjamin Myers "As wild and tempestuous and unapologetic as Klaus Kinski, Benjamin Myers's Jesus Christ Kinski is a rollercoaster character study of one of our most loved and hated cultural icons. Myers taps into the fire and fury in Kinski's art and soul, his workaholic, egocentric and testosterone-driven life, while reveals his vulnerabilities and artistic intransigence. This is a hair-raising performance written and directed by one of the most outrageously imaginative writers of our time."
Top Doll (2024) Karen McCarthy Woolf "Wild, queer and unstoppably inventive . . . McCarthy Woolf possesses a rare, uncanny power in prose and lyric, staging a fantastic line-up of dolls with their personal baggage and societal wounds. This book is poignantly absurd and unsentimentally tender - a one-off."
Fifteen Wild Decembers (2023) Karen Powell "Interweaving meticulous research and exacting imagination, Powell has brought Emily Bronte's thoughts and quirks, attitudes and gestures, sibling affection and rivalry alive on the page. The novel captures not only the fascinating peculiarity of the Bronte's, but also the wild atmospheric weather in Yorkshire that puts a spell on everything."
The Happy Couple (2023) Naoise Dolan "A cracking ensemble, The Happy Couple is a beautiful sonata about our relationships and a sad fugue for fear and loneliness. The book is a tough, all-engrossing love-test. Dolan's acerbic humour is unapologetically analytical. She breaks the rule of intimacy with wit and panache that are second to none. I was kept on tenterhooks till the last few pages and my heart wouldn't stop pounding afterwards. I don't want to say goodbye to Luke and Celine."
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster (2023) Mirinae Lee "The atrocity and suffering interwoven in these pages tell the splintered history of war and violence in twentieth-century Korea that keeps me awake at night. Mirinae Lee unravels human intentions and actions with devastating details, reminding us of many hearts of darkness. What's most striking, however, is the trust invested in the power of storytelling. The interlocking lives in the novel read like scar tissues that reopen and close. A mutual understanding is established as we re-examine the wounds that won't heal until they find their voice, until we listen."
Here Again Now (2022) Okechukwu Nzelu "Love has always been a stubborn twin of grief. In Here Again Now, Okechukwu Nzelu reinvents the grammar of time to tell a transgenerational story of grief as tender, potent and nimble as love. Through observant prose and skin-deep dialogues, Nzelu gives us unforgettable portraits of intimacy between friends and families, shaped and reshaped by origin, conflict, migration, responsibility and the yearning for change."
