- Even before hitting the half an year streak, 2023 is already beaming with good books.
- Though some of the top rated editions tend to tackle a more wider spectrum of genres, the books themselves are very exciting to read.
- Most of the books have been written by renowned novel laureates.
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From an era-spanning chapter to a tale of the super-rich, here are some picks of the best fiction of 2023 so far.
These will guarantee a thrilling read—but they won’t promise a happy ending.
Victory City by Salman Rushdie
The 15th novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and Quichotte, Victory City, described by The New Yorker as “immensely enjoyable”, is an era-spanning epic that begins in 14th-Century southern India. Its heroine is a grief-stricken nine-year-old girl, Pampa Kampana, who is instructed by a goddess to create equality for women in a patriarchal world. Kampana’s fortune, over centuries, becomes interwoven with that of the great empire of Bisnaga, the “victory city” of the title. In this novel, Rushdie has created “an alternative Mahabharata”, writes The Guardian, “an elaborate founding myth from the bare bones of history”.
Birnam Wood By Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize in 2013 for her novel The Luminaries, and the New Zealand author’s latest offering, witty thriller Birnam Wood, has also been highly acclaimed. Eco-activism meets staggering affluence when the young members of an environmental rights group end up being entangled with a billionaire drone manufacturer. “Catton is not just a master at spinning a web of competing philosophies, ” says Vogue.com. “Her characters are deeply flawed but you can’t help but root for them.” The Guardian praises Catton as a “novelist of lavish technical gifts who addresses herself to the world, broadly and richly conceived.” Birnam Wood is, says the review, “another virtuoso performance: elaborately plotted, richly conceived, enormously readable.
Shy by Max Porter
From the author of Lanny (2019) and The Death of Francis Bacon (2021), Porter’s fourth book is another slight volume of experimental, poetic prose. Its hero is 15-year-old Shy, who we encounter as he walks away from Last Chance, a home for troubled youth, with his pockets full of rocks. Shy is Porter’s best, says The Telegraph, since his acclaimed 2015 debut, Grief is a Thing with Feathers, “an act of humanity and grace, heightened by its distinctive form and artistry.” According to the iNewspaper, it is “a dazzling bolt of prose in the long night of our times”.
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
“Marvellous – clever, funny and brilliantly well observed,” is how India Knight describes Pineapple Street in The Sunday Times. The debut novel by Jenny Jackson explores generational wealth and privilege in forensic detail, following three women who are part of the super-wealthy Stockton clan, in leafy Brooklyn Heights, New York. One was born into the wealth, one has married into it, and one wants to give it away. “What is impressive about the work is that it treats rich people as fallible human beings,” says Medium. “Although these characters are imperfect, you’ll fall in love with them anyway and you’ll want to know how they turn out once the end of the book is reached.”
Maame by Jessica George
Jessica George’s debut novel became an instant NYT bestseller when it was published earlier this year; favourable comparisons have been made with another publishing sensation, Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie, from 2019. Maddie, nicknamed “Maame”, is a twenty-something Londoner with Ghanaian parents, who forgoes the regular trials of a 25-year-old existence as the primary caregiver to her father, who has Parkinson’s. A coming-of-age story about family, relationships and identity, Maame, writes The Washington Post, “isn’t always an easy story to read, but is always told with grace and compassion”. The New York Times says: “George shows the details and scope of life with such confidence and joie de vivre, it’s easy to forget she’s a first-time novelist.” haunting presence of traumatic histories, profound imbalances of power and opportunity in the world today, and society’s darkest possible futures”. The Guardian says: “There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness”.
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
When he’s faced with the past he would prefer to forget, retired policeman Tom’s life is thrown into further confusion. In the Irish author’s ninth novel, Barry explores how the effects of violence and abuse reverberate across generations. Old God’s Time is a “reckoning with violated innocence,” says the Irish Independent. The story recycles around the crimes of church and state is told in a fresh and spectacular way.
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