Batuman is a winning guide to the surreal worlds of Russian literature conferences, American graduate school and truly terrible language exchange programmes. Through all her globetrotting misadventures and encounters with academic monomania, her passion for the Russian classics is undiminished
Read an extract from The Possessed
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Poetry, says Boast, is "reality’s invisible architecture". Time, astronomy and the music of chance mingle with reflections on Coleridge and the Book of Job in this resonant collection which rings with the confidence of early Heaney
Read an extract from Sidereal Photograph: PR
Guernsey makes a fascinating setting for this novel in two voices. A legacy of shame and secrets links two teenagers: Charlie, caught up in the German occupation, and his niece Catherine, kicking against small-island claustrophobia 40 years later. Studded with Guernsey patois, it's funny, spiky and a true original
Read an extract from The Book of Lies
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In his polemical investigation into British society, Jones charts the increasing demonisation of the working class against growing social inequality. His discussions range from the legacy of Thatcherism to the middle-class commentariat and the BNP
Read the Guardian review of Chavs
Read an extract from the book Photograph: PR
Harrison, an 11-year-old Ghanaian immigrant recently arrived on a Peckham housing estate, decides to find the killer of a boy who was stabbed. His comic attempts at DIY detection - fingerprinting with sellotape - turn deadly when they bring him to the attention of the estate's meanest gang. This exploration of the psychology of urban violence is clearly inspired by the Damilola Taylor case, and has gained a chilling resonance with the recent riots
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Read an extract from Pigeon English Photograph: PR
Star-crossed lovers struggle for self-determination in a fantastical travelling circus powered by magic. This 19th-century Anglo-American costume drama is dreamlike, immersive and beautifully designed
Read an extract from The Night Circus Photograph: PR
It is an illness of prosperity, rising with life expectancy. In this monumental 'biography', American oncologist Mukherjee treats cancer as a character in the human drama, from the first recorded mastectomy in 500 BC to the heartbreaking stories of his own patients
Read an extract from The Emperor of All Maladies Photograph: PR
A small boy is holed up in the 'palace' of his father, a Mexican drug baron, with his minders, a collection of hats, a state-of-the-art arsenal and an imagination that does not quite grasp that blowing 'orifices' in real people is not the same as an Xbox game. His yearning for company takes him off in search of a pair of pygmy hippos, in a dazzlingly oblique homage to Latin American "narco-literature"
Read an extract from Down the Rabbit Hole Photograph: PR
In a beautiful Kashmiri valley, where the mountains hang 'like green curtains', a young man watches as all his peers disappear from his village. Enlisted to pick identity papers and weapons off the corpses of the 'militants' who pour over the Pakistani border, Waheed's nameless protagonist bears witness to an unreported war in a searing novel that goes where journalists cannot
Read an extract from The Collaborator
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A competition to design a 9/11 memorial on the site of the World Trade Center leads to uproar when it transpires that the winning architect is Muslim. Former New York Times journalist Amy Waldman investigates how America has changed over the past 10 years in this richly textured novel about grief, identity and anger
Read Kamila Shamsie's review
Read an extract from The Submission Photograph: PR
