Recommend One Book Published In The Last 5 Years?

[Marc]

You can recommend one book published in 2020 or thereafter—what do you recommend?

[Henk]

This is so hard, I was checking my favourites shelf and the novels post 2020 are actually quite scarce. I also had the conversation with a friend if the books you read as a teenager, fresh to genres and tropes, imprint themselves more on the readers mind than later books.

Anyway, I would pick We Do Not Part by Han Kang. Her Nobel laureate status in my view is well earned and I think this is one of her strongest works and really encapsulates a lot about her oeuvre and how she tries to tackle history and discomfort in an urgent yet compelling way. I think her work will stand the test of time.

[Bill]

I read mostly fiction from the last decade or so. I have little nostalgia and in fact little use for most of the fiction I read as a teenager. (Maybe I read mostly trash back then!) I've complained regularly about prose practices from the "classics" of the 60s to the 80s.

Marc, you want me to pick one book? That's not possible, haha. But I'll cheat and pick one per year.

Nino Cipri, Homesick: Stories
Isabel Yap, Never Have I Ever
Richard Butner, The Adventurists: Stories
Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog: Stories
Sofia Samatar, The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Julia Elliot, Hellions: Stories

I could easily add another 2 books for each year, but I've already been too abusive.