The Federal’s 75 books to look out for in 2023

Fiction

1. Fraud by Zadie Smith (Penguin Random House): From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who deserves to tell their story — and about who deserves to be believed.

2. Age of Vice: A Novel by Deepti Kapoor (Juggernaut): A story of corruption in modern-day India, it’s an action-packed saga that blends class, murder, gangsters and forbidden romance. A  novel that tackles greed, power, and integrity.

3. Victory City by Salman Rushdie (Random House): Rushdie’s 15th novel is a century-spanning epic tale of a woman in 14th-century southern India, who whispers a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it.

4. I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (Penguin Random House): An stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart

5. The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis (Swift Press/Knopf): In his first new novel in 13 years, set in early 1980s Los Angeles, the author of American Psycho blurs fact and fiction about a serial killer. The novel focuses on a hero who must navigate his own desires and paranoia as the serial killer lingers around campus.

6. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux): A psychological thriller set in contemporary New Zealand, this novel is built around the activities of a guerrilla gardening group. Catton became the youngest ever winner of the Booker Prize in 2013 with The Luminaries.

7. Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury): The Irish writer’s first novel is set  around Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory in 1960s New York and is a dizzying exploration of sex, freedom, art and voyeurism, seen through the coming-of-age of 17-year-old Mae.

8. Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Hamish Hamilton): Marías’s final novel, posthumously published in September this year, sees a retired British SIS member return for one last assignment in 1990s Madrid

9. Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood (Chatto & Windus): Atwood’s new short-story collection, her first since 2014’s Stone Collection, features 15 tales that were inspired by the uncertainty of the pandemic era; the author of The Handmaid’s Tale finds humour and humanity in the most eccentric of characters.

10. The Lock-Up by John Banville (Faber): The third title in Banville’s crime series sees the return of Detective Inspector St John Strafford to investigate the suspicious “suicide” of a young woman in 1950s Dublin.

11. Shy by Max Porter (Faber/Graywolf Press): Slim but multi-layered, this new novel from the author of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers  is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a tormented teenage boy.

12. August Blue by Deborah Levy (Penguin): Set in Athens, Levy’s new novel explores ideas of selfhood and femininity through a woman who believes she has glimpsed her double.

13. The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate): Eleven years after The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng is back with a fictionalised account of William Somerset Maugham’s visit to Penang in 1921. A novel of love and betrayal set in early 20th-century Malaysia.

14. The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Jonathan Cape/Penguin): Centred on a group of lovers and friends living in Iowa City, this novel from the author of the Booker-shortlisted Real Life explores the idea of “chosen family”. A novel of intimacy, precarity and friendship.

15. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home  by Lorrie Moore (Knopf): In her first novel since 2009’s A Gate at the Stairs, the master of short fiction tells a ghost story set in the 19th and 21st centuries: it’s an untrodden territory for Moore, whose fiction is hyperrealistic.

16. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead (Fleet): A sequel to the comic heist novel Harlem Shuffle, set in New York of the 70s. A darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family.

17. History’s Angel by Anjum Hasan (Bloomsbury): The author of many critically acclaimed works of fiction is back with a novel set in contemporary Delhi and examines the rise of hatred against Muslims.

18. River Spirit by Leila Aboulela (Grove Press): Set in 1890s Sudan, Aboulela’s latest novel, told through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism.

19. The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks (Penguin): The two-time Oscar winner, who made his literary debut in 2017 with a collection of short stories, is  back with a novel that spans eight decades as a host of characters come together in an attempt to make Hollywood magic.

20. Assassin by KR Meera (Penguin): A blend of  real and fictional, personal and political, it investigates the dangerous times we live in, and lays bare the hidden depths of human nature.

21. The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb (Penguin): Deb’s first novel in fifteen years, it’s a sweeping tale of rebellion, courage, and brutality, which connects India’s tumultuous 19th and 20th centuries to its distant past and its potentially apocalyptic future.

22. Murder at the Imambara: A novel by Raza Mir (Aleph): In this sequel to the bestselling novel, Murder at the Mushaira, Raza Mir’s unorthodox detective poet Mirza Ghalib, journeys to Lucknow to solve a particularly difficult crime that has foxed the authorities.

23. Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber): After two books set in 19th-century America, Barry returns to Ireland for the story of a retired policeman pulled back into the past.

24.  Dr No by Percival Everett (Influx): Following the Booker-shortlisted The Trees, an absurdist caper with bite about the exploits of a brilliant maths professor and an aspiring Bond villain.

25. Greek Lessons by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won (Hamish Hamilton): A mute young woman in Seoul makes a connection with her language teacher, who is himself losing his sight, in the new novel from the author of The Vegetarian.

26. The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (Cape): The Booker winner follows three generations of an Irish family, from the 70s to the present day, in a “meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic”, combining poetry, adventure and the resilience of women.

27: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (Hutchinson Heinemann): From the author of Fates and Furies and Matrix, a 17th-century “female Robinson Crusoe” in which a young English servant flees from a starving colonial encampment into the American wilderness.

28.The Door of No Return by David Diop, translated by Sam Taylor (Pushkin): Coming after his International Booker-winning At Night All Blood Is Black, Diop’s latest novel, set in the 18th century, tells of how a French naturalist travels through a Senegal ravaged by the slave trade.

29. Tremor by Teju Cole (Faber): From the author of Open City, one man’s creative, personal and professional life in the lead up to the pandemic.

30. The Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (Harper): Filled with academia, fables and dreams, sweeping across three landscapes, and featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness, this work of fantasy asks: in the wilderness of this world, what will you choose to hold on to?

31. Anthill by Vinoy Thomas, translated by Nandakumar K. (Penguin): Anthill, translated from the Kerala Sahitya Akademi-winning Malayalam novel Puttu, is the story of common people who break the shackles of family, religion and other restraining institutions, but eventually also struggle to civilize themselves, from their beginnings of a hillbilly existence and life as a promiscuous community.

32.Not Quite a Disaster After All by Buku SarKar (HarperCollins): A novel that unfolds over six connected, haunting vignettes spanning two continents and two decades. It shows how our expectations from life shift and change, and how they can be pushed in the most unpredictable ways.

33.What Will People Say by Mitra Phukan: (Speaking Tiger): When fifty-six-year-old Mihika falls in love with sixty-year-old Zuhair, little do they know it would trigger an avalanche of responses in Tini Gaon, Assam, their hometown. Mitra Phukan recreates the atmosphere of a small town and expertly exposes its hypocrisy and deep-seated prejudices in this novel.

34. One: The Story of the Ultimate Myth by Mansoor Khan (HarperCollins India): The film director-turned-novelist tells the story of two strangers who want to take their revelation to the world before it’s too late. But their plan is waylaid by reality.

35. Loot by Tania James (Penguin): A historical novel set in eighteenth-century India, England, and France, about a young man’s dream of leaving a mark on the world, that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across two continents and fifty years.

36. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (Picador): After the Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008),  this is Lahiri’s third collection of “intimate and poignant” short stories, set in and around the city that has been home to her since 2011. These stories are centred on characters who are cast adrift in myriad ways.

37. The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff (Harper): Shroff’s debut novel is a mash-up of adventure story, thriller, dark revenge, and comedy. Rooted in a rural village in India—and led by the pariah widow Geeta, whom everyone believes to have killed her husband—a handful of women band together to take back their lives, and take down the patriarchy.

38. Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue (Pan Macmillan): Based on true story, it tells the love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both fourteen.

39. Song of the Golden Sparrow by Nilanjan Choudhury (Speaking Tiger): In this satire on modern India, Choudhury mixes fact and fiction to tell the story of Manhoos and Mary, and mirrored in their tumultuous lives, is the history of free India from 1947 to 2022. 

40. Imaginary Rain by Vikas Khanna (Penguin Random House): After Barkat (2021), based on his food drive called Feed India during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Michelin-Starred Chef turns to fiction, with an immigrant’s story of survival, forgiveness and moving on.

41. Death in Shambles: A Hill Station Mystery by Stephen Alter (Aleph): A crime thriller by one of India’s finest writers. The story of a retired police deputy inspector general’s journey towards the truth and his entanglement in a web of deceit and lies. 

Non-fiction

42. Spare by Prince Harry (Penguin Random House): Prince Harry, Duke of Essex, opens up about his life as part of the British monarchy, from his extraordinary upbringing to the  death of his mother, Princess Diana, and the vulnerable period in his life and its long-lasting effects on him and his family. 

43. Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey Through Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh (HarperCollins): Amitav Ghosh’s wide-ranging new book dwells as much on China as on India; it’s equally about opium and tea. Straddling across Europe and Asia, it’s a personal history of the capitalist enterprise as experienced by a writer invested in an indigenous understanding of the environment.

44. The Patriarchs: How Men Came To Rule by Angela Saini (Fourth Estate): The British science journalist and broadcaster examines patriarchy and gendered oppression, tracing its roots to the prehistoric times, tracking the spread of male domination in societies across the globe.

45. Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson (Faber). The portrait of one of the most acclaimed contemporary poets who possesses “an infinite sensitivity to the world”. A memoir revolving around family, music, misspent youth and inventive profanity, Toy Fights is peppered with Paterson’s trademark wit 

46. Mystics and Sceptics: In Search of the Himalayan Masters, Edited by Namita Gokhale (HarperCollins):  A collection of essays traversing across the geography of the Himalayan range, filled with tales of encounters with saints, sadhus, madmen and charlatans. A tribute to the mysteries of the Himalaya and the mystic secrets it contains. 

47. Ratan Tata: The Authorized Biography by  Dr Thomas Mathew (HarperCollins): An intimate portrait of one of modern India’s great icons, who is a household name but a private individual, spanning 85 fascinating years, from Ratan Tata’s childhood years to the many strategic innovations he spearheaded, including the acquisitions of Corus, Tetley, JLR, the Nano, 26/11, and the succession dilemma.

48. Why We Die by Venki Ramakrishnan (Hachette): After describing his journey of discovering the structure and function of the ribosome (for which he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Thomas A Steitz and Ada Yonath) in his popular science book, Gene Machine (2019), Venki Ramakrishnan’s new book explores why we age and die. 

49. Adman Madman by Prahlad Kakkar (HarperCollins): In this tell-tale memoir, Kakkar relives the bizarre and brazen episodes from his personal life and professional life; his most unforgettable experiences, peppered with funny anecdotes, and seasoned with lessons on storytelling.

50. The Diaries of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka, translated by Ross Benjamin (Schocken): Complete and uncensored diaries from the master of the nightmarish in a new translation that features material available in English for the first time. 

51. The Grain Book: Cooking with Grains For A  Healthier Life by Anahita Dhondy (HarperCollins): Chef Anahita Dhondy, who has been experimenting with alternative grains – like millet, corn, rye or oats – uses these healthy grains to recreate wholesome  recipes and cook up some of her own. 

52. A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe by Milan Kundera (Faber): The Franco-Czech novelist makes the case for the “small countries” of central Europe as the nucleus of European values and a lightning rod of the dangers facing the continent. 

53. The Big Book of South Indian Cooking by Rakesh Raghunathan (HarperCollins): In his debut, the chef and host of popular TV show Dakshin Diaries, brings over 200 authentic yet easy-to-follow recipes that celebrate the rich culinary history of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

54. Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West by Maximilian Hess (Hurst): An examination of how Russia’s response to the west’s economic sanctions following the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 helped to set the stage for the latest conflict.

55. Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson (HarperCollins): The “Baywatch” bombshell and Playboy cover girl tells her true story of a small-town girl and nature-loving free spirit, interspersed with original poetry.

56. A Lucky Man: The Memoirs of a Radio-wala by Mark Tully (Speaking Tiger): The indefatigable chronicler of the India story documents his encounters with the towering political figures of South Asia, including Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Zia ul Haq and Mujibur Rehman.

57. Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster (Faber): One of the best fiction writers reflects on the 200 years of American gun culture, tracing the use and abuse of guns, through the colonial prehistory of the Republic, armed conflict against the native population, the forced enslavement of millions, and the mass shootings that dominate the current news cycle; filled with haunting photographs by Spencer Ostrander.

58. Among Others: Friendships and Encounters by Michael Frayn (Faber): The celebrated playwright and novelist, whose 1982 backstage farce Noises Off turned 40 in 2022, writes about his inspirations

59. The Hindi Heartland by Ghazala Wahab (Aleph): In this  first-of-its-kind biography of the Hindi belt, Ghazala Wahab traces the history, society, culture, religion, language, ideology, politics and polarisation in the region known as the Hindi heartland—a contiguous area that today consists of nine states with Hindi as their official language.

60. Authorized Biography of Manoj Bajpayee by Ananya Ghosh (Rupa): The first authorized biography of the man known as the quintessential ‘misfit’ in Bollywood, with new  details about the series Family Man, the response and his smooth transition to OTT platforms.

61. George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes (Profile): The poet and painter (daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes) writes of her unlikely love for a magpie that she rescues and rears by hand in the Welsh countryside.

62. How Prime Ministers Decide by Neerja Chowdhury (Aleph): Journalist Neerja Chowdhury gives us the inside story on key decisions taken by India’s prime ministers that deeply impact the country’s politics, economy and society. It draws on hundreds of interviews with ministers, political insiders, top bureaucrats, and key figures of the political establishment.

63. India’s Foreign Policy Blunders by Yashwant Sinha and Satish Misra (Rupa): Former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha examines the many missteps that were committed in the realm of India’s foreign policy since Independence which, if avoided, would have saved succeeding generations of free India from many a trouble that continue to burden country’s external policy even today.

64. The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer (Penguin): In his latest travel book, which shuttles from Iran to North Korea, and from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Iyer recollects his journeys over several decades through competing ideas of paradise to see how we can live more peacefully in an ever-more divided and distracted world

65. Through The Broken Glass: Autobiography of TN Seshan (Rupa): The 10th Chief Election Commissioner of India (1990–96) known for his electoral reforms, looks back at his illustrious life and career, from his brush with politicians of all hues to initiating reforms that cleaned up the electoral system.

66. My Life in Design by Gauri Khan (Penguin): Gauri Khan charts out her journey as a designer, outlining the design thought-processes that went into her Mumbai residence, Mannat, and other key projects. Bonus: Exclusive pictures of her and her family: Shah Rukh, Aryan, Suhana and AbRam

67. Lazzatnama: The Taste of the Indian Food by Pushpesh Pant (Rupa): The academic, food critic and historian, who retired as a Professor of International relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, documents Indian cuisines and how our myth, legend and lore cover references to what our ancestors ate and how our signature recipes have evolved in a thick haze.

68. Ananda: A Journey into India’s Complex Relationship with Cannabis by Karan Madhok (Aleph): A  biography of Cannabis sativa, one of India’s most famous exports to the globe’s counterculture, which explores the myriad cultural and legal connections around the hallucinogen in India, from its first cultivations, ancient Vedic beginnings, its politics, legal status, medicinal benefits, dangers, and the cultures around its recreational use.

69. Who Cares About Parliament? by Derek O’Brien (Harper): The former quiz master and Parliamentarian writes, among other matters of concern, about how Parliament has been undermined in the last decade under PM Narendra Modi.

Also read: The Federal’s 15 notable books (fiction) of the year 2022

70. The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg (Penguin Random House): In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts — geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders — to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster

71. Tipu Sultan by Vikram Sampath (Penguin) Vikram Sampath’s biography of the controversial 18th century ruler of Mysore, whose rise is inextricably linked with the fall of the Wodeyars, and who has been erased from history or misrepresented.

72. Untitled Memoir by Rani Mukherji (HarperCollins): Marking her debut as an author, actor Rani Mukerji tells it all in her candid, intimate autobiography, a deeply personal, disarmingly honest account of her inspiring journey. 

73. The Hyderabad Heist: The Untold Story of India’s Biggest Museum Theft by Sharmishtha Shenoy (Rupa): The story of the multimillion-dollar burglary in the Nizam’s Museum, Hyderabad, in September 2018, in which a diamond-studded, intricately designed gold box and other artefacts speckled with emeralds and rubies were stolen, causing national and international furore.

74. Gilded Cage: Years that Made and Unmade Kashmir by Sandeep Bamzai (Rupa): The third part of Bamzai’s Kashmir trilogy, it documents the contentious years that resulted in the making and unmaking of the ‘Kashmir issue,’ the vital years that defined Kashmir’s accession to India.

75. The Marie Kondo Tidying Companion by Marie Kondo (Pan Macmillan): The New York Times bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and star of the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo and Sparking Joy with Marie Kondo, will help you put your life in order.

(The notes on the books are based on the information sheets provided to The Federal by the publishing houses)