Literary fiction

This page is devoted to beautiful writing. Literary fiction can be hit or miss for me. While I love detailed prose and clever sentences, I don’t like writing that’s too flowery or over-engineered. So, these book recommendations are all the literary novels that I think it worth your time. You won’t find pages and pages of landscape descriptions, but you will find clever turns-of-phrase, insightful character studies and deep themes.

A literary novel about a Black-British boy embracing his sexuality.

A lesbian romance about a lapsed Jew who makes restriction her religion.

An intense teenage friendship haunts both women into adulthood.

Indian-Nigerian Vivek Oji’s dead body is left on his family’s doorstep.

An interracial couple moves from London to Somerset and their marriage falls apart.

After the last American troops leave Vietnam, three siblings begin a perilous journey to become refugees in the UK.

Two sisters confront their beliefs when one gets into a non-binary relationship.

On the outskirts of Seoul lives a thirty-year-old “millennial everywoman”.

Set between London and NYC, four sisters navigate grief and addiction.

Two Igbo girls are bound together by folklore and traditional “magic”

An unlikely family in Trinidad is shattered by a secret.

A Jamaican woman leaves her child to illegally migrate to the U.S

A novella based on a true story of a Bedouin girl who was raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers.

A Dominican immigrant tries to survive in New York after the 2008 financial crash

An adored only child, Annie John comes of age in Antigua.

Surrealist fiction about an 11-year-old girl who feels like an alien

Drawing from the true story of women murdered in Chillicothe, Ohio, the story centres on twin sisters who grow up in the rural town.

1961, in a quiet, rural Dutch province. Isabel’s life of routine and discipline is upended when Eva comes to stay.

Set in 1980’s Glasgow, 15-year-old Mungo is a sensitive boy who wants to be loved.

A traumatic legacy passes through generations of a family who run a beachfront hotel in Barbados

A new mother mentally composes her own suicide note.

A Black-British woman tries to climb the social ladder, but questions whether this carefully constructed life is worth sacrificing her sense of self.

Four generations of women in one family live together under one roof i n County Tipperary, Ireland.

Three people watch one woman’s transformation.

After an incident at school, sisters July and September move across the country with their mother.

Four sisters move from the Dominican Republic to New York, each of whom possess a special gift