And Other Stories

Rejected by his brother and largely ignored by his parents, Kieron Smith finds comfort – and endless stories – in the home of his much-loved grandparents. But when his family move to a new housing scheme on the outskirts of Glasgow, a world away from the close community of the tenements, Kieron struggles to find a way to adapt to his new life. Kieron Smith, boy is a brilliant evocation of an urban childhood. Capturing the joys, frustrations, injustices, excitements, revels, battles, games, uncertainties, questions, lies, discoveries and sheer wonder of boyhood, it is a story of one boy and every boy. It is James Kelman at his very best.

Deeply personal and politically acute, in Autobiography of Cotton, Rivera Garza crafts a new kind of border novel that tells how a brittle land radically altered her grandparents’ lives and the territories they helped develop. In this intimate fictionalisation, Rivera Garza reveals a rich social history of agricultural colonisation, labour activism, environmental degradation and cross-border migration.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureZaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out . . . Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines." Things are drawing to a head, but at the Mambo de la Fete, they still dance the Villain's Dance from dusk till dawn.

Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano delivers a fever dream coming-of-age garnished with gaming, a doomed house in Happyland, and an electric slang all his own. Half-Bads in White Regalia is an unforgettable debut that unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity.

First publication (outside of India) for this playful and moving masterpiece of psychological intrigue and feminist space-making by the International Booker winnerIn this Indian modern classic by the International Booker Prize-winning author, roofs are meant for wild things, for romance and for play. They are realms of freedom – freedom from the male gaze, sexual freedom and freedom from society. Chachcho and Lalna use their roofs to build a friendship that transcends time and memory. ‘One of the finest Hindi writers, Geetanjali has created for herself a thoughtful, lyrical and contemporary fictional world, which is free from moral posturing and political hectoring. And Rahul Soni’s English translation of The Roof Beneath Their Feet is attentive to its poetic nuances and intelligently responsive to its complexity.’ Alok Bhalla‘In The Roof Beneath Their Feet, Geetanjali Shree has created a dazzling, multifaceted narrative that plays around with shifting time and perception, leading the reader on a wild journey as only she can. Rahul Soni’s fleet-footed translation keeps up with Shree’s pyrotechnics, nimbly evoking a world like no other.’ Jeremy Tiang

Five of the six stories in Landscape with Landscape trace a suburban journey in the 1960s, as the writer negotiates the conflicting demands of Catholicism and sex, self-consciousness and intimacy, alcohol and literature. In the sixth story a Paraguayan man imagines a country called Australia, while his son sickens before his eyes. ‘Murnane is unlike anyone else, the sort of writer who demands to be read in a new way but, above all, demands to be read.’ Brian Evenson, Chicago Review of Books‘The emotional conviction . . . is so intense, the sombre lyricism so moving, the intelligence behind the chiselled sentences so undeniable, that we suspend all disbelief.’ J. M. Coetzee

Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary AwardShortlisted for the Governor General''s Literary Award for FictionShortlisted for the ReLit Award for NovelNoopiming is Anishinaabemowin for ‘in the bush.’ In it, Simpson and a cast of seven – Akiwenzii, the old man; Ninaatig, the maple tree; Mindimooyenh, the old woman; Sabe, the giant; Adik, the caribou; and Asin and Lucy, younger humans – turn the tables on colonial myth-making, exposing the unnatural strangeness at the heart of settler-capitalism. With warm humour and canny observation, The Cure for White Ladies breaks open the self to a world still alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits.

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi AwardMagadh, Shrikant Verma’s masterpiece, was first published in Hindi in 1984 and is widely regarded as one of the most important works of modern Indian poetry. A chorus of narrators – commoners, statesmen, nameless wanderers – pieces together the histories of ancient cities and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent, their rise to splendour, their decline and eventual fall. In poems that are stark and urgent yet arch and richly allusive, Verma lays bare their tales of corruption, guilt, ignorance and arrogance. Rahul Soni’s landmark translation stays faithful to the spare, haunting, incantatory cadences of the original, revealing how startlingly prescient and relevant Magadh remains today.‘Forty years after, these poems are more relevant than ever, telling of power’s hollow victories, the peculiar burden of joy, how sorrow finds us wherever we may hide.’ Jeet Thayil

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard PrizeWinner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham PrizeA boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unravelling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs. Night of the Living Rez, the book that heralded the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction, is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community.

Winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2008A man bets all he has on a horserace to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines a future together.Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark.

Winner of the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize Winner of the 2019 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize‘I thought to myself that I needed to sing death, perform a rite for death, write death, then bid farewell to it. The way to send death away was to sing with my own death all the death in the sky and on the ground.’The title section of Kim Hyesoon’s visceral Autobiography of Death consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during Korea’s violent contemporary history, but also unveil what Kim calls ‘the structure of death, that we remain living in’. Autobiography of Death at once re-enacts trauma and narrates death – how we die and how we survive within this cyclical structure. In this sea of mirrors, the plural ‘you’ speaks as a body of multitudes that has been beaten, bombed, and buried many times over by history. The volume concludes on the other side of the mirror with ‘Face of Rhythm’, a poem about individual pain, illness, and meditation.

‘Mirror Nation offers the best of what poetry can provide—a new way of seeing.’ Firecracker Awards,Don Mee Choi delves into South Korea’s violent recent history, particularly the military’s massacre of hundreds of students taking part in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, in a poetry of grief that is both personal and collective. Mirror Nation is a sorrowful reflection on the ways in which a place can hold a ‘magnetic field of memory’.‘Don Mee Choi draws on friendships, literature and documentary materials to elucidate the personal griefs we suffer under the assaults of empire. Formally explosive and emotionally harrowing, Mirror Nation is a riveting investigation into the coded images that fuse memories of different times and places.’ Forrest Gander, Poetry Society Book of the Year 2024‘From Ethiopia to Israel, Nicaragua to Afghanistan, she ties headlines and fragments using the equal sign, which she refers to as “a syntax that enables multiple places and times to coexist simultaneously.” Choi skilfully illustrates the cyclical, endless nature of violence to more deeply understand her home, herself, and the world.’ Publishers Weekly

At an otherwise forgettable party in Los Angeles, a queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the centre of everyone’s attention. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. Since she’s an artist, she will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model.Your Love Is Not Good stuffs queer explosive into the cracks between identity and aspiration, between desire and art, and revels in the raining debris.‘Impassioned, wry, compassionate, and hell-raising, this novel illuminates its frangible but resilient world the way a painter uses color on canvas to illuminate the focal point of her vision – building layer after layer of meaning until the image appears as if it has always been there for us to see. A resplendent and fearless book. Must read.’ Kirkus starred review

Winner of the 2025 International Booker PrizeIn the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions have garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India’s most prestigious literary awards.‘A significant presence in Kannada literature, Banu Mushtaq reveals the varied realities of contemporary women with rare talent and art. Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.’ PEN Presents Selection Panel

Published in Australia in 2009, Barley Patch was Murnane''s first book in fourteen years, written after a period in which he had thought he would never write fiction again. The book begins with the question, ‘Must I write?’ What follows is both a chronicle of the images that have endured in the author’s mind and an exploration of their nature. The clarity of the images is extraordinary, as is their range, from Mandrake the Magician to the bachelor uncle kicked in the ‘stones’ as a child, from a cousin’s doll’s house to the mysterious woman who lets her hair down, from the soldier beetle who winks messages from God to the racehorses that run forever in the author’s mind.The narrator lays bare the acts of writing and imagining, finally giving us a glimpse of the mythical place where the characters of fiction dwell before they come into existence in books. With something of the spirit of Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, this is a cornerstone of Murnane''s unclassifiable project, for which he is a deserving Nobel Prize candidate.‘A genius.’ Teju Cole

Winner of the Stella PrizeWinner of the Magarey Medal for BiographyWinner of the Queensland Literary AwardLonglisted for the Women''s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025A larger-than-life champion of Aboriginal self-determination, Tracker Tilmouth was whip-smart, irreverent, startling, and deadly serious, famous for rattling the chains of Australian political life wherever he went. One day he asked a novelist-friend for help with his memoirs. Wright agreed, though she knew it would take a whole community to do his life justice. Thousands of interview hours later, the result was Tracker: a groundbreaking piece of creative oral history, a testament to the power of storytelling in contemporary Aboriginal life, and a living monument to a legendary warrior of conscience.‘A magnificent work of collaborative storytelling.’ The Age (Australia)