‘A magnificent farrago of best guesses, classical locations, biblical myth and not a lot of sea’

An interesting and entertaining treatise from the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

James is honest and generous in his shifting perspectives on an attack on eight gay men in Jamaica

The female protagonist, Dilara, feels like a bodiless mouthpiece being used to tell the story of Erdogan’s Turkey

In his follow-up to An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, Eoghan Daltun shows how policy shifts in land managment could work in practice across Ireland

The Occidental Book of the Dead reads like what you might get if Ishmael Reed and Walter Mosley had scripted Chinatown

Josh Holton delivers an impressive autofictional debut; Alex Hyde creates a portrait of two very different artists

Through the seemingly dry framework of grammar, the author takes us on an intellectually stunning and thrillingly alive journey

A debut novel that attempts to nail marriage and the commercial wedding industry as a suffocating experience for women

It’s difficult to imagine a better account of the deeply repressed Eton provost and horror writer’s life ever being written, writes John Connolly

Anna Arno examines the life and work of the man who wrote some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century

What begins as a lightly satirical account of the publishing world evolves in profound ways

However, the former Sinn Féin MEP and MLA’s autobiography reveals little about the other parts of her life and feels incomplete as a result

Oran Doyle’s compelling debut Give Me ’Til Midnight is a refreshing take on the now-familiar time-loop plot

This strange beast projects Cusk’s tortured authorial persona on to a woman seen everywhere

If endurance is the only true test of literary quality, then the jury is still out

The author is a witty, intelligent and perceptive guide to the increasingly grotesque work of having a self in public

Interviews with ordinary Ukrainians light up this book’s pages, although it contains a strange fascination with ornithological detail

Richard Coker makes a persuasive case for us to live our lives in a way that aligns with what will survive us in the end

The author is toying with us and our contemporary desire for total knowability