Madame Sosostris & The Festival for the Broken Hearted by Ben Okri (Head of Zeus, £14.99)
Madame Sosostris, that “famous clairvoyante” who first appears with tarot cards and a bad cold in TS Eliot’s Modernist masterpiece The Waste Land, is resuscitated here in this surreal new novel by Ben Okri. Introduced as “a migration from a famous poem”, she arrives as a special guest at a Midsummer Night’s Dream-style costume party, in celebration of “a festival for the broken-hearted”. The festival has been organised by Viv, on the 20th anniversary of the day her husband left her, and takes place in a fairytale chateau in the South of France, where various famous characters from literary and art history waltz through the narrative in mysterious fancy dress. The novel is vague at times, but full of rich hallucinatory imagery and enjoyably vibrant symbolism. Maija Makela
Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed and Wonder by Philip Marsden (Granta, £20)
Beginning in the author’s native Cornwall, Under a Metal Sky takes the reader through a strange and mystical history of metals that is as dark as it is dazzling. Probing the untold geological stories of the minerals beneath our feet, Marsden follows a meandering quest across Europe that uncovers histories of peat extraction in the Netherlands, gold-mining in Georgia and a rich web of mercury, radium, silver and more in the lands in-between. With a narrative as compelling and sometimes fantastical as a novel, Marsden never shies away from the darker counterparts to these histories of scientific discovery, and the result is a timely reminder of the dangers of an economy of extraction, detailed in a similarly dreamlike prose to Robert McFarlane and WG Sebald. Maija Makela
Do Not Try to Become a Buddha by Myozan Ian Kilroy (Wisdom Publications, £21)
Devotional, biographical and historical in content, Do Not Try to Become a Buddha is an evocative and corrective guide to the practice and history of Zen Buddhism in Ireland. Kilroy’s reflections on the nature of reality, emerging from his own teaching and practice, are challenging, enlightening and compellingly written. The survey of the history and currency of Zen Buddhism in Ireland with which the book closes gives voice to the spiritual lineage and present realities of a significant religious minority in a cultural landscape still dominated by Christian structures and norms. Written with candour and unaffected beauty, this book will prove to be a gracious and rigorous introductory text for anyone interested in the principles, practice and place of Zen Buddhism in the Irish context. Andrew Roycroft
Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto (Magpie, £16.99)
Funmi Fetto’s debut collection of short stories will draw the reader into the compelling lives of nine Nigerian women. These are women who confront the cultural expectations of worlds occupied by religious fanatics, scam artists, ignorance, secrecy, violence, longing, and deadbeat husbands. Our nine women discover that while rejecting tradition may bring freedom, it comes at the cost of loneliness and isolation. The collection gains momentum as the stories progress, ending on a high with the remarkable The Tail of a Small Lizard. However, the stories are often let down by undercooked endings that do not parallel the rich complexity that the author brings to her characters and the worlds in which they reside. Nonetheless, Funmi proves herself with this collection, as a writer with great potential. Brigid O’Dea
Daybreak in Gaza, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller (Saqi Books, £14.99)
Daybreak in Gaza is an anthology that seeks to preserve stories of Palestinian lives and cultures, before and during Israel’s genocidal campaign. There are nearly a hundred accounts, from memoirs and prose poems to diary entries and transcribed voice notes. The contributors are artists, doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers; people who stayed and people who left; people who survived and people who didn’t. A man lists the possessions in his family home, and wonders if it would have been better to stay among them and die. A peace activist describes the moment his seven-year-old-son said he wanted to be a martyr. These are stories you don’t read in the news. Recording them is an act of resistance against erasure. Ruby Eastwood
Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo (Faber & Faber, £9.99)
First published in 1977 and now reissued as a modern classic, this is a story about colonisation and the black diaspora. Sissie travels to Germany from Ghana on a student scholarship and is frustrated by how she is seen as a black woman before anything else. Later in London, observing the wretchedness of black people’s lives and their struggle to adapt to the cold climate, yet remain in thrall to their host country, the author writes, “Sissie bled as she tried to take the scene in.” There is an angry undertone throughout which becomes more marked when the author changes from prose to verse. She writes a letter to a lover and admonishes him for staying in exile when he has duties to his homeland, but does not send it. Ilse McDonagh
