Irish fiction
One beautiful thing about books is that every year brings a new crop of brilliant writers you might never have heard of the year before. Another wonderful thing is the regularity with which award-winning maestros return to deliver another banker of a book. A third is the delightful re-emergence of a favourite writer after a long, seemingly fallow period. And 2022 has something of each for everyone in the audience.
The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. The Queen of Dirt Island (Transworld, August) by Donal Ryan is a celebration of fierce, loyal love and the powerful stories that bind generations of women together.
In a time of plague and terror, three men vow to leave the world behind them in Haven (Picador, August) by Emma Donoghue. They set sail in a small boat, in search of a lonely rock in the ocean, the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael.
Again, Rachel (Penguin, February) by Marian Keyes is the long-awaited sequel to Rachel's Holiday, which was published 25 years ago. Rachel Walsh is back, in Cloisters. But not as a patient. This time she's part of the staff.
Idol (Doubleday, May) by Louise O'Neill interrogates our relationship with our heroes and explores the world of online influencers.
We will look in more detail in subsequent articles at 2022's debut authors but suffice to say that there is a lot to look forward to. Edel Coffey, well known as an arts journalist and previously as a book publicist, crosses over with her first novel, Breaking Point (Sphere, January), in which a mother goes on trial after leaving her baby in the car on the hottest day of the year.
How to Gut a Fish by Sheila Armstrong (Bloomsbury, February) is said to be a dazzling and disquieting collection of stories, its praises sung loudly by Roddy Doyle, Claire Fuller and Jan Carson.
In The Truth Will Out (Orion, March) by Rosemary Hennigan, an actor lands the leading role in a hugely successful but controversial play based on the true story of a mysterious death.
In The Quiet Whispers Never Stop (John Murray, April) by Olivia Fitzsimons, a mother and, years later, her daughter plot to escape the stultifying, troubled North.
None of This Is Serious (Canongate, April) by Catherine Prasifka, Sally Rooney's sister-in-law, finds Sophie feeling left behind as Dublin student life is ending and her friends seem to have everything figured out.
Polluted Sex (Influx Press, April) by Lauren Foley is fearless in its depiction of women's bodies and sexuality, offering an unflinching view of Irish girl- and womanhood.
The Deadwood Encore (HarperCollins, April) by Fish short story prizewinner Kathleen Murray looks fun. Frank Walsh, seventh son of a seventh son, should have inherited his late father's legendary healing power, but instead he's stuck on ringworm and warts.
Ruth & Pen (Penguin, May) is the debut novel by Emilie Pine, whose essay collection Notes to Self was the Irish Book of the Year in 2019. Set over one day in Dublin in 2019, it's make or break for the relationships of the two women in the title.
The Midnight House (Headline Review, May) by Amanda Geard is a story of family secrets, war, love and sacrifice, moving between Ireland and London in 1940, 1958 and 2019.
Niamh Mulvey asks in Hearts and Bones: Love Stories for Late Youth (Picador, June) who we are now that we've brought the old gods down as she tackles friendship, family and love.
The Amusements (Sandycove, June) by Aingeala Flannery, a series of interconnecting stories set in Tramore, lifts the lid on some of the darker aspects of Irish society. Think Liz Strout meets Donal Ryan, say her publishers.
Hawk Mountain (Doubleday Ireland, July) by Conner Habib is a disturbing and emotionally riveting horror debut about partners and friends, fathers and sons, bullies and scapegoats.
There's Been A Little Incident (Apollo, September) by Alice Ryan, the daughter of novelist James Ryan and former Irish Times literary editor Caroline Walsh, is a story of family, grief, and the ways we come together when all seems lost.
Anna Burns's 2018 Booker Prize for Milkman obliged publishers to pay more attention to Northern Ireland. Next year's crop of titles by Northern writers is a bumper one and possibly a vintage one. The Raptures (Doubleday, January) by Jan Carson is a worthy successor to her brilliant novel, The Fire Starters. When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has extraordinary consequences.
Dance Move (Stinging Fly Press/Picador, February) by Wendy Erskine, the Belfast writer's keenly-awaited follow up to her debut Sweet Home, will consolidate her reputation as one of our finest short-story writers, if the other stories are as good as Nostalgie, which we published last summer.
These Days (Faber, March) by Lucy Caldwell follows two sisters as they try to survive the Belfast Blitz.
Trespasses (Bloomsbury, April) is the story of an illicit love affair during the Troubles by Louise Kennedy, whose debut short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, announced a major new talent.
Spies in Canaan (Bloomsbury, May) by David Park, a highly talented but low-profile writer, is a bold and unsettling parable about guilt, atonement and redemption set in the US.
Lenny (New Island, March) by Laura McVeigh, bestselling author of Under the Almond Tree, is also set in the US, a tale of family, nature and time.
Edith (Lilliput, May) by Martina Devlin is based on the life of Edith Somerville, of Somerville and Ross fame, after the death of her writing partner Violet Martin and the outbreak of civil war.
Set in 1994, Factory Girls (John Murray, June) by Michelle Gallen, author of the brilliant Big Girl, Small Town, sees three students get summer jobs in their border town's shirt factory as things start to come apart at the seams.
Truth Be Told (Macmillan Children's, April) by Sue Divin is a YA novel about two teens from very different backgrounds with one surprising thing in common.
This Train Is For (No Alibis, June) is Bernie McGill's first short story collection since Sleepwalkers, was short listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize in 2014.
A Streak of Madness and The Last Word (Turnpike), a reissued novel and story collection by Ian Cochrane, continue the publisher's championing of a witty chronicler of working-class rural Protestantism.
Headwreck (Lilliput, August) by Emer Martin is both a stand-alone work and continuation of her fictionalised epic family saga, The Cruelty Men.
Instant Fires (New Island, September) by Andrew Meehan is the tale of two lost souls, Ute and Seanie, in Heidelberg, Germany.
The Colony (Faber, February) by Audrey Magee, whose debut The Undertaking featured on several prize lists, is a novel about a painter and a linguist seeking to capture an island's essence, and the islanders' response.
Poguemahone (Unbound, April) by Patrick McCabe is "a wild, 600-page ballad, narrated in a kind of free verse monologue" by an Irish emigrant in 1970s Kilburn up to the present day.
Summoned home to the Soviet Union while surveying a bog in the Irish Midlands in 1950, the title character in The Geometer Lobachevsky (Tuskar Rock, April) by Adrian Duncan knows a death sentence when he sees it and stays put. An intriguing follow-up by the author of Loves N otes from a German Building Site and A Sabbatical in Leipzig.
We Were Young (W&N, February) by Sunday Times Short Story Award winner Niamh Campbell is her ambitious follow-up to her debut This Happy. Cormac, a talented but directionless photographer approaching 40, meets Caroline, a talented younger woman, and embarks on a miniature odyssey of intimacy.
Homesickness (Jonathan Cape, March) by Colin Barrett is his long-awaited follow-up to Young Skins, his debut collection which won the 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and the Guardian first book award.
Based on a true story of mutiny and shipwreck, The Night Ship (Canongate, August) by Jess Kidd tells of two children living 300 years apart, yet connected in unexpected ways.
In All Along the Echo (Atlantic, April) by Danny Denton, The Stinging Fly editor's follow-up to 2018's The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow, a radio talk-show host and his producer take a road trip across Ireland which becomes a surreal quest to discover whether our lives are more than the stories we tell.
The Writer's Torch: Reading Stories from The Bell, edited by Phyllis Boumans, Elke D'hoker and Declan Meade (Stinging Fly Press, April) is an anthology featuring 18 short stories from the 1940s and 50s originally published in The Bell magazine, with responses by contemporary writers.
Artists Bell and Sigh build and weather a life together in Seven Steeples (Tramp Press, April) by Sara Baume, a novel about the transformation of love and the self over the years.
The Horse of Selene by Juanita Casey (Tramp Press, June) is, Mary Burke argues in her afterword, the lost connection between JM Synge and Kevin Barry. Written in just six weeks during the summer of 1964 while the author camped on Achill Island, it is, the publishers claim, a masterpiece.
A horror story about being bound by the blood knot of family, Ringu meets Enduring Love in Sophie White's new novel, Where I End (Tramp Press, October).
Crime fiction titles to look out for include The Empty Room (Constable, March) by Brian McGilloway, about a mother's search for her missing 19-year-old daughter; The Island (Orion, May), Adrian McKinty's follow-up to his bestselling The Chain, another high-concept thriller where a fatal incident spirals out of control; The Last to Disappear (Quercus, May) by Jo Spain, a chilling new thriller set in the frozen heart of Finland; and The Interview (Sandycove, March) by Gillian Perdue, where a 14-year old-girl is found covered in someone else's blood and her stepfather is missing.
Irish nonfiction
As the 50th anniversary approaches this month, On Bloody Sunday (Monoray, January) by Julieann Campbell – whose teenage uncle was the first to be killed that day – tells the story of an atrocity which reverberated around the world through the words of survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses and politicians.
Based on over 130 hours of interviews and spanning three decades, Bessborough: Three Women's Stories of Love and Loss from an Irish Mother and Baby Institution (Hachette, April) by Deirdre Finnerty will tell the stories of three women who each spent time in Bessborough House in Cork city, which was in operation from 1922 until 1998.
Quinn (Merrion, April) by Emmy-nominated film producer Trevor Birney reveals the extraordinary story of grit and greed on the Border which led to a vicious campaign of violence to regain control of the Quinn empire.
My Fourth Time, We Drowned (Fourth Estate, March) by Sally Hayden is a shocking investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa, one of the most devastating human rights disasters in history. The Irish Times reporter follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the UN.
I Don't Want to Talk About Home (Doubleday, July) by Irish-Syrian writer Suad Aldarra reframes the Syrian migrant narrative.
Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP (Faber, May) by Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil.
Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution (Yale, March) by Terrance Dooley and Left Without a Handkerchief (Lilliput, May) by Robert O'Byrne explore the fate of the owners of Big Houses whose homes were burned by the IRA in the 1920s.
Kilmichael: The Story of an Ambush (IAP, May) by Eve Morrison is a new account of the most controversial military engagement in the War of Independence, featuring previously unpublished interviews with veterans.
The Lives of Eoin MacNeill: The Pen and the Sword (Cork University Press, February) edited by Conor Mulvagh and Emer Purcell, considers one of the founding figures of the State.
The Irish Difference: A Tumultuous History of Ireland's Breakup with Britain (Atlantic, January) by historian Fergal Tobin explores the forces and features that led to Irish independence.
Ireland's Secret War (Gill, April) by Marc McMenamin is the story of Dan Bryan, G2 and the lost tapes that reveal the hunt for Ireland's Nazi spies.
Sandycove will publish a significant but as yet untitled new book about the future of Northern Ireland by prize-winning scholar and constitutional adviser, Prof Brendan O’Leary, in September 2022.
United Nation (Gill, May) by Frank Connolly makes the case for integrating Ireland. Can Ireland Be One? (Merrion, September) by Malachi O'Doherty explores just how practical a united Ireland would be, and wonders how well the different parts would fit together.
Negative Space (Merrion, May) by leading art critic Cristín Leach marries memoir and personal essay to explore writing, art, resilience and the unravelling of a broken heart.
Roe McDermott’s as yet untitled debut essay collection (Tramp Press, August) investigates the intersection of PTSD and creativity and challenges the perception of the disorder as predominantly afflicting men and war veterans, re-centring women within the politics of trauma.
Fierce Appetites by Elizabeth Boyle (Penguin, March) is a scholarly but deeply personal essay collection by a passionate academic making sense of her present through the writings of the past.
Yeah, But Where Are You Really From? How Dublin Made Me - And What I've Learned Along the Way by Marguerite Penrose is an account of growing up black and Irish, and with a disability.
All My Friends Are Invisible (Quercus, February) by YouTube star Jonathan Joly is a childhood memoir about being different, being bullied and learning to cope.
I Am Miss D Amy Dunne (Gill, March), co-written with RTÉ legal affairs correspondent Orla O'Donnell, is the memoir of Amy Dunne, who as the 17-year-old Miss D, had to go to court to fight for the right to an abortion when she discovered the baby she was carrying had a fatal abnormality.
Any Girl (Hachette Ireland, February) is a memoir of surviving exploitation in the Irish sex trade by Mia Döring, a psychotherapist specialising in sexual trauma. Sins of the Father (Bonnier, February) is Shaneda Daly's memoir of surviving a decade of daily abuse by her father.
In The Last Good Funeral of the Year (riverrun, March), the death before her time of an old friend forces Ed O'Loughlin to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and novelist in a new, colder light.
The Stream of Everything (Gill, May) by John Connell, author of The Cow Book, finds him canoeing the length of the Camlin river with childhood friend and fellow writer Peter Geoghegan and reflecting on life, nature and everything.
Trouble (Monoray, April) by stand-up comic Marise Gaughan is the coming-of-age memoir of a girl imploding through trying to make sense of her father's suicide.
All Down Darkness Wide (Jonathan Cape, July) by poet and Irish Times poetry critic Seán Hewitt is a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and an exploration of queer identity and trauma.
Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood (Tinder Press, August) by award-winning author Kit de Waal is her memoir of being caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham.
Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber (Penguin, June) by Sean O'Driscoll examines the extraordinary story of Rose Dugdale, English heiress turned IRA activist.
When she died in November 2020, Jan Morris was considered one of Britain's best-loved writers. Jan Morris: Life from Both Sides, A Biography (Scribe, September) by Paul Clements, travel writer and Irish Times local history reviewer, is the first full account of her remarkable life.
In Search & Rescue: Stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Truth about R116 (Merrion, April), Lorna Siggins, former Irish Times marine correspondent, exposes the shocking truth behind the Irish Coast Guard Rescue 116 helicopter crash in 2017, and investigates other tragedies and triumphs.
Dean Ruxton has often struck gold mining the Irish Times archives for his Lost Leads series. His new book, Death on Ireland's Eye: The Victorian Murder Trial that Scandalised a Nation (Gill, February) studies a suspicious death in Howth that transfixed Ireland in 1852.
The centenary of the first publication of James Joyce's Ulysses has not gone unnoticed. Look out for a host of titles, including Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin, January) by Terence Killeen, with a foreword by Colm Tóibín; Ulysses: A Reader's Odyssey (New Island, January) by Daniel Mulhall; Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses (OUP Oxford, February) by Sam Slote, Marc A. Mamigonian, and John Turner; Consuming Joyce: 100 Years of Ulysses in Ireland (Bloomsbury Academic, February) by John McCourt; and One Hundred Years of James Joyce's Ulysses (Penn State Uni Press, June) edited by Colm Toibin.
Fresh from the success of his second novel, White City, Kevin Power, who also teaches creative writing at Trinity College, addresses the art of literary criticism in The Written World (Lilliput, May); The Lives of the Saints (Faber, April) are Sebastian Barry's lectures as Laureate of Irish Fiction; Neil Jordan: Works for the Page (Cork University Press, ) by Val Nolan focuses not on his filmmaking but on his writing. Walter Macken: Critical Perspectives (Cork University Press, March), edited by Sandra Heinen and Katharina Rennhak, explores his enormous success on the stage and as a writer of fiction.
This Woman's Work: Essays on Music (White Rabbit, April) edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon features award-winning female creators, such as Anne Enright, writing about the female artists that matter to them and their own personal experiences.
The Anomaly, a million-copy bestseller and winner of France's Prix Goncourt, asks: what would you do, if there were two of you?
The Politics of a Pandemic (Gill, April) by Jack Horgan-Jones and Hugh O'Connell is an in-depth study of the Irish Government's handling of Covid-19.
Did you know that 80 per cent of our ageing biology is within our control? Age Proof by Prof Rose Anne Kenny (Bonnier) seeks to ensure that we live longer, happier and healthier lives.
In Search of Madness (Gill, April) by Prof Brendan Kelly is a psychiatrist's travels through the history of mental illness.
Mum Dying: The Musical (April, New Island) by OR Melling is a tale of death and the madness it can inflict on families. An eccentric, vivacious Irish matriarch with terminal cancer is nursed at home by her 10 adult children.
Look Here: On the Pleasures of Observing the City (Daunt, May) by Ana Kinsella is a celebration of city life, a layered portrait of London and its people that urges us to slow down, look closer and find beauty.
The Game: A Lifetime Inside and Outside the White Lines (Merrion, May) by Tadgh Coakley, a combined memoir and essay collection, contemplates how sport has shaped his life, and ponders its influences, good and bad, on our wider world. A History of the GAA in 100 Objects (Merrion, October) by National Museum curator Siobhán Doyle is a vibrant and evocative history of the GAA told through artefacts, from a 15th-century cow-hair hurling ball to the Liam McCarthy Cup. England and Eternity: A Book of Cricket (Apollo, August) by Declan Kiberd is a teasing but affectionate celebration of the game by one of Ireland's greatest critics.
International fiction
Douglas Stuart, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize with Shuggie Bain, returns with Young Mungo (Picador, April), a portrayal of dangerous first love and working-class life.
The Slowworm's Song (Sceptre, March) by Andrew Miller, Costa Award-winning author of Pure, is a tale of guilt and the search for atonement. An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic who has just begun to form a bond with the daughter he barely knows receives a summons to an inquiry into an incident during the Troubles.
People Person (Trapeze, April) by Candice Carty-Williams, is about an ageing influencer with a terrible boyfriend who is flung back in contact with her four half-siblings, is the follow-up to her brilliant debut Queenie.
Careering (Sphere, March) by Daisy Buchanan is a hard look at the often toxic relationship working women have with their dream jobs.
I loved the Booker-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz and I also like the sound of Here Goes Nothing (Sceptre, May). Angus Mooney is not happy – he's been murdered. He feels humiliated – he's never even believed in an afterlife. And his pregnant widow and his murderer are getting a little too close for his liking.
William Boyd has had great success with whole-life novels The New Confessions, Sweet Caress and my favourite, Any Human Heart. The Romantic (Bloomsbury, October) looks at one man's journey from his birth in 1799 to his death in 1882.
Bournville (Viking, November) by Jonathan Coe follows one family in that Birmingham suburb from VE Day to 2020. French Braid (Chatto & Windus, March) by Anne Tyler is also a family saga, except it starts in 1959.
The award-winning author of Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel, returns with Sea of Tranquility (Picador, April), a novel of time travel that captures the reality of our current moment.
To Paradise (Picador January) by Hanya Yanagihara, acclaimed author of A Little Life, spans three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment.
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Corsair, April) is described as a sibling novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Companion Piece (Hamish Hamilton, April) by Ali Smith is a follow-up to her seasonal quartet.
Moon Witch, Tiger King by Marlon James is the second book in his Dark Star trilogy, his African Game of Thrones.
Elizabeth Finch (Jonathan Cape, April) by Julian Barnes is "more than a novel", apparently. "It's a loving tribute to philosophy, a careful evaluation of history" and more.
One Day I Shall Astonish the World (Viking, April) by the always entertaining Nina Stibbe is a story of female friendship.
A Previous Life (Bloomsbury, January) by Edmund White is pitched as a daring, category-confounding and ruthlessly funny novel, exploring polyamory and bisexuality, ageing and love.
Love Marriage (Virago, February) by Monica Ali, bestselling author of Booker-shortlisted Brick Lane, is about family, love and the state of Britain.
Fight Night (Faber, May) by Miriam Toews sees Swiv suspended from school and getting some unorthodox life lessons from her grandmother.
Take My Hand (Phoenix, May) by Dolen Perkins Valdez is based on a true story about the sterilisation of poor black girls in the US in the 1970s.
Debuts to look out for include Black Cake (Penguin, February) by Charmaine Wilkerson, soon to be a major Hulu series produced by Oprah. It spans 60 years in the life of one Caribbean/American family. We Are the Brennans (Macmillan, February) by Tracey Lange explores the power of love in an Irish-American family torn apart by secrets. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador, March) by Maddie Mortimer is an acclaimed coming-of-age novel at the end of a life. The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois (Fourth Estate, January) by prize-winning poet Honoree Fannone Jeffers is a story of love and race in the US. Yinka, Where is Your Huzband by Lizzie Damiloloa Blackburn is the story of a 31-year-old British-Nigerian woman in need of a date for her cousin's wedding. When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton, February) by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is said to combines the richness of myth with razor-sharp observation of life in Trinidad. Memphis (John Murray, April) by Tara M Stringfellow is an ode to that city and a celebration of a Southern black family there.
I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam (Bluemoose, March) is the story of Teha'amana, Tahitian muse and child-bride to Paul Gauguin, conveyed through the myths and legends of the islands. Nightcrawling (Bloomsbury, May) by Leila Mottley is about a young black woman who walks the streets of Oakland, California, and stumbles headlong into police corruption and the failure of the US justice system. A Terrible Kindness (Faber, January) by Jo Browning Wroe explores the aftermath of the Aberfan disaster.
There are lots of big names whose works are coming out in translation. Days of Old (Lilliput, May) by Maylis Besserie, tr. Clíona Ní Ríordáin, is a fictionalised account of Samuel Beckett's last days in a French retirement home. The Anomaly (Michael Joseph, January) by Hervé le Tellier tr. Adriana Hunter, a million-copy bestseller and winner of France's Prix Goncourt, asks: what would you do, if there were two of you? Seven Empty Houses (Oneworld, March), a short story collection by Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell; The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street (Scribe, February), a Russian adventure by Pieter Waterdrinker, tr. Paul Evans; The Barefoot Woman (Daunt, April) by Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Jordan Stump. All The Lovers In The Night (Picador, May) by Breasts and Eggs author Mieko Kawakami, tr. Sam Bett and David Boyd; Paradais (Fitzcarraldo, March) by Hurricane Season author Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes.
Winnie M Li wrote an acclaimed debut novel, Dark Chapter, about rape an recovery, based on her own life experience. She returns with Complicit (Orion, June), about Hollywood's sleazy underbelly. The Men (Granta, June) by Sandra Newman imagines a world without men. Booth (Serpent's Tail, March) by Karen Joy Fowler is the story of the family, whose most notorious member assassinated Lincoln.
International nonfiction
Hunting Ghislaine (Hodder & Stoughton, April) by John Sweeney tells the extraordinary, shocking story of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former partner of disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and the daughter of media baron Robert Maxwell.
Based on the BBC's most poular podcast ever, The Missing Cryptoqueen (WH Allen, June) by Jamie Bartlett tells the unbelievable story of the rise, disappearance and fall of Dr Ruja Ignatova, the inside story of the world's biggest crypto con.
The Diaries of Alan Rickman (Canongate, October), an edited collection of the actor's 27 volumes, are spiky, gossipy and incredibly funny, we are promised. Other actors spilling the beans include Bob Odenkirk with Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir (Hodder, March); Managing Expectations by Minnie Driver (Manila, May); Mean Baby (Virago, May) by Selma Blair; and Sheila Hancock with Old Rage (Bloomsbury, June). Ten Steps to Nanette (Allen & Unwin, March) by Hannah Gadsby is the memoir of the award-winning Australian comedian whose stand-up show took the Edinburgh Fringe Festival then Netflix by storm.
Good Pop Bad Pop (Cape, May)is the wonderfully titled and keenly awaited memoir by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker. Nick Cave sat down with Irish journalist Sean O'Hagan to produce Faith, Hope and Carnage (Canongate, September), a meditation on faith, art, music and grief.
From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies (White Rabbit, February) is the story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family.
Several books are coming out to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27th, including The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation (William Collins) by Rosemary Sullivan; Always Remember Your Name: The Children who Survived Auschwitz (Bonnier) by Andra & Tatiana Bucci; and The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz: A Powerful True Story of Hope and Survival (HarperCollins) by Thomas Geve, with Charlie Inglefield.
The Story of Russia (Bloomsbury, October) by Orlando Figes tells the story of a hugely influential nation from its foundations to the present.
China is the focus of The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and China (Public Affairs, April) by former Australian leader Kevin Rudd; and No Escape (William Collins, May) by Nury Turkel, a personal account by a leading Uyghur activist of China's oppression of his people.
The troubled global political climate is addressed by How Civil Wars Start (Viking, January) by Barbara F Walter; Helen Thompson's Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (OUP Oxford, February); and Liberalism and Its Discontents (Profile, March) by Francis Fukuyama.
A Spectre Haunting Europe (Head of Zeus, May) by China Mieville is the acclaimed author's take on Marx's Communist Manifesto.
In Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet (Penguin, May), George Monbiot sets out how we can and must transform the way we grow food. Invisible Child (Hutchinson, January) is a true story of poverty, survival and hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott.
Burning Questions (Chatto & Windus, March) is a collection of essays from 2004–2021 by Margaret Atwood; In the Margins (Europa Editions, March) by Elena Ferrante explores the pleasures of reading and writing.
I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (William Collins, May) by Miranda Seymour is an intimate biography of the acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Enough: The Violence Against Women and How to End It (William Collins, April) is by barrister Harriet Johnson.
Menopausing (HarperCollins, May) by Davina McCall addresses a fact of life for half the population often approached with shame, fear, misinformation or silence.
In Love (Granta, April) by Amy Bloom is a memoir of love and loss about the assisted death of her terminally ill husband Brian.
The Instant by Amy Liptrot (Canongate, March) is an honest account of being single in your early 30s. Black and Female (Faber, August) by Tsitsi Dangarembga offers a feminist vision of Black liberation.
The state Britain finds it in is addressed in several books, including Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History Of Britain (WH Allen, May) by Hannah Rose Woods; Geography Is Destiny: Britain's Place in the World, a 10,000 Year History (Profile, May) by Ian Morris; Chums: How a tiny group of Oxford Tories took over Britain (Profile, June) by Simon Kuper; Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals (Profile, March) by Oliver Bullough; and The BBC: A People's History (Profile, January) by David Hendy. The Prince Rupert Hotel for the Homeless: A True Story of Love and Compassion Amid a Pandemic (William Collins, June) by Christina Lamb is a moving account of homeless people's lives being transformed during a Covid lockdown.
As part of Penguin's Black Britain: Writing Back series, Bernardine Evaristo has written new introductions to A Black Boy at Eton by Dillibe Onyeama; Growing Out: Black Hair and Black Pride in the Swinging 60s by Barbara Blake Hannah; Britons Through Negro Spectacles by ABC Merriman-Labor; My Fathers' Daughter by Hannah-Azieb Pool; and Sequins for a Ragged Hem by Amryl Johnson.
