The Biggest Books Landing on Your Reading List in 2024

Michael Cunningham’s first novel in nine years gets its UK release this January: a suitably contemplative way to start the year. Day follows a Brooklyn-based family – centring on brother and sister Robbie and Isabel – on the same April date across three years, from 2019 to 2021. You may recall there was a worldwide event taking place in those years. The novel wisely doesn’t go too deep on any pandemic logistics (in fact, the word is never mentioned), but it does attempt to show the consequences of that extraordinary event on this family, as they grapple with the more regular facets of life: heartbreak, stagnant marriages, awkward adolescences. Cunningham deploys his trademark spare prose and wry humour to great effect here.

The small-town crime novel is a very well-represented genre, but Collin Barrett’s debut has an enviable prestige: the author’s short stories have been published to great acclaim in the New Yorker and Irish literary magazine The Stinging Fly. Wild Houses is set in Ballina, County Mayo, where a feud between small-time dealer, Cillian, and local law enforcers, Gabe and Sketch is causing problems (as criminal feuds usually do). But when Cillian’s brother turns up, battered and bruised, on Dev’s doorstep, the isolated Dev is dragged headlong into a family’s revenge quest.

Sanghera follows up Empireland, which explored the impact of imperialism on Britain, with Empireworld, which will explore the impact of imperialism on... well, the world. From religion to food and driving on the left side of the road, the empire’s effect is huge. But how do other countries view those consequences? And, perhaps more importantly, how does Britain?

Kiley Reid’s 2019 debut Such a Fun Age was a – sorry, no other word for it – fun take on race and class, a refreshing outlier in a typically dour genre. Her follow-up, Come and Get It, heads to campus for some lessons in relationships and finance. Millie is about to graduate when a professor offers an unusual way to earn some much-needed money. Where will that newfound side-hustle lead? In Reid’s hands, expect high-wire tension, side-eyeing satire and a heap of jokes.

Édouard Louis’s latest, an autobiographical novel explores some familiar themes to the French author’s work: class, sexuality, society’s inequality. In this, Édouard heads to Amiens for school and university in Paris, taking on a new name and a life. He indulges in activities both aristocratic and seedy in an attempt to rebrand himself. But can you ever truly escape your past? Hm, we’d wager that it’s probably not that simple.

As engaging as doorstoppers can be, there is an unparalleled pleasure in something short and searing. Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s debut is set in modern-day Nigeria, where the country’s criminalisation of same-sex marriage has created a hostile atmosphere for the LGBTQ+ population. After an intimate moment with the family apprentice, Obiefuna is sent to a Christian boarding school by his father. So begins a process of self-discovery. Blessings is told from Obiefuna and his mother’s perspective, a dynamic which has plenty of potential for the profound.

After author Katherine Min’s death, her daughter, Kayla, found a manuscript in her late mother’s drawer. Katherine had been working on a project, and that book turned into The Fetishist, the writer’s first posthumous publication, a revenge story about furious and frustrated musicians. We follow three characters, caught in a high-wire trap: young, impulsive punk singer Kyoko, who blames seductive violinist Daniel for her mother’s death. Then there is Alma, the extraordinary cellist, as beautiful as she is talented, and the love of Daniel’s life. Kidnapping kicks off the main action here, but we soon learn that these characters’ stories go back much further.

It is indeed a revenge story, but it is also a romance and a thriller with observations on race (one particularly memorable passage breaks down the kind of Western men who are attracted to Asian women) and all the better for it: The Fetishist is a pacy, provocative romp through the brilliant and bitter world of classical music. Crucially, it is also funny.

In Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel, Caledonian Road, Campbell Flynn, a celebrity art historian not immune to controversy, is encountering twin threats: middle age and a public downfall. Over the course of a scandal-filled year, Flynn’s high-flying life of privilege will come under scrutiny like never before. O’Hagan told Esquire that Caledonian Road is a “big social novel of our times”: “It draws on years of research in royal palaces, prisons, country estates, in sweatshop factories, and with drill gangs, with oligarchs and migrants, in the art world and the British media.” This state-of-the-nation novel is also set to be essential viewing; the screen rights have been assigned to Johan Renck, who directed the critically-acclaimed miniseries Chernobyl. You can read an exclusive extract in the Spring issue of Esquire, on sale now, and online here.

This is the first book Salman Rushdie has written since he was stabbed onstage at an event in New York state (his novel Victory City was published after the attack, but written beforehand). In Knife, Rushdie writes about the attempt on his life and what happened afterwards: a testament to endurance and the power of writing.

You cannot move for dreary retellings of Shakespeare – hello Anyone but You! – but Allen Bratton’s Henry Henry, a contemporary reimagining of the Henriad, is joyous and moving (and more than a little discomfiting). It is London in the 2010s and Hal, the eldest son of the Duke of Lancaster, is wasting his 20s in the capital. Hal is gay, Catholic, and addicted to cocaine. I know what you’re thinking. That never stopped anyone having fun! And he certainly is, until the realities of family duty and, even worse, the possibility of actual intimacy become unignorable. Bratton, an American writer, has a good eye for the English aristocracy and public school types (not exactly a hard target, but plenty get it wrong) and, more intriguingly, Catholic guilt. Those are – unfortunately? – the exact intersection of my interests but even for the more healthily-adjusted, there is plenty to like in this lively debut.

Nathan Newman’s debut brings together a pleasingly weird bunch of people: a dentist who longs to be an artist (he cannot stop creating pictures of mouths!), a romantically-troubled Imam, a teenager whose nudes have leaked. And then there is 23-year-old Natwest, who is waiting for an embarrassing package to arrive before heading off for university. An ambitious title.

Every few years, we must read a novel about London during a heatwave. This time, it’s Oisín McKenna’s turn. It’s 2019, the hottest June on record, and we’re about to head into a highly-charged weekend between four characters. There’s Maggie, pregnant and down-on-her-luck (though that latter description matches many of this novel’s characters), and Ed, the bike courier who hopes to make a life with her. Then there’s Phil, who has a secret past with Ed, and is currently engaged in an open relationship with Keith. Meanwhile, Phil’s mother is travelling to London to tell her son about her cancer diagnosis.

This is a well-paced, often enveloping entry into London lit, with funny observations about the capital’s inhabitants: there are memorable descriptions of city-workers touching in and out of ticket barriers as well as chaotic, party-centric house shares. It feels like the work of someone who has lived and loved in the capital, and even better, it opened this reader’s eyes to new sides of his home city.

Coco Mellors’ first novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, was a runaway hit: an incisive exploration of relationships and addiction against the backdrop of New York’s art and advertising scene (somehow Mellows made the latter more interesting than the former). Her follow-up charts three sisters – across New York, London, and Los Angeles – as they navigate their personal and professional lives after the death of their sister. Mellors is a warm and glamorous writer, and whether she’s delving into the world of modelling or London’s elite, as she does in Blue Sisters, there is always mischief to be found in her lines.

June marks a hundred years since Franz Kafka’s death (the author died from starvation as a result of tuberculosis at the age of 40). To mark that century, ten authors – including Ali Smith, Elif Batuman and Charlie Kaufman – have penned ten short stories which are deemed Kafaesque. If anything will speak to the general weirdness of our times, this collection, with its AI architects to bureaucratic nightmares, will be it. Though, perhaps, what we shall learn is that all times are a little weird.

Trend alert: novels told over three days, spanning years, about a single, sprawling family. It’s the second on this list! Will it catch on? Perhaps someone from BookTok could tell us. (No need to reach out.) A Person Is a Prayer, from debut author Ammar Kalia, does indeed share the crisp narration and lyricism of Michael Cunningham’s Day, though somewhat expands the focus to take in Kenya, India and England. We meet Bedi and Sushma, who are brought together by an arranged marriage and have three children: Selena, Tara and Rohan. Many years later, they come together to spread their father’s ashes in the Ganges and find that they are asking the same question of life, namely: how do you lead a happy one? Intergenerational tales are ripe for exploring themes of loss and tradition and home and this is no different, though Kalia’s take is refreshingly nuanced and – thank God – funny.

Percival Everett is on a roll. In 2021, the disturbing and darkly comic The Trees, was shortlisted for the Booker. And his 2001 novel, Erasure, was recently adapted by Cord Jefferson into the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction. He is back with JAMES, a retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Everett’s version is told from the perspective of Jim, an enslaved man who follows Finn on his adventures along the Mississippi River. This is likely to be a refreshing take on an old tale and, perhaps in a couple of decades (but more likely sooner), a film.

How has the LGBTQ community shaped popular culture? And what are the moments that helped shift a marginalised community from the sidelines to the mainstream where it is today? England's Dreaming authorJon Savage is set to answer those questions in this survey of the period between 1955 and 1979, focusing on artists in music and wider culture, from Little Richard to David Bowie.

In Lauren Elkin’s Scaffolding, one Paris apartment plays host to two couples, separated by five decades and linked by relationship woes. In 2019, Anna, an astute and introspective psychoanalyst, is processing her miscarriage, a stalling marriage, and befriending her thrilling neighbour, Clementine. In the Seventies, Florence and Henry are also facing challenges in their marriage and questioning the expectations that have been put upon them. Elkin’s writing is invigorating and enlightening: she asks big questions about intimate issues and daringly provides answers. She is unafraid to take a few big swings. Perhaps most thrilling are her observations about contemporary life, like when Anna documents the habits of a neighbouring family: “They have a little girl who likes to dance. Lately it’s been to a Taylor Swift song that she blasts from an iPad, which echoes across the street and into my window, shake shake shake, she sings though she doesn’t understand the lyrics, what is being shaken out and off.” It’s that blend of humour and insight which make Scaffolding such a rich, entertaining read.

Rachel Kushner returns with a typically outlandish premise: a spy novel about a commune of eco-activists. Sadie Smith, a 30-something agent, is sent from America to remote France to penetrate the group and its charming leader, Bruno Lacombe. Will Sadie’s mission succeed? Or will Bruno’s ideas about the path to enlightenment prove irresistible?