New year- new you- new authors- new books!
2018 looks set to be an exciting year for book lovers with the arrival of many new adaptations for film and television, and so many brand new authors to adopt as our favourites.
If you love discovering new writers, and being one of the first to read debut novels, this list is for you. The excitement of delving into a freshly created world of fiction is ours for the taking thanks to these fresh, new authors.
Keep your eyes out for their books when they’re released, or pre-order now!
Jessie Greengrass
The first of our new authors is Jessie Greengrass. Philosophy graduate Jessie Greengrass found acclaim through her short stories centred on loss and isolation. The writer is already an award winning short story author; Greengrass earned Book of the Year in the Telegraph and The Economist, awarded the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.
Her 2018 novel Sight is due for release in February.
“A woman recounts her progress to motherhood, while remembering the death of her own mother, and the childhood summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother. Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history… What emerges is the realisation that while the search for understanding might not lead us to an absolute truth, it is an end in itself.”
Emma Glass
Emma Glass grew up in Swansea, Wales, initially studying literature and creative writing, then taking a side swerve to study nursing in hopes of working in nursing research. The world of fiction continued to call her, however, and the fresh new talent kept writing. Glass’s use of language is unashamedly James Joyce inspired, and is so poetic and so dark that one cannot help being drawn in.
Peach is released in January 2018.
“Something has happened to Peach. It hurts to walk but she staggers home to parents that don’t seem to notice. They can’t keep their hands off each other and, besides, they have a new infant, sweet and wobbly as a jelly baby. Peach must patch herself up alone so she can go to college and see her boyfriend, Green. But sleeping is hard when she is haunted by the gaping memory of a mouth, and working is hard when burning sausage fat fills her nostrils, and eating is impossible when her stomach is swollen tight as a drum. In this dazzling debut, Emma Glass articulates the unspeakable with breath-taking clarity and verve. Intensely physical, with rhythmic, visceral prose, Peach marks the arrival of a visionary new voice.”
Gaël Faye
A wonderful new novel from another of our new authors, Gaë Faye. Gaël Faye is a French-Rwandan ex-investment banker-now-rapper, born in Burundi to a French father and Rwandan mother. He says he is influenced by some hip hop culture, and Creole literature in his music and writing. His gentle but meaningful prose has already made him an award winner, winning him the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2016.
Small Countries is due for release in June.
“Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in the comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother, and little sister, Ana, is something close to paradise. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country – and their peaceful idyll will soon shatter when Burundi, and neighbouring Rwanda, are brutally hit by war and genocide. Small Country describes an end of innocence as seen through the eyes of a young child caught in the maelstrom of history. A luminous novel of extraordinary power, it is a stirring tribute not only to a dark chapter in Africa’s past, but to the bright days that preceded it.”
Rachel Heng
Rachel Heng was born in Singapore, and studied comparative literature and society in the US. She briefly worked as an investment manager in London and is now pursuing an MFA in fiction and screenwriting. Heng is another author in this list who found her literary feet with short stories, and been awarded literary prizes for that work. Speaking of inspirations, Heng has remarked: “I wanted to write about our societal obsession with youth and eternal life, our relationships with our oozing, shedding, deteriorating bodies, our age-old fear of mortality.”
Suicide Club is released in July.
“Some time in the near future, thanks to medical technology HealthTechTM, immortality is now within humanity’s grasp. But faced with declining economic productivity, falling birth rates and a severely ageing population, the Ministry has become the all-powerful arbiter of how healthcare resources are allocated. The Suicide Club hasn’t always been an activist group. Initially, it was a group of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden, hedonistic activities: performances of live music, traditional meals of the most artery-clogging kind, irresponsible orgies . . . You name it. Now branded terrorists, anyone found guilty of wanting the right to die as they choose will find themselves fast-tracked to the Third Wave and condemned to immortality…”
David Chariandy
David Chariandy grew up in Toronto, and currently lives and works in Vancouver where he teaches English with a focus on Anglo-Caribbean literature. His debut novel Soucouyant was received with critical acclaim, and gained nominations from 11 literary awards. Brother is his second novel but the first to be published in the UK.
Brother is due for release in March.
“Michael and Francis are the bright, ambitious sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of houses and towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, the brothers battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them on a daily basis. While Francis dreams of a future in music, Michael’s dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their school, whose eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic event. Beautifully written and extraordinarily powerful, Brother is a novel of deep humanity which provides a profound insight into love, family, opportunity and grief.”
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