This year, 2015, has already seen the publication of highly anticipated new works by global literary giants such as Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Milan Kundera, and Harper Lee. Several other big novels have already been announced, among them Salman Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and Jonathan Franzen’s Purity. But these are not all. In the five remaining months of the year, several other exciting new works are also scheduled for publication. Here’s your shopping list from around the world (and that’s not counting the new English translations of two of Haruki Murakami’s earlist novellas.
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (August), Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is remembered for her facility with locating horror in the most ordinary situations. Her 1948 short story, The Lottery, is a classic, and one of the most widely anthologised tales in the history of US literature. Her best-selling novel The Haunting of Hill House has been lauded by Stephen King as “one of the finest books ever to come of the (horror) genre” and The New Republic has called her the “Queen of the American Gothic.” Fifty years after her death, her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt are publishing an edited selection of 30 of her short stories and non-fiction, most of which has never been published before.
The Book of Memory (September), Petina Gappah
Zimbabwean-born Petina Gappah’s first published work came in 2009, a collection of short stories titled An Elegy for Easterly. It won The Guardian’s First Book Award for that year. Twelve of its 13 stories are set in Zimbabwe, and feature lives of characters against the backdrop of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
At the time that her first book came out, Gappah objected to being marketed as “the voice of Zimbabwe”, taking issue with the presumptuous nature of such a pronouncement. The Guardian reported her as saying: “It's very troubling to me because writing of a place is not the same as writing for a place. If I write about Zimbabwe, it's not the same as writing for Zimbabwe or for Zimbabweans.” The Book of Memory is her first novel, and is centered on a woman convicted of murder, narrating her story from a prison in Harare.
The Heart Goes Last (September), Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is both prolific and beloved. Best known for her speculative fiction, she’s also an accomplished poet and nonfiction writer. This is her first novel since the Man Booker awardee Blind Assassin (2000), that is not part of a series. It is the story of a couple, Charmaine and Stan, who sign up for a social experiment that involves their receiving jobs and home in exchange for time in jail every second month, during which another couple takes their place. This is vintage Atwood stretching of the limits of the possible.
Atwood’s last published work was her collection of short stories, Stone Mattress (2014). She is the first author to have contributed to the Future Library Project, through which her story Scribbler Moon will only be published in 2114. She also recently contributed a comic strip to the anthology The Secret Loves of Geek Girls.
Under the Udala Trees (September), Chinelo Okparanta
This is Nigerian-American author Okparanta’s debut novel, following her critically acclaimed short story collection Happiness, Like Water (2013). Okparanta is the recipient of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and a 2014 O’Henry Award.
Under the Udala Trees is set in late 1960s war-ravaged Nigeria, and tells the story of eleven-year-old girl Ijeoma, and Amina, the girl with whom Ijeoma eventually falls in love.
Okparanta is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and teaches at the Southern New Hampshire University. Born in Nigeria, she moved to the United States when she was 10.
The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age (September), Joyce Carol Oates
The well-known American author has published over 40 novels, numerous plays, volumes of poetry, and nonfiction. She’s one of the most respected writers in the US today, and has taught writing at Princeton since 1978. In The Lost Landscape, she recounts her early life, and what went into the shaping of her later work. In it, she explores the formative experiences of early childhood, including her friendship with a hen on her family’s farm, and how reading Alice in Wonderland changed her life forever.
A Strangeness in My Mind (October), Orhan Pamuk
The Turkish Nobel laureate’s ninth novel, and his first in six years, follows the life of a migrant named Mevlut Karataş from Central Anatolia to Istanbul, where he dreams of becoming successful, even as he continues the family profession of selling boza, a Turkish drink. It is the story spanning a generation: of Mevlut’s life, love, marriage, desire to belong in the city, and the frustrations of his professional failures. It speaks as much to the development of his story as it does to Istanbul’s, and with this novel, Pamuk continues the legacy of writing about his home city.
Death by Water (October), Kenzaburo Oe
Japanese novelist and Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe first thought up what became his latest novel Sui Shi, or Death by Water, during a court case wherein he was fighting an accusation of libel. Oe was the recipient of Japan’s second Nobel Prize in Literature, and often sets his stories in his hometown of a small village in Shikoku.
This latest novel has been available in the original Japanese since 2009, and is about “an ultranationalist who drowns in a flood a day after the end of World War II.” The 80-year-old Oe’s work is influenced by his eldest son Hikari’s disability. His themes and concerns have also included deep explorations of nuclear power, existentialism, myth and folklore, progressive politics, and war. Oe is as known for being a firebrand activist in Japan as he is for being one of the country’s most eminent authors.
M Train (October), Patti Smith
In 2010, poet, visual artist, and pre-eminent punk rocker Patti Smith published Just Kids, about her life in 1970s New York, and especially of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, when they were both young and struggling in the big city. It was widely hailed as an instant classic, and she’s following it up with M Train, which is described as ‘a journey through eighteen “stations”’.
Smith begins by writing about the time she spent in a Greenwich Village cafe that she visited every morning to drink coffee and write her thoughts down. From there, the writing expands into ruminations about art, inspiration, and Smith’s time with her husband Fred. M Train includes black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.
Numero Zero (November), Umberto Eco
Eco, Italian author of such classics as The Name of the Rose, and Foucault’s Pendulum, has finally written a new novel. It’s out and already atop the bestseller lists in Italian, and the English translation will be published this November. Set in the year 1992, in Milan, it tells the story of ghostwriter Colonna, hired to write a journalist’s memoir. His entanglement with the journalist’s world leads him into a jungle of conspiracies. His publisher Bruce Nichols says, “This novel is vintage Eco – corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories – and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones.”
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Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (August), Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson is remembered for her facility with locating horror in the most ordinary situations. Her 1948 short story, The Lottery, is a classic, and one of the most widely anthologised tales in the history of US literature. Her best-selling novel The Haunting of Hill House has been lauded by Stephen King as “one of the finest books ever to come of the (horror) genre” and The New Republic has called her the “Queen of the American Gothic.” Fifty years after her death, her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman DeWitt are publishing an edited selection of 30 of her short stories and non-fiction, most of which has never been published before.
The Book of Memory (September), Petina Gappah
Zimbabwean-born Petina Gappah’s first published work came in 2009, a collection of short stories titled An Elegy for Easterly. It won The Guardian’s First Book Award for that year. Twelve of its 13 stories are set in Zimbabwe, and feature lives of characters against the backdrop of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
At the time that her first book came out, Gappah objected to being marketed as “the voice of Zimbabwe”, taking issue with the presumptuous nature of such a pronouncement. The Guardian reported her as saying: “It's very troubling to me because writing of a place is not the same as writing for a place. If I write about Zimbabwe, it's not the same as writing for Zimbabwe or for Zimbabweans.” The Book of Memory is her first novel, and is centered on a woman convicted of murder, narrating her story from a prison in Harare.
The Heart Goes Last (September), Margaret Atwood
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is both prolific and beloved. Best known for her speculative fiction, she’s also an accomplished poet and nonfiction writer. This is her first novel since the Man Booker awardee Blind Assassin (2000), that is not part of a series. It is the story of a couple, Charmaine and Stan, who sign up for a social experiment that involves their receiving jobs and home in exchange for time in jail every second month, during which another couple takes their place. This is vintage Atwood stretching of the limits of the possible.
Atwood’s last published work was her collection of short stories, Stone Mattress (2014). She is the first author to have contributed to the Future Library Project, through which her story Scribbler Moon will only be published in 2114. She also recently contributed a comic strip to the anthology The Secret Loves of Geek Girls.
Under the Udala Trees (September), Chinelo Okparanta
This is Nigerian-American author Okparanta’s debut novel, following her critically acclaimed short story collection Happiness, Like Water (2013). Okparanta is the recipient of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and a 2014 O’Henry Award.
Under the Udala Trees is set in late 1960s war-ravaged Nigeria, and tells the story of eleven-year-old girl Ijeoma, and Amina, the girl with whom Ijeoma eventually falls in love.
Okparanta is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and teaches at the Southern New Hampshire University. Born in Nigeria, she moved to the United States when she was 10.
The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age (September), Joyce Carol Oates
The well-known American author has published over 40 novels, numerous plays, volumes of poetry, and nonfiction. She’s one of the most respected writers in the US today, and has taught writing at Princeton since 1978. In The Lost Landscape, she recounts her early life, and what went into the shaping of her later work. In it, she explores the formative experiences of early childhood, including her friendship with a hen on her family’s farm, and how reading Alice in Wonderland changed her life forever.
A Strangeness in My Mind (October), Orhan Pamuk
The Turkish Nobel laureate’s ninth novel, and his first in six years, follows the life of a migrant named Mevlut Karataş from Central Anatolia to Istanbul, where he dreams of becoming successful, even as he continues the family profession of selling boza, a Turkish drink. It is the story spanning a generation: of Mevlut’s life, love, marriage, desire to belong in the city, and the frustrations of his professional failures. It speaks as much to the development of his story as it does to Istanbul’s, and with this novel, Pamuk continues the legacy of writing about his home city.
Death by Water (October), Kenzaburo Oe
Japanese novelist and Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe first thought up what became his latest novel Sui Shi, or Death by Water, during a court case wherein he was fighting an accusation of libel. Oe was the recipient of Japan’s second Nobel Prize in Literature, and often sets his stories in his hometown of a small village in Shikoku.
This latest novel has been available in the original Japanese since 2009, and is about “an ultranationalist who drowns in a flood a day after the end of World War II.” The 80-year-old Oe’s work is influenced by his eldest son Hikari’s disability. His themes and concerns have also included deep explorations of nuclear power, existentialism, myth and folklore, progressive politics, and war. Oe is as known for being a firebrand activist in Japan as he is for being one of the country’s most eminent authors.
M Train (October), Patti Smith
In 2010, poet, visual artist, and pre-eminent punk rocker Patti Smith published Just Kids, about her life in 1970s New York, and especially of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, when they were both young and struggling in the big city. It was widely hailed as an instant classic, and she’s following it up with M Train, which is described as ‘a journey through eighteen “stations”’.
Smith begins by writing about the time she spent in a Greenwich Village cafe that she visited every morning to drink coffee and write her thoughts down. From there, the writing expands into ruminations about art, inspiration, and Smith’s time with her husband Fred. M Train includes black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.
Numero Zero (November), Umberto Eco
Eco, Italian author of such classics as The Name of the Rose, and Foucault’s Pendulum, has finally written a new novel. It’s out and already atop the bestseller lists in Italian, and the English translation will be published this November. Set in the year 1992, in Milan, it tells the story of ghostwriter Colonna, hired to write a journalist’s memoir. His entanglement with the journalist’s world leads him into a jungle of conspiracies. His publisher Bruce Nichols says, “This novel is vintage Eco – corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories – and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones.”