From Alaa Al Aswany’s searing account to Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan, a semi-surreal collection by Haruki Murakami and Rosalie Knecht’s latest, this week’s best new fiction
The Republic Of False Truths
Alaa Al Aswany Faber £16.99
Rooted in first-hand experience, this searing account of the short-lived 2011 Egyptian revolution blends knockabout satire with real polemical anger. The villains of the piece are the leaders, who torture opponents while looting the economy and professing piety.
Ranged against them are a motley crew of students, factory workers and middle-class liberals. They dream forlornly of freedom but, as Aswany reminds us, such dreams can prove lethal.
Max Davidson
Madame Burova
Ruth Hogan Two Roads £12.99
For 50 years, Imelda Burova has been telling fortunes on Brighton seafront. Now, wearied by a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, she’s determined to retire, but she has one last promise to keep.
Meanwhile, in London, Billie, freshly divorced and mourning the death of her parents, is about to become embroiled in Madame Burova’s world in the most unexpected of ways. A joyful novel filled with warmth and wisdom.
Eithne Farry
First Person Singular
Haruki Murakami Harvill Secker £16.99
Dreams, memory and apparently trivial incidents that echo throughout life are the themes of this semi-surreal short story collection. Its narrator puts up at a ramshackle hotel where he is served by a talking monkey.
He strikes up a musical friendship with a fraudster and is berated by a stranger for an incident he can’t remember. Some of the tales are disturbing, some are haunting, and all are thought-provoking: the essence of life, Murakami suggests, is grappling with the inexplicable.
Anthony Gardner
Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery
Rosalie Knecht Verve £9.99
New York in the mid-1960s: Vera Kelly has just left the CIA, split up with her girlfriend and started working as a private detective. Business is slow until she’s paid to track down an orphan lost in the child welfare system.
The case will eventually drag Vera into extreme danger in the Dominican Republic, but its real pleasure lies in getting to know this wonderfully sardonic yet compassionate heroine. Definitely a series to watch.
John Williams