The 10 biggest new books to read in spring 2024
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Choice by Neel Mukherjee
The Booker shortlistee returns with a superb, emotive novel about ordinary people who suddenly feel adrift in their lives – and the choices, or lack thereof, that led them there. Atlantic, April 4
Sociopath by Patric Gagne
“I’m a liar. I’m a thief. I’m highly manipulative.” Prepare to enjoy, if that’s the word, the disturbing memoir by an American woman who has been a sociopath since childhood. Bluebird, April 11
Knife by Salman Rushdie
This, by some measure, is the publishing event of the year: one of the greatest living novelists on his near-murder in 2022, and how literature can ameliorate our darkest days. Jonathan Cape, April 16
Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss
Bad news: 2,000 years of democracy may imminently end, according to Truss. Should we take the radical advice of the ex-PM who calls herself the “only conservative in the room”? Biteback, April 16
Magic Pill by Johann Hari
Johann Hari: respectable journalist or confessed plagiarist? Bloomsbury prefer the former angle. Whatever you think, expect his latest grand inquiry, this one into the truth about diet-drug Ozempic, to make serious waves. Bloomsbury, May 2
The Missing Thread by Daisy Dunn
Forget the bitty style of “10 women who…” books. Daisy Dunn is rewriting 3,000 years of ancient history in one go, by reframing the whole lot around female figures. W&N, May 23
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
Two decades after Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn, we return to Eilis, Tony and children, just as a secret is revealed and their lives fall apart. Wistful prose and small-town Ireland beckon. Picador, May 23
Endgame 1944 by Jonathan Dimbleby
June 6 will be the 80th anniversary of D-Day: brace for many books. But first, travel with Dimbleby to the Eastern Front, where the Nazis’ fate was being brutally sealed. Viking, May 23
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
A tale of forbidden love and banditry in the alcohol-soaked Wild West? The first novel in five years from the Irish Goldsmiths-winner should be good, breathless fun. Canongate, June 6
War by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Believed lost for nearly 80 years, this shockingly visceral First World War novel by a French titan (and virulent anti-Semite) is finally appearing in English – in two translations at once. New Directions & Alma Books, June 11
