Contemporary Fiction

Reviews

Men in Love: Irvine Welsh Returns to His Favourite Territory

Irvine Welsh's new novel 'Hombres enamorados' lands with El Cultural describing it as 'Trainspotting's hangover of drugs, sex and class.' Which is, more or less, what every Irvine Welsh novel has been described as since 1993.

Authors

Kiran Desai Returns After Twenty Years With a Novel About Impossible Love

Twenty years after winning the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai has published The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — shortlisted for the 2026 Man Booker. Some waits are worth it.

News

Go Gentle, Maria Semple's Return with Oprah's Blessing

Fourteen years after Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple is back with Go Gentle, Oprah's latest Book Club pick. On the long wait, comedy as serious craft, and novels that ripen slowly.

Authors

Patricio Pron Opens His Pandora's Box with a Novel You Don't Expect

Patricio Pron's new novel is unpredictable — and in these times, that is worth more than it might seem. A writer who empties himself onto the page and invites you to do the same.

Genres

Novels Are Getting Simpler. So What?

A new study shows that sentence complexity in contemporary fiction has declined over the past century. The question isn't whether this is true. The question is what it means.

Reviews

Lauren J. Joseph's New Novel Turns the Trans Rock Muse Into Something Wilder

Lauren J. Joseph's <em>Lean Cat, Savage Cat</em> takes the trans rock muse archetype and returns it its voice, body, and desire — a novel that refuses every apology.