Hamnet
By Maggie O’Farrell,
Tinder

An artist's impression of the poster advertising W.S. Hardy Shakespeare Company's touring production of Shakespeare’s 'Hamlet', 1894; Depicting Hamlet (played by Gordon Craig) contemplating the skull of Yorick. Pinterest

This is not Shakespeare’s story; he is never named. It is a fictional exploration of the connections between Hamnet’s death in 1596 and the writing of Hamlet by his father around four years later. On the surface, Maggie O’Farrell’s pacy, often lyrical prose enacts everyday life in Shakespeare’s home in Stratford. But at its core, this gripping and dramatic tale is an exploration of ways of grieving and living with the loss of a child, and what that can do to a marriage.

The Discomfort of Evening
By Marieke Lucas Rijneveld,
Faber & Faber

Yet another unflinching examination of a family falling apart in the madness of grief, The Discomfort of Evening — the winner of this year’s International Booker Prize — does not hold back when it comes to expressing violence, rendered all the more shocking because most of it is narrated and inflicted by children. Discomfort is too mild a term for what follows. Rijneveld’s striking choice to give full voice to the enormity of the children’s grief and their total deprivation of human affection makes the narrative searing yet perceptive.

The Memory Police
By Yoko Ogawa,
Vintage

The losses continue in this dystopic world inhabited by the Memory Police, elegant in their uniforms, sometimes polite, but always ruthless, their menace perceivable at all times. But death and disappearance take on an anarchic life of their own on this strange island, isolated by mountainsides of thorny trees and misty peaks. Mindless erasures damage ecosystems — when formal calendars are ‘disappeared’, an unending winter ensues. A parable of these unfolding times, the pleasure of reading this book is mixed with palpable terror.

Shuggie Bain
By Douglas Stuart,
Picador

The cover image of the book, Shuggie Bain. Scanned from the book

The winner of this year’s Booker Prize grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until it has wrung out all the wildly oscillating emotions — joy, sorrow, anger, disenchantment, passion, desire, envy, hate, disappointment, and a strange, luminous love — that make up the exhilarating experience of reading this roller-coaster of a novel.

The Mirror & The Light
By Hilary Mantel,
Fourth Estate

The final volume of Hilary Mantel’s grand, immersive Wolf Hall trilogy is a testament to her virtuosity for she knows how to make readers forget the unchangeability of recorded history. The book’s triumph lies in its evocation of the minutiae of the world of the Tudors. This is a magnificent conclusion to a historical trilogy that pulls the past so close that one can almost touch it.

Tyll
By Daniel Kehlmann,
Pantheon

Tyll Eulenspiegel. WikimediaCommons

History and myth, fact and fiction, are expertly woven together to retell the history of Germany, Bohemia, the Low Countries and Continental Europe through vignettes of multiple characters drawn from different walks of life. Tyll Eulenspiegel — a figure from German legend who is famous for his tricks, witty jests and practical jokes — usually plays a key role in all of these narratives, but never overpowers them.

A long petal of the sea
By Isabel Allende,
Bloomsbury

Isabel Allende looks at an arduous journey that thousands in Spain undertook at the end of the Spanish Civil War, demonstrating that people separated by space, languages, cultures and world-views can be united by a common thread: the history of political turmoil and displacement. The narrative is an ode to resilience, to the eternal journey that some people are forced to undertake through an ever-changing world.

Amnesty
By Aravind Adiga,
Picador

Refugees at sea. Shutterstock

In the eyes of the law, rights cannot exist without responsibilities. But does the absence of legal rights also absolve a person of moral responsibilities? This is the dilemma that propels the plot of Amnesty. An introspective novel about the state of illegal immigrants everywhere, this book contemplates the fairness of law and how it is bent to suit the needs of the powerful. As the novel hurtles towards its climax, readers are left pondering whether morality, like law, is a concept invented by those in power.

The Golden Rule
By Amanda Craig,
Little, Brown

The Golden Rule is equal parts crime novel and social commentary, neatly wrapped up in some very beautiful nature writing. The surprises in the plot are beautifully constructed in the best traditions of crime fiction. But Amanda Craig’s agenda is bigger than simply writing an engaging suspense novel: she seeks to explore the root and nature of violence itself. Why do people break the golden rule, ‘Do as you would be done by’?

Bombay Balchão
By Jane Borges,
Tranquebar

This novel is a carefully disguised bildungsroman that collates history and memory into a celebration of storytelling. While individual characters stand out with their charm, they also lay claim to a shared history of complex relationships and failed conversations in Borges’s examination of a post-colonial India through the lens of identitarianism and agency.

If It Bleeds
By Stephen King,
Hodder & Stoughton

If It Bleeds finds King at his best. For one, it keeps the reader engrossed in tales about human desires and weaknesses. But more important, it does a fine job of demonstrating that King can still write a horror story that frightens as much as it enthrals. The four deeply compelling stories aptly demonstrate how cold horror can co-exist with sentimentality.