First Person Singular: Stories

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, […]

Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty

The ambitious major new novel from this internationally celebrated writer, on the scale of his bestselling 1Q84. The painter’s wife has left him for a younger man. Taking some time away from Tokyo, he starts looking after the empty house of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. Not long after he moves in, a scraping sound […]

The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportcoat shoots – for no apparent reason – the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church’s baseball team.