Books

The debut novel from the poet Kaveh Akbar. Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian-American poet in Indiana, newly sober and adrift, becomes obsessed with the idea of a death that means something. His mother died when Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down in 1988, and his search for answers leads him to a dying artist whose final exhibition is at the Brooklyn Museum.

A short, aching novella. A lonely young dreamer wandering St Petersburg during the summer “white nights” meets Nastenka on a canal bank, and over four nights they share their lives while she waits for a lover who promised to return. It’s Dostoevsky at his most tender, and you can read it in one sitting.

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman who supports his whole family, wakes up one morning transformed into a monstrous insect. What follows is less about the transformation than about how his family reacts to it: duty turning into resentment, love into relief. A strange, funny, devastating short book about work, worth and belonging.

Michael Moran, a former IRA fighter, rules his family on a farm in the west of Ireland long after the war that defined him has ended. His wife and daughters orbit him with love and fear, and his sons drift away. A quiet, precise novel about power inside a family, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

A mystical allegory by the Lebanese writer Mikhail Naimy. A mysterious figure named Mirdad arrives at a mountaintop monastery called the Ark and gradually reveals himself as a teacher, speaking with the companions about love, silence, prayer and freedom. Part parable and part scripture, it rewards slow reading.