Best Fiction – 2024

I know I should be reading more fiction. But the ones I picked up this year mostly turned out to be great ones. The best that I read this year (in no particular order):

1. Pachinko
   I’m late to the party with this one. The NYT brought out their Top 100 books of this century and I added a few to the TBR list. Pachinko didn’t disappoint. The Korea-Japan post-WWII immigrant dynamic was something that I wasnt aware of. Apple TV has a multi season series on the book but I couldn’t find 20 hours to devote to it.

2. My Friends
   Matar’s previous work ‘The Return’ was a marvel. While ‘My Friends’ didn’t match up to it, the long shadow cast by Gaddafi’s regime on Libyan families across the world was so movingly and painfully written about. Books like these are a good reminder of why totalitarian regimes must be resisted.

3. Heart of Darkness
   Re-read this masterpiece this year.

4. Les Miserabes
   Hugo’s celebrated work was part of my homework for the Paris visit.

5. Middlemarch
   Was fulfilling to read two classics this year. And Eliot’s genius sparkled throughout this book.

6. Slough House Series –
   Jackson Lamb was the literary character of the year for me. The series has also been adapted for the small screen and is on Apple TV. Worth watching it for Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Lamb.

7. Hotel du Lac
   Anita Brookner’s novel set in the Vevey-Montreaux region of Switzerland evoked the sense of the place and the gloomy weather in a unique way.

8. Beauty is a Wound
   Essential reading to understand Indonesia. Kurniawan is known as Indonesia’s Marquez and this was part of my homework for the Jakarta visit.

9. Benyamin’s Jasmine Days and Al Arabian Novel Factory
   I ‘read’ both these audiobooks in Malayalam on Storytel. Benyamin, one of Kerala’s most celebrated contemporary writers covers the Arab Spring through the South Asian diaspora mixing myth, economic realities and human relationships. When Nasrallah was killed by Israel, it was Benyamin’s work that I thought of, as N is referred to in his works

Two highly rated works that didn’t work for me were Devika Rege’s Quarterlife and Nilanjana Roy’s ‘Black River’. Roy’s work showed me a Delhi that I knew existed but had never encountered – the crime-ridden floodplains of the Yamuna.

I’ve just started reading Mating by Norman Rush and I can already get a sense of why this novel of the early 90s has garnered a cult following among the millennials who have unconventional views on love and desire.

Last year’s picks: | 2023 |