Reading list

Verso Summer Fiction

Uncompromisingly intelligent and beautiful fiction.

Verso Books 1 August 2024

Verso Summer Fiction

We launched the Verso Fiction imprint to publish international voices and revolutionary stories. With many translated into English for the first time, these books experiment with style and form, telling stories that are not often heard.

New and Upcoming Releases:

[book-strip index="1" style="buy"]

See more of our fiction

[book-strip index="2" style="buy"]

Faraway the Southern Sky

Faraway the Southern Sky

by Joseph Andras

Translated by Simon Leser

Fleeing persecution in Indochina, the young Ho Chi Minh arrived in Paris as World War I was sputtering to a close. A painfully shy twentysomething, he joined the shadowy figures of the demimonde, t...
The Last Sane Woman

The Last Sane Woman

by Hannah Regel

Nicola Long is a few years out of a fine arts degree, listless and unenthusiastically employed in London. She begins to spend her hours at a small underfunded archive dedicated to women’s art. Ther...
If Only

If Only

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the m...
Crooked Plow

Crooked Plow

by Itamar Vieira Junior

Translated by Johnny Lorenz

Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2024'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"Say something!" she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that ...
Paradise Rot

Paradise Rot

by Jenny Hval

Translated by Marjam Idriss

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder."Chris Kraus, author of I Love DickJo is in a strange new country for university and havi...
Bluebeard's Castle

Bluebeard's Castle

by Anna Biller

When the successful British mystery writer Judith Moore meets Gavin, a handsome and charming baron, at a birthday party on the Cornish coast, his love transforms her from a bitter, lonely young wom...
Is Mother Dead

Is Mother Dead

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

**Longlisted for The International Booker Prize 2023**'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed a...
Hit Parade of Tears

Hit Parade of Tears

by Izumi Suzuki

Translated by Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph and Helen O'Horan

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom.Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of t...
I Fear My Pain Interests You

I Fear My Pain Interests You

by Stephanie LaCava

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New ...
Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us

Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us

by Joseph Andras

A young revolutionary plants a bomb in a factory on the outskirts of Algiers during the Algerian War. The bomb is timed to explode after work hours, so no one will be hurt. But the authorities have...
How to Be a Revolutionary

How to Be a Revolutionary

by C.A. Davids

Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pang...
Happy Hour

Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning début brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York CityRefreshing and wry in ...
Girls Against God

Girls Against God

by Jenny Hval

Translated by Marjam Idriss

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselv...
Girls Against God

Girls Against God

by Jenny Hval

Translated by Marjam Idriss

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselv...
The Runaways

The Runaways

by Fatima Bhutto

"Dazzling. A novel that holds up to scrutiny a world of claustrophobic war zones, virulent social media and cities collapsing upon themselves, and then sets it down again, transformed by the grace ...
Will and Testament

Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

Longlisted for The Millions Best Translated Book Awards for FictionLonglisted for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureFour siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a disp...
Kitchen Curse

Kitchen Curse

by Eka Kurniawan

Hailed as a Southeast Asian Gabriel García Márquez for the exuberant beauty of his prose and the darkly comic surrealism of his stories, Eka Kurniawan is the first Indonesian writer to be nominated...
Man Tiger

Man Tiger

by Eka Kurniawan

Introduction by Benedict Anderson

Translated by Labodalih Sembiring

A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families and of Margio, a young man ordinary in all particulars except ...

Filed under: versoreadinglists