Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey review – a comic take on newly single life
A sardonic story of divorce, depression and the road to recovery by the Schitt’s Creek screenwriter

From a surreal African kingdom to a Sri Lankan afterlife, via murder, morality, grief and healing … One of this year’s prize judges assesses the six finalists they must choose between

Burning Questions, Margaret Atwood: The novelist is frank, excellent company in her third volume of essays, covering the Obama years, #MeToo and Covid

Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love by Huma Qureshi review – a fine debut
In this first collection, sweetly domestic stories are complicated when characters confront hidden wounds

Dinner Party: A Tragedy by Sarah Gilmartin review – family’s subtle poison
A finely observed Irish debut about a monstrous mother and dysfunctional siblings

Three Rooms by Jo Hamya review – on belonging and inequality.
A fraught, polemical debut novel about precarious work and housing, and the effects on women’s ambitions

We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan review – a powerful debut
Belonging and exile are at the heart of this novel of dislocation and trauma.

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi review – electrifyingly truthful. When does self-determination become selfishness? This intelligent Booker-shortlisted debut examines the legacy of a toxic mother

The Guardian: Writers & Lovers by Lily King. A kind of gorgeous agony.  From romance to debt, the struggles of an aspiring writer are observed with humour and pathos

The Guardian: Braised Pork by An Yu. Realism and surrealism intertwine as an alienated young woman finds herself on a journey from Beijing to Tibet.