Supplied
Given that many of us are engaged in a continuing Sisyphean battle with the piles of books on our bedside tables, the prospect of a bunch of big-name fiction and non-fiction titles – whose rhyming pairs include Heti and Ondaatje; Oyeyemi and Rushdie – coming out in 2024 may induce anxiety more than excitement. Still, it’s always good to know what’s on the immediate horizon, for purposes of strategy, so consider this your gentle heads-up.
Burma Sahib, by Paul TherouxSupplied
Burma Sahib, Paul Theroux (Mariner, January) The author of The Mosquito Coast’s latest, dubbed “stellar” in an early review, locates the roots of George Orwell’s anti-colonialism (also explored in the latter’s Burmese Days) in the time he spent working (while still Eric Blair) as a young policeman in Burma, then part of the British Raj.
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, by Hannah RitchieSupplied
Not the End of the World, Hannah Ritchie (Little, Brown, January) Using a positive, solutions-based (and Bill Gates-endorsed) approach to big environmental problems, the 30-year-old Scottish data scientist and senior researcher at Oxford explains why it might be okay for us humans to keep having children after all.
Code Noir, by Canisia LubrinSupplied
Code Noir, Canisia Lubrin (Knopf, February) The 59 linked, illustrated fragments that make up the Griffin Prize-winning poet’s genre-bending first work of fiction are based on the decrees from 1685 – collectively known as the “Code Noir” – set out by Louis XIV, which governed the treatment of slaves by their masters in French colonies for almost 200 years.
Alphabetical Diaries, by Sheila HetiSupplied
Alphabetical Diaries, Sheila Heti (Knopf, February) Heti’s book – and act of narrative alchemy, transforming memoir into fiction – was created by putting 10 years’ worth of diaries into an Excel spreadsheet (charmingly quaint in the age of AI), then ordering the resulting sentences alphabetically to allow patterns to emerge.
Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada's Telecom Empire, by Alexandra PosadzkiSupplied
Rogers v. Rogers, Alexandra Posadzki (M&S, February) Based on reporting originally done in this paper, Posadzki’s book promises to take readers behind the scenes of the boardroom-cum-family drama that saw Rogers chairman Edward Rogers pitted, not just against his management team, but against his mother and two sisters over the telecom’s $20-billion acquisition of Shaw Communications.
A Year of Last Things, by Michael OndaatjeSupplied
A Year of Last Things: Poems, Michael Ondaatje (M&S, March) Before he was a novelist, he was a poet known for, among other works, the Governor-General’s Prize-winning The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. This collection, Ondaatje’s first in almost 20 years, is billed as a look back “on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss.”
Wild Houses, by Colin BarrettSupplied
Wild Houses, Colin Barrett (M&S, March) Set, like his brilliant short-story collections Homesickness and Young Skins, in his native County Mayo, the Toronto-based writer’s first novel is a humour-inflected revenge fantasy involving interactions between dealers, enforcers and various other locals in a small Irish town.
Beneath the Surface of Things, by Wade DavisSupplied
Beneath the Surface of Things: New and Selected Essays, Wade Davis (Greystone, April) In addition to topics such as the demonization of coca in Colombia, the First World War and the dawn of modernity, the B.C.-based anthropologist and explorer’s new book of essays includes “The Unravelling of America,” his viral takedown of supposed American exceptionalism, from 2020.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman RushdieSupplied
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie (Knopf, April) It’s unlikely Rushdie anticipated writing another memoir after his meaty Joseph Anton of 2013, but then, as the title lays out, the thinkable happened.
We Loved it All, by Lydia MilletSupplied
We Loved It All, Lydia Millet (Norton, April) The non-fiction debut from the much-admired American novelist (The Children’s Bible etc.), draws on her long experience as an animal-rights advocate in what’s billed as “a genre-defying tour de force that makes an impassioned argument for people to see their emotional and spiritual lives as infinitely dependent on the lives of non-human beings.”
Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other, by Sophie Grégoire TrudeauSupplied
Closer Together, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau (Random House Canada, April) Its feel-good title – or series of catchphrases (the main one, “Closer Together,” being impossible not to sing to the tune of the same name by Montreal band the Box) – notwithstanding, many readers will be parsing between the lines of Grégoire Trudeau’s self-help-adjacent memoir (which covers her TV career and battles with an eating disorder) to determine the real reasons for her conscious uncoupling with the Prime Minister.
Like Love: Essays and Conversations, by Maggie NelsonSupplied
Like Love: Essays and Conversations, Maggie Nelson (M&S, April) You’d be hard pressed to find a writer as candid and genuinely intellectually questing as Nelson (The Argonauts etc); this collection of 20 years of her writing, which includes recurring topics such as gender, friendship and perversity, blurs lines between essay, memoir, philosophy and criticism.
All Fours, by Miranda JulySupplied
All Fours, Miranda July (Riverhead, May) In the filmmaker and performance artist’s second novel (a latter-day feminist answer to Kerouac?), a 45-year-old artist announces to her family that she’s embarking on a cross-country, L.A.-to-New York road trip, only to bed down in a nearby motel and and immerse “herself in an entirely different journey.”
Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith ButlerSupplied
Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler (Knopf, March) Thirty years ago, Butler’s writing on gender made her that rare bird, the celebrity academic; 30 years later, the Gender Trouble author weighs in what has since become a politicized, hot-button issue.
American Spirits, by Russell BanksSupplied
American Spirits, Russell Banks (Knopf Doubleday, March) In three intertwined tales, Banks returns to the small, working-class town in New York State that was the setting of his 1997 novel The Sweet Hereafter, and to the themes (masculine rage, disaffection) that have often been part of his stock-in-trade, this time with an injection of guns and MAGA ethos.
The Road from Belhaven, by Margot LivesySupplied
The Road from Belhaven, Margot Livesey (Knopf Doubleday, February) Livesey has been crafting perceptive, understated novels for decades; this one, set in the 19th century, involves a teenaged orphan who, after leaving her grandparents’ farm to marry a tailor’s apprentice in Glasgow, finally learns to embrace an initially unwanted gift of second sight.
The Book of Love, by Kelly LinkSupplied
The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House, February) Known for a series of beguiling short-story collections that incorporate magic, animals and the fantastical, Link has written a defiantly un-short first novel (at 640 pages) – incorporating magic, animals and the fantastical – about a group of dead teenagers in a seaside New England town attempting to bargain their way back to the land of the living.
Until August, by Gabriel Garcia MarquezSupplied
Until August, Gabriel García Márquez (Knopf, March) Cynical cash grab or rescued literary gem? A decade after the great Colombian writer’s death, his sons have pulled this final novel, written while he was struggling with dementia, out of a Texas archive.
Parasol Against the Axe, by Helen OyeyemiSupplied
Parasol Against the Axe, Helen Oyeyemi (Penguin, March) The city of Prague features as a character – unreliable of course – in Oyeyemi’s Borges-adjacent latest novel (its title a death-metal band waiting to happen) about a young woman named Hero who travels to the Czech capital for a bachelorette weekend.
James, by Percival EverettSupplied
James, Percival Everett (Doubleday, March) In what’s being billed as his highest-profile novel to date, the idiosyncratic African-American writer (Erasure etc.) pens a comedic reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Finn’s friend and escaped slave, Jim.
The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power, by Dana MattioliSupplied
The Everything War, Dana Mattioli, (Little, Brown, April) Mattioli, who became a Pulitzer finalist for her reporting on Amazon at The Wall Street Journal, brings it all together in a book her publisher is blurbing as “the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon’s endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary.”
The Alternatives, by Caoilinn HughesSupplied
The Alternatives, Caoilinn Hughes (Riverhead, April) The young writer and poet’s first two novels earned plaudits from the likes of Roddy Doyle, John Banville, A. L. Kennedy and others, as well as a raft of award noms and wins; this third novel is about three sisters who gather in the Irish countryside from various parts of the world to search for their mysteriously missing fourth.
A Map of the New Normal: How Inflation, War, and Sanctions Will Change Your World Forever, by Jeff RubinSupplied
A Map of the New Normal, Jeff Rubin, (Penguin, May) Having probed the shortcomings of the globalist model in his previous books, the Canadian economist aims to explain how the arrival of the pandemic further exposed them, leading to a perfect storm of economic misery that, per the book’s title, we’re apparently only just getting started with now.
Long Island, by Colm ToibinSupplied
Long Island, Colm Toibin (McClelland and Stewart, May) Set 20 years after Toibin’s most successful novel, Brooklyn, this sequel has the Irish immigrant heroine of the former, Eilis Lacey, opting to raise a child born of her Italian-American plumber husband’s infidelity.
This Strange Eventful History, by Claire MessudSupplied
This Strange Eventful History, Claire Messud (Norton, May) Messud’s eighth novel is a multigenerational chronicle of an Algerian-French family (based on her own) set against the backdrop of the Second World War and the Algerian Revolution.
Parade, by Rachel CuskSupplied
Parade, Rachel Cusk (HarperCollins, June) Cusk’s publisher calls this a book about “art, womanhood and violence, one which confronts and upends the conventions of storytelling.” (Despite the title, one can safely assume it won’t involve wide-eyed children eyeing a street full of floats.)
Caledonian Road, by Andrew O'HagenSupplied
Caledonian Road, Andrew O’Hagan (M&S, June) The Scottish writer channels the big social novels of the 19th century in a story involving an art historian’s precipitous fall from grace in London’s fashionable arts scene following an entanglement with a student.
The Knowing, Tanya Talaga (HarperCollins, August) The Seven Fallen Feathers author casts a dual – investigative journalist and personal – eye on the history of residential schools in Canada as she chronicles the lives of several family members, including her great-great-grandmother, who attended them.
Editor’s note: Jan 8, 2024: A previous version of this list incorrectly included You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know by Philip Gourevitch. This anticipated book will not be available until May 1, 2025.