The Best Fiction Books

The Orwell Prizes are the UK's most prestigious prizes for writing about politics, awarded annually to books and articles that best meet George Orwell's own ambition "to make political writing into an art." Boyd Tonkin, chair of this year's judges, talks us through the books shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

The best psychological thrillers are books that draw you into the lives of seemingly ordinary people, keep you turning the pages and then (often) floor you with an unexpected twist. British thriller writer JS Monroe, author of No Place to Hide, recommends some of the best ones out there, including the 1955 book that inspired the modern genre.

Modernist novels emerged as a reaction against modernity but, in their focus on inner consciousness, captured the experience of living life like never before. American writer and critic Michael Clune picks five of the best modernist novels from 1936 up to 2013. Modernist literature is still with us, he explains, because what it was reacting against is still with us.

There’s nothing better than discovering an exciting new writer at exactly the moment they break onto the scene. Here novelist Yume Kitasei recommends brand new sci-fi and fantasy (SFF) novels by debut authors coming out in 2023.

From Africa to the Middle East to Korea and Japan, there are so many countries you can discover by reading a good historical novel. British novelist and publisher Jane Johnson, several of whose books take place in Morocco at different times in the country's history, recommends five of her favourite historical novels set around the world.

Novelists often make the decision to create alternate realities—worlds that are very like, but not quite identical, to our own. Catherine Lacey, the acclaimed novelist whose latest book Biography of X is set in a United States in which the Southern states seceded during the 20th century, talks us through the process of plotting counterfactual timelines and recommends five books that explore the slippery relation between truth, reality, and fiction.

Many of us fantasize about suddenly coming into a great fortune, but literature has often explored the dissatisfaction and moral corruption of the very wealthy. Here, the novelist and broadcaster Andrew Hunter Murray selects five brilliant novels about rich people and reflects on why you probably don't want to be a billionaire.

The craze of the 1930s and 1940s was for beautifully illustrated editions of the great Victorian novels, affordably priced to take pride of place in a middle-class home. Lecturer and author Rosalind Parry recommends five outstanding editions whose illustrations are as striking as their stories.

Books featuring dystopian or post-apocalyptic themes offer us an opportunity to study human nature outside of the normal structure of society, says Rosa Rankin-Gee, author of the acclaimed novel Dreamland. Here, she recommends five other books featuring a near-future dystopia, all of which explore a societal or cultural unraveling through beautiful prose.

South Asian Americans are too often treated as sidekicks or even suspects in national narratives. Wajahat Ali recommends five fantastic novels by South Asian American authors, and makes a compelling case that for the United States to succeed as a multi-racial democracy, "it is key that people pick up the pen to tell America’s full story.”