Joshua Cohen

Through the writing of political novels, writers might hope to speak against their time, says the American author Joshua Cohen. Here he selects five books in which the protagonist undergoes a political education.

Any end-of-year list is necessarily partial; no one person could hope to read every novel published in the English language in any given year. That’s why prize lists are so useful for guiding the casual reader’s literary diet. Here, our deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a brief round-up of the books that ruled victorious during the 2022 awards season.