Top Ten Reads for August
From New York's tumultuous 1980s to a Severance-esque corporate dystopia. From a posthumous essay collection of one of Africa's most important voices to the next, gruesome level of 'weird girl fiction'. Find your must-read(s) for the month with our Top Ten Reads for August.
Open Wide
Open Wide
07/08/2025
Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to pry them open with your bare hands and climb inside? Can you ever truly know someone, if you haven’t seen what their internal organs look like? Co-dependency and obsession are unpacked in Jessica Gross's short but visceral,surreal but poignant novel that takes 'weird girl fiction' to the next, gruesome level.
TonyInterruptor
TonyInterruptor
14/08/2025
A comic masterpiece, TonyInterruptor sees one of the finest novelists working today trace the aftermath of a public interruption as it reverberates through the online world and its characters’ lives, posing fundamental questions about authenticity, the internet, love and truth. A comedy of manners for the digital age.
The Gods of New York
The Gods of New York
14/08/2025
Charting the tumultuous period that was Ed Koch's last term as mayor of NYC, The Gods of New York covers racial tensions, the AIDS epidemic, unemployment, homelessness, the collapse of the financial sector, government corruption and more. Alongside the social history is the story of individuals—Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani and more—building and destroying, feeding and extracting from the city.
Trauma Industrial Complex
Trauma Industrial Complex
14/08/2025
From Darren McGarvey, the Orwell Prize-Winning author of Poverty Safari and The Social Distance Between Us, a rigorous and wise exploration of trauma and its abundance on both social media, but also in books, music and television. McGarvey asks; is all this sharing helpful? Especially when combined with the age of disinformation online and the frayed state of identity politics discourse.
The Expansion Project
The Expansion Project
14/08/2025
The most overused reference point to this brilliant satire of corporate dystopia will be Severance, but Pester's nightmarish creation is completely his own. A frightful vision of workplace-as-hellish mundanity, quiet desperation and inhuman work interviews—Capmeadow Business Park is at once eerily familiar and otherworldly. It is also gloriously British in both sense-of-humour and setting, and the experimental elements in structure, rather than overcomplicating or being contrived, serve to make it a very enjoyable dystopia indeed.
Decolonizing Language
Decolonizing Language
21/08/2025
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's death in May this year saw the passing of one of African literature's most legendary authors. In Decolonizing Language… Ngũgĩ's advocacy for African writing in native languages and the revolutionary power of language for the spirit of formerly colonised peoples is a provocative and masterful example of his work.
Katabasis
Katabasis
26/08/2025
New from the author of Babel and the Foyles Book of the Year Yellowface, an enemies-to-lovers romance that will take you from dark academia to the underworld. As two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, Kuang weaves a surprising and utterly unputdownable tale.
The Quiet Ear
The Quiet Ear
28/08/2025
In The Quiet Ear, one of Poetry's most singular voices Raymond Antrobus tells his own story. First diagnosed as deaf at the age of six, he explores the effects on his own life, but also the cultural history of D/deafness. Growing up in East London to an English mother and Jamaican father, educated in both mainstream and deaf schooling systems, Antrobus is the perfect guide to the intersection of race and disability, not to mention a writer of immense skill.
FUSÃO
FUSÃO
28/08/2025
Moqueca fish burgers, stir-fried papaya with crispy basil, duck in golden tomato broth, papaya & chocolate cake with citrus honey glaze… need we say more?
Good and Evil and Other Stories
Good and Evil and Other Stories
28/08/2025
The six unnerving stories in Schweblin’s latest collection—her first in 10 years—are each as unpredictable as a snare: tight and sharp. Ranging from tragedy to love, the sinister to the beautiful, this is a virtuoso collection from an incomparable imagination.
