The best-written recent literary fiction

The best-written recent releases»

‘Witty, assured, energisingly original' — GUARDIAN

In my final year of college, I started to tell everyone that my father had died, very suddenly: Nightfall. The bedroom. Heart Attack. The words – he is dead – slid out quickly, rising from my throat, into the air. It was just a sentence, and it only took a few seconds, a brief dash in the conversation. It was easy. And it might have all been fine – I might have got away unscathed, with a little sympathy, a few hugs, and nothing else – had I not decided to tell Katarina first.

She was ugly, short, and had been burdened with a kind face and a terrible body. Her skin had the texture of gooseberries, all prickled and marred. The pimples started at her neck, in small raised red bumps which crept over the throat, the jaw, making their way to the centre of her chin. Imperfections were insulting: I felt that there should be a degree to which ugliness could no longer be acceptable, a line drawn somewhere, like with supermarket foods, yellow stickers on, tossed into the hands of the homeless. It bothered me. I usually looked away whenever I saw scars, scabs or untidiness of any kind, but, with Katarina, I just couldn’t stop staring.

Our pick is here»

See here for the literary fiction titles we considered this month.

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Information about submitting to Auraist is here. Our standards are as high as for our other picks, but if we publish your work, we’ll invite you to answer our questions on prose style. Your answers will be considered for inclusion in the print publication of these answers by many of the world’s best writers.

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‘Your trees are less wooden than your people.’

Maggie Haggith is a Scottish novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer known for work that blends history, landscape, and moral inquiry. Based in the Highlands, she often draws on Scottish settings and archival research to explore themes like war, conscience, and community.

Her best-known novel, The Walrus Mutterer, is set in early 20th-century Scotland and follows a minister who refuses to support World War