Pile by the Bed reviews Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s 2014 magnum opus The Books of Jacob centering around a little known Jewish messianic sect in eighteenth century Eastern Europe.
Pile by the Bed reviews Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa looking at the American inspired political unrest in Guatemala in the 1950s and 60s.
It was a tough choice but here are Pile by the Bed’s top 5 books of 2021 and five honourable mentions.
Pile by the Bed reviews Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, a great American novel rich with character, theme and resonance and shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.
Pile by the Bed reviews The Promise by Damon Galgut, winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, a vebally inventive novel dealing with the last thirty years of South African history.
Pile by the Bed reviews Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong, conclusion to her 1920s Shanghai set, Shakespeare inspired These Violent Delights.
Pile by the Bed reviews Devotion by Hannah Kent, a romance set against the story of the immigration of German religious communities to South Australia in the nineteenth century.
Pile by the Bed reviews Wild Place by Christian White – a dark, twisty descent into the suburbs when a teenager goes missing in the late 1980s.
Pile by the Bed reviews Case Study by Graham Macrae Burnet a layered exploration of self and identity set in in 1960s London.
Pile by the Bed reviews The Apollo Murders an alternate history techno-thriller debut by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto a thematically rich coming of age story set in New York and rural America in 2011.
Pile by the Bed reviews A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry, the third book in the Raven and Fisher historical crime series based around a medical practice in Edinburgh in the 19th Century
Pile by the Bed reviews The Women of Troy by Pat Barker, continuing the story of the fall of the Troy from the point of view of Briseis, begun in The Silence of the Girls.
Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Velvet was the Night a historical thriller by Silvia Moreno-Garcia which takes the 1971 student riots in Mexico City as a jumping off point.
Pile by the Bed reviews Miles Allinson’s second novel In Moonland, an exploration of the growth of cults in the 1970s and the integenerational consequences of trauma.
Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Harlem Shuffle – a crime caper novel set in 1960s Harlem by double Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead.
Pile by the Bed reviews The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley – in which she brings her steampunk sensibility with a little time travel mixed in to an alternate history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Pile by the Bed reviews and recommends Shelley Parker-Chan’s debut She Who Became the Sun – the first in her Radiant Emperor Duology set in slightly fantasy version of 14th Century China.
Pile by the Bed reviews Foregone by American novelist Russell Banks in which truth and fiction converge with aspects of Banks’ own life in the fictional reflections of an ageing film maker.
Pile by the Bed reviews Girl One by Sarah Flannery Murphy a high concept speculative thriller that is clever, thought provoking and engaging.
