Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman review – Murakami’s surreal tales around a Tokyo earthquake

The seductively quirky sad-serious tone of the author is evident as a constellation of characters try and save the city – including a lost cat and a giant talkative frog

Spa by Erik Svetoft review – how the other half dies

An oozing discharge in the corridors of a five-star hotel symbolises the corruption of the rich in the Swedish artist’s mordant gothic debut

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld review – lights, camera, attraction

The US author’s zingy new novel tackles celebrity, lockdown and frustrated love lives with ambition and panache

In brief: The Wakes; Humanly Possible; A Tidy Ending – reviews

A wittily poignant tale of friendship, death and unexpected joy; an impressively wide-ranging history of humanism; and a darkly comic crime novel

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin review – Vietnamese refugees adrift in Thatcher’s Britain

This dazzling debut follows a traumatised family as they try to rebuild their lives in Britain

Deep Down by Imogen West-Knights – fluid and skilful debut about domestic abuse

The effect on two siblings of their violent father’s death is told with sharp wit and vivid shifts in time in this accomplished first novel

Reach for the Stars by Michael Cragg review – hot gossip from pop’s golden age

In this hoot of an oral history the stars of 90s chart acts recall how their innocence collided with a cynical music industry

Arrangements in Blue by Amy Key review – cathartic meditation on singledom

The poet’s Joni Mitchell-inspired memoir of her partnerless life marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy and solitude

The Conservative Party After Brexit by Tim Bale review – why conservatism turned into chaos

The politics professor deftly chronicles the errors and ideologies that have brought the post-Brexit Conservative party to the brink of ungovernability

Defeating the Dictators review: prescriptions for democratic health

Charles Dunst salutes Joe Biden’s domestic spending but also points to how Trump’s sclerotic grip still hobbles the US

Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns review – a blazing debut

Radical politics drive this propulsive novel about social precarity and solidarity, narrated by a ride-share driver

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

A bullying beetle; an Irish myth; the search for a magical beast; and a gripping coming-of-age story set in Ghana

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy audiobook review – a painfully funny memoir

The Nickleodeon star describes a dysfunctional childhood spent trying to please her narcissistic mother in this darkly comic autobiography

Homelands by Timothy Garton Ash review – Europe’s story

The author and journalist charts some of the lessons learned from the Hungarian revolution to the invasion of Ukraine

Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell review – the meaning of humanism

An skilful examination of seven centuries of thought that deftly combines philosophy, history and biography